First the news folks have been waiting for....
Cafe Azul has confirmed they are opening in early December 2021.
Very excited to have a new option in only a month from now! One month from arepas.
Also an update on the Food Hall I announced here back in February 2021:
http://riverdaleparkstation.blogspot.com/2021/02/hospitality-hq-to-open-food-hall-at.html
Obviously this did not open in the Summer of this year as they originally had planned.
It has taken longer than expected to get the 9 vendors signed up for this space.
Apparently they have recently made great progress getting chefs and now expect a second quarter 2022 opening.
Really? I looked inside the Cafe Azul site on Friday and it didn't seem they even had started building it out. But it would be great news to have one more spot taken. Same for Hospitality HQ.
ReplyDeleteAs you said before, RPS now needs some non-food options. I wonder how the retail dynamic will play out in the area with College Park opening the City hall next month, the Aster (aka Southern Gateway) in 2022, and the Union on Knox with its cool Sterling Place in 2023. I hope they can all be successful and feed off each other's success, but there are some risks...
Interesting. I went by there today and saw what you were seeing. I was only going off what the owner told me. December does seem like a stretch but we shall see. Honestly I think the biggest risk in this immediate area are way too many condos in such a small area and food option saturation.
DeleteI'm not sure there is a lot of condo building in the area. Or do you mean apartments? If so, indeed, the increase in supply over the next few years is remarkable: just in College Park there are seven multi-story complexes being built as of now. Six of those are student housing though, and students generally tend to use low services and they wouldn't drive much since campus would be within walking distance.
ReplyDeleteAs for food options saturation, that's a pretty flexible market, so if there is no room for all of them, a few businesses will have to close shop, but I wouldn't expect major dislocation. My hope is that if new office buildings are built and occupied in midtown College Park and the Discovery district, a larger number of professionals would live in places like the Pilot house and the Aster and both CP and RPS would get a more balanced diet of retail options.