Today, though, during the first weeks of December, the shops and streets are much quieter. Stores like World Market and Old Navy that may have once been popular destinations for buying gifts have since abandoned the now nearly empty��Chevy Chase Pavilion mall on the corner of Wisconsin Ave. and Western Ave. ��

In a latest attempt to revive the area, the local leaders have turned to developers to add more residential spaces and bring more neighbors to Friendship Heights. Leading the way along the neighborhood’s main corridor of Wisconsin Ave. is a mixed-use project by Federal Realty Investment Trust. After almost a year and a half of planning and debate, commissioners approved the project proposal in a 3 to 1 vote during a special meeting last Thursday.��

“We have an obsolete building that we would like to revitalize,” Geoff Sharpe, vice president of development for Federal Realty, said at the meeting. “I’m speaking personally as someone who lives across the line in Maryland, who shops in Friendship Heights every week: It’s the right thing to do to revitalize the neighborhood.”��

The existing building, Friendship Center, is a collection of storefronts: Maggiano’s, Marshalls, Sheyla Vie and DSW. Rebuilding on this space, the new multi-story project will include approximately 350 apartment units along with 10,500 to 14,000 square feet of retail space. ��

The project will bring the largest addition of affordable housing to the northwest area so far, Sharpe said. These units, in particular, will hopefully attract younger residents, said Richard Bradley, executive director of Friendship Heights Alliance, an organization concerned with economic development in the neighborhood.��

“There’s a joke that goes around that says that if you want to visit your parents, you go to Bethesda; if you want to visit your grandparents you go to Friendship Heights,” Bradley said. “It’s an active but it’s an aging community, so obviously, we want to shift that.”��

The project’s emphasis on residential space was a point of contention for commissioners and residents alike. Ali Gianinno, the one “nay” vote, said she was conflicted about what she felt was still missing from the project; her biggest concern is too little retail space.��

“[Friendship Heights] is supposed to be a hub for jobs, retail, transit and housing. And I think that this project doesn’t do enough to meet a lot of those pieces,” Gianinno said. “It’s going in the right direction, and I don’t want to slow progress. But I also know that I feel very strongly that we have to focus on the fact that Friendship Heights is a regional center.”��

Multiple residents, including Ryan Keefe, spoke at the meeting in favor of the project, specifically the additional housing.��

“We should set a precedent in [the area] that would say yes to development, yes to neighbors and frankly yes to a lot of affordable housing,” Keefe said.��

Tracy Hadden Loh, who lives next door to the redevelopment, said she hopes this will be the first step in bringing new neighbors to the area.��

“This is a really good thing for my immediate community,” she said. “People are telling on themselves super loud if they’re thinking something otherwise.” ��

“I have spent my life advocating for housing reform in this city. It is something I care about so much,” Loh added.��

Bradley said there are plans to bring more development projects like this to Friendship Heights, including a redevelopment where the Mazza Gallerie mall is currently, adding around 400 new apartment units.��

“It’s all part of a both immediate change and a longer range change that sees Friendship Heights transitioning into a more affordable, inclusive, but still vibrant and interesting area of the city,” Bradley said.��

The post New project seeks to bring life back to Friendship Heights first appeared on 91����.

The Tenleytown high school went under lockdown just after 2:45 as it prepared to let out for the day.

Senior Henry Marks, 17, said he could tell when the lockdown announcement came over the intercom that it was not just a drill.

“All they said was there was a threat outside the building,” Marks said. “They never provided specifics. They were very clear students were not in danger.”

During the lockdown, parents gathered outside the block, waiting to learn when to pick up their children from inside.��

“I don’t feel good,” one parent said about the lack of information they had then.��

The lockdown was lifted less than an hour later and students were dismissed from the back of the school.����

Commander of the second district, Duncan Bedlion, said police arrived on the scene quickly after receiving the initial report and multiple 911 calls. After firing a gun at 40th and Chesapeake St. intersection, an adult male in dark clothing got into a black Infinity sedan with other individuals and fled the scene, Bedlion said.��

“There was some property damage, but we have no reports of any victims being harmed by gunfire,” Bedlion said.��

“There are no victims outside of Jackson Reed High School that have been struck, and there are no victims in Jackson Reed High School,” he added.����

Less than a mile from Jackson-Reed, American University sent an alert at 3:03 telling its students to avoid the area and residents of the nearby Frequency Apartments to shelter in place. This was followed shortly by another alert at 3:21, saying the scene had been stabilized. In the time between, the university suspended its shuttle service to the Tenley Town metro.

American University said in a memo after the incident they are increasing university police presence through the weekend in the area around the metro station, Frequency Apartments and the Washington School of Law “out of an abundance of caution.”

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When that stylist opened his own salon in Tenleytown in 1982, the mother and daughter��followed him there. Today, three generations of Fletchers still come to Minsky’s Hair Emporium to see owner Jack Bubis, or “Grandpa Jack” to Maggie Fletcher’s two children.

“Jack is a wonderful person,” Bettina Fletcher, 73, said. “He’s done well with this community.”��

Bubis, 71, moved to Washington, D.C. from Montreal when he was 25, taking a��job at the��hair salon in Georgetown, before opening Minsky’s six years later. Bubis said he has stayed in business for the past 40 years because of people like Bettina and Maggie.��

“A lot of my clients, we’ve been together longer than most marriages,” Bubis said.��

Like her mother, Maggie Fletcher, now 45, went to Jack at Minsky’s to get her hair done for her wedding. That evening Bubis was dancing at the reception.��

“And he was the first person to cut Emma’s hair and the first person to cut Tim’s hair as well,” Maggie Fletcher said, referring to her 12- and 7-year-old children. Bubis also cut Bettina Fletcher’s mother’s hair when she was alive.��

Even though the family now lives in Bowie, Maryland, Maggie Fletcher said they make the 45-minute drive to Tenleytown, D.C., “because it’s Jack.”��

“Just sit and look” at the salon walls��

When Minsky’s was closed for several months during the pandemic, Bubis decided to repaint the entire shop, changing what used to be red and green walls. However, visitors to the salon are less likely to spot the now dark purple and lilac backdrops as they are the photos, paintings and playbills that cover nearly every square inch of the space.����

“When I decided I wanted to open up my shop, I didn’t want to be like everyone else,” Bubis said.��

A lifelong fan of the theater, Bubis said he acquired many of the signed headshots now hanging at Minsky’s from attending Broadway shows and standing outside the stage doors to catch members of the cast.��

The name Minsky’s was also a product of Bubis’s love for theater.��

“I wanted something Jewish, something Russian, and something to deal with burlesque,” Bubis said, referring to his inspiration, Minsky’s Burlesque house, which was owned and operated by a Hasidic Jewish family in Brooklyn in the early twentieth century.��

The remainder of Bubis’s wall art collection came to him as gifts, he said. Pointing to a signed photograph of actress Mae West, Bubis said that particular black and white artwork was from a client who told Bubis, “She’ll like it here.”��

Even after coming to Minsky’s for decades, Bettina Fletcher said she still spots something new among Bubis’s collection each time she’s in the salon chair.��

“All kinds of things around here if you just sit and look,” she said.��

Mixed with the memorabilia are personal touches, including framed photographs of Bubis’s grandfathers — both barbers — and a photo collage of a young Emma Fletcher.��

Down to the details, Bubis said he wants clients to feel at home in his salon. Around this time of year, that includes pulling out his wealth of holiday decorations.��

“I don’t take this lightly,” Bubis said. “I have a lot of clients that say to me this makes their holiday.”��

Minsky’s is known for having an extravagant Christmas display, with multiple themed trees, garland weaving between collector plates on the ceiling and a painted wintery window display.��

“Christmas is one of my favorite holidays. For a Jew, I’m a good Christian,” Bubis said. “To me, Christmas is just one of those wonderful holidays … And it’s not about the gifts. It’s about the cheer and the people.”��

A fixture in the Tenleytown community��

In all his years in Tenleytown, Bubis has cut men’s and women’s hair at Minsky’s, serving clients of all ages.��Though most of this time has been at the salon’s current location on Wisconsin Avenue, Minsky’s was also previously located at two other Tenleytown addresses.����

In the four decades he has owned Minsky’s, Bubis said he has watched the neighborhood grow and change. His own business has stayed afloat, especially during COVID, he said, because of loyal clients like the Fletchers and other members of the community.��

At Minsky’s, Bubis said he does everything, from running the business to cutting and styling clients’ hair. Though he has had employees from time to time in the past, Bubis said he prefers to run the show solo, since he enjoys his work so much.��

“I’m going to be 72, and I still love what I’m doing. I keep learning. I keep doing different types of hairstyles for different people,” Bubis said. “This is what it’s all about. I mean, if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you’re in trouble.”��

The post Minsky’s salon and owner bring eclectic joy to Tenleytown for decades first appeared on 91����.

Wright, 63, has been a poll worker in Washington, D.C., for 30 years and has been a site coordinator for several of these elections. Expecting a good turnout on Election Day, Wright said he and workers at his site feel safe and prepared for today’s voters.��

“I haven’t heard of anyone being threatened around here [and] I haven’t heard of anyone being afraid of being threatened,” Wright said. “It may simply be that this is a small, closed-in city, and therefore being able to make anonymous threats isn’t as easy.”��

Since 2020, threats to election workers, from top elected officials to citizen volunteers, have , according to the Center for American Progress. With many former volunteers fearful of persecution, lower turnout for election workers this year.��

Nick Jacobs, public information officer for the D.C. Board of Elections, said overall, they have not seen these risks come to the nation’s capital.��

“We’ve pretty much been spared all of that,” he said.��

Today’s election worker numbers are on par with previous years in D.C., Jacobs said, with just under 1,900 workers trained as of last week.��

Robin Raphel, who describes herself as “semi-retired,” is at Annunciation Church today for her first time as an election worker. As a voter assistance clerk, Raphel said her job is “to ease the way for people” by greeting those who come inside, helping voters submit their completed ballots, and giving them an “I voted” sticker at the end.��

“It’s meant to be a pleasant experience, so that people keep coming to vote,” Raphel said.��

Training, a four-hour class required for all workers, involved learning how to assist voters, including anyone with disabilities, Raphel said. Security is also a part of training, according to Jacobs, who said workers learned how to ensure ballots are protected and safely returned from the site to the D.C. Board of Elections for tabulation.��

“We ensure that all locations are safe and secure both to protect ballots and to protect voters and election workers,” Jacobs said.��

At Annunciation Church, like other voting sites, Wright said their ballot box inside is under lock and key. At the end of today, he and another witness will take out the ballots for them to be transported in a specially sealed bag by an election worker and police officer to the Board of Elections.��

“I think the District of Columbia does a pretty good job, cumbersome though it is, of making sure the will of the people is duly recorded,” Wright said.��

The post DC election workers trained and ready for today first appeared on 91����.

“I’ve lived in luxury buildings before, but this … truly is an actual luxury building,” Matikonis said.��

Located just south of Tenleytown, City Ridge is one of the latest mixed-use developments to arrive in Washington, D.C. Still, it’s the first of its kind in the northwest corner of the district, said Jeff Edelstein, partner at Roadside Development, the group behind the project. Often called live, work, play communities, these developments blend residential buildings with commercial spaces and social amenities. Matikonis, 29, said the “built-in ecosystem” is City Ridge’s most attractive feature, especially in her stage of life.��

“I’m not going to bars and clubbing anymore,” Matikonis said. “It is one little community versus having to live in a neighborhood. I’m not there yet.”��

An earlier found that mixed-use developments are becoming increasingly favored by millennials like Matikonis, who tend to prefer “a vibrant urban community feel that blends the shades of work and play,” according to the study.��

City Ridge has features attracting a diverse demographic of tenants, Edelstein said, including a private playground for families or grandchildren of residents.��

“We have everything from grad students to empty nesters to business professionals,” Edelstein said. “It’s kind of really exciting to see such a collision point of different people living here.”��

This style of living that mixes residential, retail and office spaces in one community has skyrocketed in popularity over the last decade, , quadrupling nationwide and representing about 10% of apartments available in cities. While Manhattan is the city with the most in total, D.C. has added the most mixed-use developments of any city in those ten years —��over 17,0000 of these apartments new since 2012 alone.��

Edelstein said the vision behind City Ridge was to weave the development into what is already a well-established neighborhood.��

“We’re really trying to fill in some daily needs and some excitement with new restaurants and not over retail it,” Edelstein said. “There’s already a lot of great retail up and down the Wisconsin Avenue corridor, so we’re just trying to see a niche for dining and grocery and an elevated health club and bring those to the project.”��

City Ridge offers what its website calls “a curated retail ecosystem for everyday living,” including the district’s first and only Wegmans, a popular supermarket chain and the only grocery store in D.C. to sell liquor. A KinderCare Learning Center is expected to open by the spring of 2023, along with restaurants like Taco Bamba.��

“You have a one stop shop for your grocery store and a liquor store,” said Gianna Nacci, resident experience manager at City Ridge. “We really created a space that you didn’t really have to leave if you really didn’t need to.”��

Residents can also stay near home during the workday: City Ridge offers co-working spaces and a co-working terrace, where tenants can “break out of their four walls,” Edelstein said.��

“You don’t have to just work in your unit. You have all these amazing spaces you can go work in if you’re only going to the office two, three times a week or not at all,” he said.��

Although Roadside had the plan for City Ridge before the pandemic began, Edelstein said popularity of the project, especially the work-from-home spaces, grew following the height of quarantine and isolation.��

“I think people are itching for that human interaction but in a different way,” Edelstein said. “People are excited to interact with their neighbors and hang out again, and they’re spending more time at home.”��

The apartments opened in May of this year and months later, Nacci said they have 150 tenants and are working to fill the rest of the nearly 700 total units. Each of the four residential buildings has rooftop amenities, including grills and a greenhouse, along with indoor spaces like a den with a golf simulator, library and fitness studio. Alongside a members-only rooftop pool and social club, award-winning chef Michael Mina is expected to open two restaurants at City Ridge early next year.��

The wealth of offerings has contributed to the project’s success so far, Edelstein said.��

“If it was just residential or just more of a cookie-cutter development, it wouldn’t have been as well received,” he said.��

Along with the effects of the pandemic, Nacci said mixed-use developments appeal to newer mindsets around living styles.��

“People especially now, especially generations to come, are big on convenience, and when you create a community like this, it really does give you the aspect of convenience at your fingertips,” Nacci said.��

Nacci said because D.C. is a city where many residents may not have a car, communities like City Ridge are more popular in the area for this convenience factor.��

Even in a more expensive city like D.C., rent for City Ridge skews high, with a 499-square-foot studio costing around $2,600 a month and a 1,723 square foot, three-bedroom apartment going for over $10,000 a month. The average rent in D.C. is $2,335 a month for an average apartment size of around 750 square feet, according to RentCafe. But Nacci said the price tag factors in all that the development has to offer residents beyond a place to live.��

“We’re selling the lifestyle,” Nacci said. “For the level of service that you’re getting, as well as the amenities and the convenience of the area, it kind of speaks for itself.”��

The post Live, work, play comes to Northwest D.C. first appeared on 91����.

Inside, they are likely to spot teachers and students sporting “Jackson-Reed” T-shirts and lanyards in the halls.��

But one also should not be surprised to catch the name “Woodrow Wilson” still hanging about in a few areas around campus.��

A time and community in transition��

When the D.C. Council approved the new eponym for the school in March, what was formerly��Woodrow Wilson high school faced a quick turnaround period, said Marc Minsker, assistant principal.��

“Immediately, we had to put in work orders for some of the signage to be replaced,” Minsker said.��

Minsker, a former English teacher who greets every student he passes by name, is quick to point out all the updates made so far while walking through the green and tan tiled halls.��

Such progress “is not [in] public school fashion at all,” said��senior Hadley Carr.��

Large replacements included an embossed 20-foot-long, 4-foot-wide��stone sign spanning the corner of Nebraska Ave. and Chesapeake St. that was demolished and recast over the summer.��

Alteration on a seal in the floor of the school’s atrium carried into the start of the fall semester. For the first week of classes, Minsker said students and teachers walked around a tent in the school’s entrance until contractors completed the renovation.��

Facilities like the gymnasium and football field have also been updated, and the school has produced merchandise like T-shirts and lanyards with the new name, Carr said.��

Carr, also editor-in-chief at the school’s student newspaper, The Beacon, credited the quick pace to the over $1 million allotted to the school by a mayor’s office initiative, . The working group was responsible for recommending changes to facilities whose namesakes are “inconsistent with DC values” and “contributed to our long history of systemic racism,” according to its website.��

The school has faced “hiccups” with certain changes, Minsker said, like obtaining new athletic uniforms. ��

“Some of our teams don’t even have all of their new Jackson-Reed gear yet,” said Minsker, who oversees athletics at the school. “The athletic department had ordered everything in time, but it just takes forever.” ��

Carr is on the school’s soccer team and said she and her teammates had to wear their old Wilson jerseys for the season’s first games. The boys’ team, she said, had to wait even longer for their new gear.��

Uniform rebranding for all sports teams cost a sum of $98,000, according to Minsker who confirmed the number with the school’s athletic director, Nadira Ricks. She told Minsker the price was more than booster organizations could afford, and that DCPS and DC Infrastructure Academy signed off on invoices.��

Multiple groups have been involved in the process, from the district to parent fundraisers to the city council, though Minsker could not specify budget details.��

Jackson-Reed’s Parent Teacher Student Organization is overseeing changes to the website, which is still under the same wilsonhs.org domain. Minsker said they plan to roll out an entirely new website and updated interface by the end of this calendar year.��

“The goal was to really rebuild from scratch, and then unveil it as the Jackson-Reed website,” Minsker said.��

In national databases like College Board or ACT, Minsker said the school is often still listed as Woodrow Wilson.��

Carr said she can still spot “little things” with the Wilson name around the school and expects the holdouts to stick around for months or even years.��

“Just tiny signs in the hallways that you wouldn’t even think about but are still there,” Carr said. “I still see students wearing their Wilson gear from the years before, so it will take a little while for the community to adjust.”��

Students and staff are settling in with the new name and identity, Minsker said, though they are still in a period of transition.��

“It’s kind of taking a while for people to check themselves when they’re saying ‘well, Wilson, I mean, Jackson-Reed,’” Minsker said.��

“People are going through a journey of acceptance about our name change,” Carr said.��

“A long time coming”��

The call to rename the school began seven years ago with a group of social studies teachers. In what was “a long time coming,” Carr said the movement gained momentum in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd and ensuing protests across the country against systemic racism.��

Judith Ingram co-founded the DC History and Justice Collective, which joined the renaming push in 2018 to become one of the leading forces behind the change. Ingram was spurred to action, she said, after learning more about Woodrow Wilson and the former president’s Jim Crow-era policies in the district.��

“How is it, knowing what we do now, that we can allow the public high school in the neighborhood to be named after Woodrow Wilson, segregationist-in-chief?” Ingram said she remembers thinking at the time.��

The collective held forums and debates, and circulated a that eventually amassed over 22,000 signatures.��

The name Jackson-Reed is a hyphenated honoring of Edna Jackson and Vincent Reed, the school’s first Black teacher and principal.��

Before Jackson-Reed, there was Wilson. And then Wilson.��

Many community members, including parents, were against the change, Ingram said because they wanted to hold onto a certain reputation.��

“Beyond Woodrow Wilson, there is a Wilson brand,” said Ingram, a parent of two school alumni. “Students coming from Wilson were well known in colleges. They just had a very good track record of academic and sports and theater excellence.”��

Alumni and current students had formed what Carr said was a school community around the name Wilson.��

“Not necessarily Woodrow Wilson, but just Wilson,” Carr said.��

In 2021, amid growing consensus to remove the old name, the mayor’s office and DCPS proposed August Wilson, a Black playwright famous in the twentieth century, as a replacement.��

Ingram said she and the justice collective protested the suggestion, which they saw as a form of “having our cake and eating it too.”��

“We could congratulate ourselves of having gotten rid of the name Woodrow, but we wouldn’t have to change anything else. And we really wouldn’t have to have that deep investigation of our history,” Ingram said.��

Throughout the decision-making process, Carr said many students had difficulty keeping up with the latest developments.��

“It’s certainly an interesting process that I think a lot of students are still confused about,” she said.��

The confusion even made its way onto the senior T-shirts for last year’s graduating class, a cohort that included Carr’s former co-news editor.��

“I remember she called me, she was like, ‘Hadley, there’s an August Wilson quote on the back of our shirts, and I think they’re going to change the name. What am I going to do?’ And I was like, that’s hilarious and horrible,” Carr said.��

During deliberations, the resounding argument against Jackson-Reed, Carr said, was the cost of renovations.��

But despite August Wilson being a more “convenient” option, Minsker said students and staff��ultimately did not want to select a figure without ties to D.C. or their school.��

“Why are we recognizing someone who has zero connection to our community when there are really fabulous African American educators that poured their heart and soul into this place?” Minsker said.��

��Education on the namesakes’ legacies��

At the start of the semester, Carr and two other editors from the paper led a panel for students, hosted by the principal Sah Brown, which included colleagues of Vincent Reed, Edna Jackson’s niece and others.��

The event was “a great way to start the school year” Minsker said, and it helped put “focus on this new identity and celebrating these names.”��

Carr, who has spent the last two years reporting on the process for the newspaper,��said she felt initially conflicted.��

“As an athlete, I had spent my first two years of the school cheering for Wilson, playing for Wilson,” she said. “But as I began to learn more and more about Edna Jackson and Vincent Reed, I could not be more proud to go to a school with their names.”��

She said she hopes the administration offers more education on the two figures to help more of her classmates accept the change.��

“If the school continues to move in the direction of understanding the impact of Edna Jackson and Vincent Reed, then it will be a quicker transition,” Carr said.��

The post High school embraces name change, renovations underway first appeared on 91����.

The pharmacy and convenience store closed its location at 5335 Wisconsin Ave. at the end of August. It’s just the latest retailer in a string of vacancies over the past few years that have left the mall with more empty storefronts than active businesses.��

Retail across Friendship Heights, an area reputed for decades as a high-end shopping hub, has been impacted by a consumer shift away from indoor malls and department stores, said Richard Bradley, executive director of Friendship Heights Alliance, an organization helping to revitalize business in the area. Customers of Chevy Chase Pavilion have lamented the decline of retail via social media, tweeting about the closures of major��chain anchors like ��and at the end of 2020 and departure in January of this year.��

Business at the Pavilion was struggling even before the pandemic though, Bradley said. The effects of COVID-19 and the increased popularity of online shopping accelerated the shopping center’s deterioration. ��

“It was really the last five years that it sort of imploded,” Bradley said. “People today want the retail to be outside.”��

The few signs of life in the Pavilion are at a T-Mobile store, Cheesecake Factory and the Ward 3 COVID-19 Center, as well as an Embassy Suites hotel in the mall’s upper floors.��

Alex, 22, stayed at the hotel when visiting Washington, D.C. last weekend and said the “completely dead” center is a letdown to tourists like herself.��

“The whole reason you want to come is because you think s—’s going to be here,” said Alex, who declined to give her last name for job security reasons. “It’s been a huge disappointment.”��

Aaron Davis, the night manager at the Embassy Suites there, said while hotel business and occupancy have not been greatly impacted, guests may feel that marketing on the internet has misrepresented the area.��

“Some of the pictures that are still online do still have the mall as up in full swing,” Davis said. “When they do get here, they are a bit disappointed by the fact that everything’s closed.”��

Davis said he had not heard word of new businesses coming to occupy the empty spaces.����

“Even though the Pavilion is advertising space, they are renting spaces, we just haven’t had any sort of business come back up again yet,” Davis said.��

The mall hosted a pop-up art gallery this summer in partnership with Lost Origins Gallery and Friendship Heights Alliance. A Spirit Halloween is currently in the process of opening on the ground floor, a mall security officer confirmed.��

A ��last year found that “The American mall isn’t dead” but needs to be “reimagined” as more of a community gathering place. Across the country, the consulting group found that mall vacancies were accelerated by COVID-19, up to just over 11% at the start of 2021. ,��a national real estate group and property management for Chevy Chase Pavilion, was more optimistic — they reported in 2022 that U.S. shopping center vacancies had fallen to almost 6% after having peaked in 2021 at just under 7.5%.��

Bradley said he believes Chevy Chase Pavilion and other retail spaces in Friendship Heights will evolve to better serve the neighborhood with new kinds of businesses, such as restaurants or entertainment.��

“My sense is over the next four or five years, it will reemerge as a different kind of dynamic place,” Bradley said. ��

Building management did not respond to multiple requests for comment.��

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