I have not copied in the entire WCP blurb on Bloomingdale's Windows Cafe and Market at 1st and Rhode Island Avenue NW.
Click on the link to read the entire WCP article.
This image is from the Washington City Paper.
When he opened Windows Cafe & Market in Bloomingdale in 2001, Hunegnaw Abeje peddled mostly beer and chips from behind a Plexiglass window. Now, he stocks $10 organic maple syrup, and the Plexiglass is long gone.
Windows is typical of the D.C. corner stores that have upscaled in an attempt to grab hold of the new money and customers streaming into D.C.’s gentrifying corridors. Compared to how it looked 13 years ago, Windows is now much bigger and fancier, though Abeje says he started upgrading long before Bloomingdale’s first sit-down restaurant opened in 2010. In 2003, he began converting his storage space into shopping aisles, giving him space for what would become two main rooms in his 1,900 square-foot shop: one for selling coffee and sandwiches, and another that stocks fresh produce, bread—including challah—and frozen foods like an organic pesto pizza for $10.49. The café serves $8 sandwiches named after D.C. streets.
“This is my ambition,” says Abeje, an Ethiopian immigrant. His upgraded store and café now employs seven part- and full-time workers.
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The D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue assessed Windows’ building to be worth $473,610 in 2013. Yet the structure was sold in August 2013 for $695,000—a sum that speaks to the rising real estate prices sweeping Bloomingdale. Renting commercial space in the area before it was cool, so to speak, has come at a high price for Abeje. He says when he took over the location in 2001, his rent was about $1,100, and it’s increased modestly over the years. When his new lease starts in April, he says his rent will more than triple.
Still, Bloomingdale is the only location Windows knows, and Abeje opted to re-sign the more expensive lease. “I am worried, but what can you do?” he says. “I wasn’t ready to leave my store.”
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