A Foggy Bottom community group will soon receive $175,000 from the District to revitalize neighborhood corridors that have struggled to attract business following the city’s pandemic-era shift to virtual work, pending final paperwork approvals from the city.
The grant will fund the Foggy Bottom-West End Main Streets program, a project that the Foggy Bottom Association will launch before October 2025 to support local retail by recruiting businesses to come to the area and infusing cash into existing businesses that haven’t recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. FBA board members said the District approved the FBA’s November grant application in December 2024 and that members filed all necessary paperwork last month, but the group is still waiting to receive the city’s disbursements.
The grant program comes more than a year after a Foggy Bottom-West End Main Street study recommended implementing the program in the neighborhood, citing struggling businesses and high numbers of storefront vacancies.
“It really stems from the lack or the loss of local businesses and the increase of vacancies in just the whole neighborhood,” FBA Vice President Will Crane said. “We used to have a bike shop. We used to have a hardware store. There was a Safeway in the Watergate. And it’s just really sad to see the amount of businesses that are struggling.”
An online tracker of commercial office building occupancy shows that virtual work lingers in Foggy Bottom, as about half of people who worked in person in the area have returned as of 2024. The neighborhood reported a 63 percent vacancy rate in 2023 — higher than other areas, like the Golden Triangle — and shops in the Watergate complex bear the brunt of the neighborhood’s vacancies, with a 60 percent vacancy rate.
The FBA will use the grant to revamp vacant storefronts and streetscapes, boost the area’s image and foot traffic through events and marketing and grant businesses money for renovations and upgrades, FBA board members said at a meeting last month. Members said the FBA will oversee the efforts and team up with the inaugural executive director for the Foggy Bottom-West End Main Street program to allocate the funds.
Grant recipients must use at least $40,000 of the grant for local business support, fewer than $20,000 for events and less than 50 percent of the total fund for administrative expenses, according to the Main Street Application Presentation. The FBA must match at least $15,000 of the funds, per the presentation.
Crane said he hopes that the grant will prioritize local businesses that operate on the ground level and serve residents for renovations or cash infusions from the grant, including dry cleaners, auto shops and bike stores.
“I would hope that the Main Streets is about lifting all businesses that are here, that are actually here, serving the local community versus a business that is strictly office,” Crane said.
He said the neighborhood needs the program in part because landlords who lease properties haven’t invested in maintaining infrastructure in commercial areas, like the Watergate retail area, which he said is owned by a single individual who has let the plaza fall into disrepair. A Northern Virginian retired doctor bought all the Watergate retail spaces for $15.4 million in 2017, the Washington Business Journal reported.
Crane said vacancies give passersby a poor impression of the neighborhood because Foggy Bottom is close to the State Department and Georgetown neighborhood and has a large residential population of more than 12,000 people, yet has such a “low vitality” at the ground level.
“It has so much promise for businesses to come in, but yet a single individual is making the decision not to make investment in this property,” Crane said.
Ben Sislen, the executive director of Foggy Bottom’s Main Street program and the owner of Western Market sports bar ExPat, said final communications between the program and the Department of Small and Local Business Development, the agency in charge of the grant, are still ongoing.
FBA President John George said the group is waiting for the D.C. government to confirm that the FBA is registered as the entity to receive the funds and for the FBA’s insurance to add D.C. to its policy. The FBA must use the grant by the end of the fiscal year 2025 or by Sept. 30, according to DSLBD, but Sislen said he isn’t concerned about the status of the funding.
DSLBD didn’t return a request for comment.
“The funding will come,” Sislen said. “You’d love to snap your fingers and have it, but it’s probably for the best. It’s a process and a bureaucratic one.”
The lack of grant installments so far hasn’t slowed down the program’s work because members have been busy with necessary preparations before the money arrives, Sislen said. He said over the past month he and FBA members have conducted an inventory of all the 226 businesses in the program’s corridor and are trying to get in touch with owners to discuss their businesses’ needs.
“The job is so big, and I’m just excited about it,” Sislen said.
Local business owners in the Foggy Bottom area, though initially unaware of the grant, said they are still experiencing the ramifications of the pandemic and hope the program will boost spending in the community.
Devon Greene, the owner of Stephen the Tailor in Western Market, said the pandemic hurt his business because many companies decided that remote work was more effective and didn’t return in person. He said when people work remotely, they don’t need their clothes tailored as often, especially because employees often opt out of formal wear.
“Because of that, we’ve seen a drastic, drastic reduction in terms of customers, and so we’ve thankfully been able to hang on, but we’re nowhere near the numbers that we were doing pre-pandemic,” Greene said.
Greene said he would use a cash infusion from the grant to invest in marketing efforts to promote the business in the area, hire more staff like a front-of-house employee and upgrade the store’s equipment.
Jeremy Pollok, the owner of Tonic at Quigley’s, said business “dramatically” declined during the pandemic due to reduced foot traffic and that the restaurant would not have survived during COVID-19 if it weren’t for the D.C. government’s relief funds. Pollok said Tonic’s sales numbers haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels yet, which he attributes to people working from home.
President Donald Trump penned an executive order on his first day in office instructing federal workers to begin transitioning to fully in-person work as soon as is practicable, which will likely spur a larger in-person worker presence in downtown D.C. Pollok said he expects a potential increase in foot traffic as a result, especially during lunch.
“You hate to see businesses closed because of the pandemic or because of the after-effects of the pandemic,” Pollok said. “I hope all sorts of businesses reopen or new things come in.”
Hector Gaona, the owner of Watergate Cuts, a barbershop open in the Watergate since 1966, said the barbershop is “not the same” as it was before the pandemic because the lack of local in-person workers has reduced foot traffic, prompting businesses to shut down and leave behind vacant storefronts in the Watergate complex. Watergate Pastries, which was located across from the barbershop, closed two months ago, he said.
Gaona said the barbershop’s location one floor below street level makes it difficult for residents to know the shop exists, so Watergate Cuts uses social media platforms like Instagram to promote its services.
“It’s not like it used to be,” Gaona said. “This used to be a great place.”
