But, this being the fashionable H Street corridor, AVA H Street won't be anything like its buttoned-up counterparts in Northwest (yeah, I'm looking at you, Mt. Vernon Triangle). Instead, the building will have "colorful facades and prominent branding." In other words, you'll know it's the AVA because the word "AVA" will be plastered all over the façade, and highlighted with fluorescent green. Also, the building has a Facebook page, so obviously it's a hipster joint.

To be fair, that's the Wall Street Journal's denotation, not DCmud's. In a December article, "AvalonBay’s New Strategy: Hipsters and Suburbia," AVA is described as the most affordable of the company's three brands, which "will target younger renters who don’t mind smaller units or roommates and who want to live in urban areas." CEO Timothy Naughton told WSJ that the AVA design will be "high energy from sound to color.”

That must be why the AVA will make it LOUD AND CLEAR where its residents — who won't be hipsters because true hipsters can't afford to live in such a place, or would never choose to — should park their cars:

   

   

(Facebook/AVA H Street)

Indeed, two decades before Brooks Brothers reared its herringbone head on M Street, people did live at 3077, but probably not the Chardonnay-sipping set who showed up to the store’s invite-only party. Former resident Bob Greenberg describes a very un-Brooks Brothers life at 3077 M.

Greenberg, whose parents inherited the building in 1945 and owned it until 1995, moved into one of the four apartments that stood above the building’s lower retail level in the 1970s. Greenberg remembers rent costing around $150 --  less than a Brooks Brothers cashmere sweater. Tenants tilted toward the bohemian, and the floors tilted at a 10-degree angle. Toilets occasionally crashed through the ceilings of apartments below.

“At that time, Georgetown was a very vibrant artist community,” says Greenberg, 65. Renters included artists, musicians, and at one point, five or six members of the Chez Odette’s kitchen staff crammed into one apartment. Greenberg, who was “something of a musician myself,” calls the scene “riotous.”

On hot summer nights when he would play music with the windows open, people came upstairs looking for a nightclub. Tenants left bits and pieces of their lives in the apartments — one artist abandoned his two cats when he abruptly moved out; another painted a jungle mural on his wall that was never painted over.

Traces of even older occupants lived in the crevices of the building. One of the apartments used to house a club for boys, Greenberg explains. “We found old marbles and jacks that had fallen down into the cracks in the floor.”

The nearly 200-year-old building had its structural drama — the Chez Odette’s staff flooded their bathroom, causing the toilet to careen through the floor into Greenberg’s kitchen in the apartment below — but he mourns the loss of some of its special charms.

“The apartment on the second floor, there was an old fireplace converted to gas,” he says. “Beautiful inlaid tile work.” He loved the Chez Odette apartment’s gas stove. “Probably from the turn of the century,” he says. “Beautiful piece. Falling apart of course.” He gives a little chuckle. “Sadly, that’s all gone now.”

Gone, too, is Food Mart, the grocery store that Greenberg’s parents, Larry and Barbara, operated out of the building for 43 years. The four apartments stood above a retail space that previously housed a Safeway, a Sanitary Grocery Store, a bookstore, an antique shop, a hair salon called Dot’s, and a homeopathic pharmacy, according to Greenberg’s recollections and personal research.

Barbara Greenberg, now 87, has no regrets about closing her business and selling the building in 1995. “I didn’t like Georgetown anymore,” she says. “We’d seen it come and go. The shops started to sell the T-shirts and things.” She lives in Bethesda and hasn’t been back in several years, but she hears from her 24-year-old granddaughter that the retail in Georgetown has gone much more upscale.

By the time his parents were ready to sell, Bob Greenberg was also ready to leave the neighborhood. “For my money,” he says, “the mystique was going out of Georgetown.” Was there a defining moment when he turned against it? “I think when Benetton came in,” he says.

Plus the maintenance on a building was becoming impossible to keep up with. Greenberg, who essentially ran Food Mart from the mid-1970s and on, says between the 1950s refrigeration system and cost of renovating a historical building, business was no longer sustainable. Many of their old customers — ambassadors and members of Congress who would order by phone and have their groceries delivered — were gone. Dean & Deluca moving in didn’t help.

Greenberg watched the building be gutted for the Pottery Barn that was to replace his parents’ store and apartments. “They couldn’t tear it down, so they kept the 31st Street side and M Street side walls up, and that’s it,” he says. “The obliterated the second and third floors.” Gone were the gas stoves and the tilework and the mural his friend had painted, which remained long after he had moved out.

It wasn’t easy to watch the building go down. “To tell you the truth, I was depressed for years,” he says. “But I woke up one day and said forget about it. Past is past.” Greenberg hasn’t been back to Georgetown in 10 years.

“I don’t think I went into the Pottery Barn,” he says, and he doesn’t intend to visit the Brooks Brothers. “I have all the suits I need right now.”

Based on Bloomberg Rankings, the list ranks the best cities in which to live if money were no object, and takes into account 16 criteria: "the number of restaurants, bars, and museums per capita; the number of colleges, libraries, and professional sports teams; the income, poverty, unemployment, crime, and foreclosure rates; percent of population with bachelor’s degrees, public school performance, park acres per 1,000 residents, and air quality."

Arlington came in second, behind Raleigh, N.C., because...

Home to numerous headquarters of companies and government agencies, this Washington D.C. suburb is a draw in its own right. The area is highly educated, with more than two-thirds of the population holding a college degree. Arlington has a median income level of $93,806, low levels of foreclosures, and the lowest unemployment among cities we ranked. (Arlington is not incorporated as a municipality but is in the U.S. Census Bureau's list of incorporated places and was included in our survey.)

And D.C. was sixth:

The nation's capital doubles as a pretty cool city. There are great bars, endless restaurants for hobnobbing, and some of the best museums on the planet. On the down side, however, Washington D.C. suffers from the second-highest level of violent crime on this list and a poverty level that nears one in five citizens. However, the city is much in demand, with the lowest foreclosure rate on our list and great schools.

We can only assume that by "schools" they mean colleges, not DCPS.

[ARLnow]

Two areas in Washington are among the top 25 "cities" with the highest rent increases in the past few years, according to Businessweek. The D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria area was ninth in the nation, with an average increase of 7.4 percent from 2009 to 2010. According to AXIOMetrics, renters in some parts of Old Town Alexandria paid 13.5 percent more.

We know what you're thinking: "I'll just move to the Bethesda-Frederick-Gaithersburg corridor!" Not so fast.That area came in 25th in the nation, with an annual increase of 5.6 percent. Both areas had average rents just shy of $1,500.

[NBC Washington]

"We really want to create a cigar place that serves as a business incubator," part owner Tony Marshall tells the Business Journal, which reports that Marshall "sees Puff as a place where politicians, lobbyists and others come together to do deals and relax at the same time."

What smells worse than cigar smoke? Here, at long last, is our answer: the whiff of political corruption.

Commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle said,

Known as 'America's Main Street,' Pennsylvania Avenue is home to dozens of law firms and government affairs lobbying outfits that crave proximity to Washington's two main points of power, the White House to the west and the Capitol to the east.

If you think it's expensive now, just wait until this guy comes to town.

[WBJ]

Whether the space will be occupied by Target or another retailer, the mall is facing a retail shakeup:

With the pending closure of Barnes & Noble down the street (the massive bookseller did not renew its recently expired lease) murmurs over the future of the mall (and inklings that H&M will move from the mall and take over B&N's corner spot) increased in volume, and are gaining validity now that several mall tenants have not only been asked to leave by the end of the year, but several packed up shop just yesterday.

One unanswered question: How would the congested neighborhood handle the increase in traffic? Maybe it's time to think more seriously about putting a Metro stop over there.

The Post reports that, according to Census figures, one-fifth of the region’s 6 million residents were living with extended family members and friends last year, up 33 percent over the past decade. Virginia saw the biggest increase, at 45 percent, while Maryland was up 40 percent and D.C. 29 percent.

Time for the obligatory reference to the Great Depression!

'We haven’t seen anything like this since the Depression,' said Frances Goldscheider, a Brown University sociologist who has studied families and living arrangements. 'Overwhelmingly, it’s the recession’s effect on people’s ability to maintain a house. You have the foreclosures on one hand, and no jobs on the other. That’s a pretty double whammy.'

But it's not just the economy, stupid. Baby boomers have moved in with their elderly parents because, well, you know. Plus, the Hispanic and Asian populations have skyrocketed, and, not to fuel a stereotype or anything, but they're "more likely to live among several generations under one roof."

Blacks are more likely to have grandchildren living with them. Asians tend to have their parents in the house. Hispanics often share their homes with more distant relatives such as aunts and uncles or with people who are not relatives. Non-Hispanic whites have more adult children at home.

See, we're all guilty of it. Apparently the stress of living together is tearing some families apart — one homeless prevent center reports that more than half of its clients were evicted by a friend or family member — but for most of us, the repercussions are less dramatic: having to share a bathroom, fighting over the remote control, and, of course, never getting laid again.

[WaPo]

The most expensive sale was of the Evermay Estate, a brick mansion in Georgetown that went for $22 million, slashed from its original price of $49 million. The second and third most expensive purchases were in Maryland: Leonsis bought the Marwood Estate in Potomac for $20 million from his friend, Nextel founder Chris Rogers, who himself bought a $10 million home in Bethesda; Rogers also bought Leonsis' home in McLean, Va. for $9 million, good for fourth on the list. Finally, there was an $8.26 million sale in Alexandria.

Curbed has also compiled top-five lists specific to D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Try not to cry while perusing them.

That may be coming to an end, as the Trump corporation has submitted a bid for the Old Post Office, a beautiful but underused local landmark that the General Services Administration has put up for redevelopment. The Trump plan would redevelop the building into a 300-room "ultra-luxury hotel" — something that we imagine will be classy out the wazoo. Should Trump's proposal be accepted, it would be led by his daughter, Ivanka.

Of course, when dealing with Trump, there are a few risks that need to be taken into account. The Donald doesn't exactly have a sterling track record when it comes to avoiding bankruptcy. The organization is a bit reckless in dealing with neighbors. And he tends to get lawsuit-happy when the bills come due.

Trump already has one property in the region; his company owns a golf course that, according to its website, is "in Washington, D.C." — the Trump National Golf Club, 25 miles away in Potomac Falls. If he gets his hotel at the Old Post Office site, I bet he'll claim it's "on the National Mall."

[via WaPo]

The home at the corner of 13th Street and Fairmont Street NW sold last week for $1.4 million.

"It is the highest residential sale in Columbia Heights by almost $300,000," Brandon Green, a managing broker with Keller Williams Capital Properties, said."

The home features 5,000 square feet of space; its 5-bedroom, six-and-a-half bathroom layout is considered unusually large for the area. It also features three decks and off-street parking.

"All of those elements, combined with a lot of extra movement in Columbia Heights, created a sale that's really breaking the price ceiling," Green said.

The high-end sale reflects a larger trend of growth in the neighborhood, partially spurred by the D.C. USA development, which helped create a major commercial corridor around the Columbia Heights Metro station.

If you needed more proof that the Beltway is completely insulated from the rest of the United States, ponder this: While the rest of America saw housing prices fall by 4.5 percent compared to last year, Washington-area housing prices rose 1.3 percent.

In Alexandria, the median sales price has risen 3.6 percent this year, from $415,000 to $430,000. In Arlington, it increased 2.9 percent, from $470,000 to $483,500, and 1.4 percent in the District, from from $387,000 to $392,400. Fairfax County and Montgomery County rounded out the Washington Business Journal's list of the five most expensive housing markets in the region.

The news come as no surprise since we're also home to some of the richest counties in America. For those who can barely afford toothpaste, there's always Cumberland County.

WAMU reports that D.C. is the only city on the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index where housing prices rose over the past year and in the first quarter.

However, UPI reports that the city has been attracting highly skilled workers from across the country.

According to UPI, D.C. is a great relocation market as employers are offering relocation benefits to recruit talent.

With that in mind, not all residents are getting the same treatment. Some city residents are not able to find work at all.

In February, D.C. registered the lowest jobless rates among all MSAs in the country, at 5.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but the unemployment rate in Ward 7 was about 20 percent in April.

(via WAMU and UPI)

In suburban areas such as Montgomery County, planners are encouraging developers to build more and more apartments. That part is easy; the hard part is making the apartments affordable.

Developers would rather build smaller studio and one-bedroom units, as opposed to two- and three-bedroom apartments, as they offer a higher rent per square foot.

It also comes down to adapting to modern life. Potential buyers would rather not purchase a house because they're more likely to move several times. Workers are expected to change jobs multiple times, and owning a home denies them the flexibility to take jobs in different cities.

[via Washington Examiner]

Dogs Deserve Better founder Tamira Thayne says her group plans to put a $176,507 down payment on the 4,600-square-foot house and 15 acres. The asking price is $595,000.

Thayne told The Virginian-Pilot that her Pennsylvania-based group will need volunteers to help with its efforts.

Vick was the Atlanta Falcons' top draft pick in 2001. He served time in federal prison for his involvement in an illegal interstate dogfighting ring. He now is a quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.

The scammers, posing as lawyers or housing consultants, prey on the homeowners through mail or phone, promising them that their payments can be lowered for a steep fee. The scammers then make off with the money, never to be seen again.

One in ten homeowners in PG County are delinquent on their home mortgages.

[Source: WAMU]

We also talked with Politico’s Andy Barr about Newt Gingrich’s decision to seek the Republican Party’s president nomination. And – Alex Parker looked at the selection of Mark Turgeon to be men’s basketball coach at Maryland. 

If you missed any of today’s show, it’s available here:

Wednesday at 10am: Should the District balance its budget with spending cuts or tax hikes? And: were innocent men convicted in a 1984 murder?

Cooper shared his rationale publicly for the first time today, on NewsTalk. The interview can be seen below in its entirety.

We also talked with Leo Schefer, president of the Washington Airports Task Force, about the debate over where to locate the new Metro station at Dulles and the recent incidents of air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job.

DCist.com’s Martin Austermuhle offered analysis of next week’s DC Council special election.

And we aired a segment on the Konterra development in Prince George’s County that was pre-empted by our coverage of President Obama’s town hall meeting in Annandale.

Thursday at 10am: Del. Tony O’Donnell (R-Southern Maryland) discusses the just-concluded session of the Md. General Assembly. And we’ll talk with David Linden, author of “The Compass of Pleasure.”