Columbia Heights has been Gentrification Ground Zero in the District for the past few years. Decades of stagnation followed the 1968 riots that left large patches of the 14th Street corridor burned to the ground.
But a few years ago, the shuttered Tivoli Theater was revived as a shopping complex, and the massive DCUSA complex -- home to Target, Best Buy, Staples, and other megastores -- was built, becoming D.C.’s largest retail complex.
With the new business came the new condos and the new residents, and chic new restaurants like Commonwealth Gastropub, Logan @ The Heights, and Social. Sticky Fingers, the hip vegan bakery, moved in. And now, Columbia Heights is getting ... an IHOP.
Amid all the upscale joints, the neighborhood will be getting a good ol' pancake and coffee place, which will be open 24 hours a day.
According to Bob Moore of the Development Corporation of Columbia Heights, it will bring 110 new jobs along with its selection of multiple flavors of syrup. But beyond the jobs, IHOP will add another affordable eatery in the increasingly pricey neighborhood.
Columbia Heights has its fast food and its ethnic eateries, but the IHOP will fill a gap left by the demolition of the old Waffle Shop three years back. Residents were split on that -- some lamented the loss of a longtime neighborhood establishment, while others were happy to see a place that was sometimes the locus for small-scale criminal activity reduced to rubble.
DCUSA management hopes to keep that element away from the new IHOP -- the franchise will be owned by a Metropolitan Police Department officer. DCUSA’s Dave Stein, reaching a bit, said of the IHOP, “It’s going to be owned and staffed by police officers.”
As for those “urban pioneers” who have poured into Columbia Heights from the suburbs, who may be horrified to find the home of the Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity moving in among the fancier spots: Have no fear, an organic grocery will be moving into DCUSA around the same time.
