Crystal City Underground is going under https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/04/30/crystal-city-underground-closing.html
Some random reactions:
*Underground retail is shitty retail,
*Shitty retail is cheap-rent retail,
*There's no real model for sustainably-cheap-rent retail in new development,
*Landowners can do as they please with their property,
*Residents who fought for keeping the Underground will feel betrayed.
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The frustrating lesson, as always: Love development, hate developers.
For a region that’s a bit structurally immune from zaniness and fun, losing the Underground (and the puppet store, cobbler, weird DoD knick-knacks store, etc) seems like a squandered opportunity.
A Somerville Underground would be unstoppably awesome somehow.