It’s unusual for me to create a follow-up article so quickly on the heels of its predecessor, but in this case, the timing makes it worth it: less than two months ago I wrote about the retail environment at the mega-development known as The District Wharf (or just “The Wharf” as the locals prefer). A luxury chocolatier called Harper Macaw occupied an obscure small space on a side street, where, perhaps due to the location, it could only justify operating six hours a day for just four days a week.
Harper Macaw is closed now. Its successor, an establishment called Array Floral Design Studio (for which I can find no other information), has not yet fully left its mark.
The residuals from Harper Macaw are still fully evident on the interior walls.
But it’s clearly willing to try a spot one could easily label “snakebitten”, and it doesn’t take any sort of great analytical heft to see that it’s comparatively obscure.
Here’s a view in the other direction.
And, by contrast, here’s a view on the main commercial corridor, with the Potomac Riverfront right there on the right.
I’m increasingly suspecting that Harper Macaw’s inordinately short operating hours and ostensibly brief life at the Wharf was deliberate, not just on the part of Harper Macaw’s proprietors, but of the management structure at The Wharf itself. It seems Harper Macaw has already relocated to an even more obscure location, this time in a warehousing site near DC’s border with Maryland that, unlike The Wharf, lacks any retail clout. But The Wharf is also a new enough conception (it opened in late 2017) that its smart development team probably already clearly saw the red flags for a mixed-use, lifestyle-oriented fabrication with a sizable retail component. In this era of retail dearth, tenants were going to come and go, and it was probably wise to offer a few small, low-profile, cheaper locations to budding entrepreneurs as pop-ups.
As a result, I suspect that both Harper Macaw and its successor, Array Floral Design, are pop-up retailers, intended for a short life to essentially explore the possibility of a bricks-and-mortar showroom for their merchandise. Long associated with seasonal goods—Christmas decorations, Independence Day fireworks, Halloween costumes—the pop-up has in recent years become a more viable alternative to the persistent struggles of more established, mainstream, year-round retailers. These short-term leases (often no more than three or four months) help keep up the occupancy levels while allowing smaller businesses a chance who may lack both the capital and the year-round viability to justify a length commercial lease, most of which are two years at a minimum.
For The Wharf to embed a pop-up typology into its design shows real foresight. In a way, it proves that commercial property management is having to mimic the time-tested strategy of “fast fashion” retailers like Forever 21 and H&M, two of the few clothiers who have thrived during this difficult climate because of their ability to maneuver nimbly amidst changing tastes and shift their merchandise quickly, providing surprises and prompting more frequent costumer visits than the rigidly brand-centered (and struggling) stalwarts like The Gap and Aeropostale. If this “fast tenant” approach, saturating commercial space with pop-ups, proves successful for lucrative developments like The Wharf, it may become the new normal, replacing the more secure, long-term, high-capital tenant approach that dominates the prime waterfront corridor. But managing even just one pop-up takes a lot more human effort and is ultimately undesirable for the leasing entities, because a four-month commitment is never preferable to a twenty-four-month one.
If I ever become a regular at The Wharf, I’ll check back at this pop-up location to see if it shifts tenants as often as I expect it will. Maybe one of these days I’ll actually get there during that tiny window they call “business hours”.
2 thoughts on “Pop-up options at DC’s Wharf: the buoy in turbulent retail waters.”
Isn’t this just an updated version of “festival marketplace”, which theoretically offered low friction and quick turnover for tenants…back in the 80s?
You hit the nail on the head, Chris. It doesn’t have as much teal, no statues of 1920s-era children playing, comparatively few fountains. But its a 2010s take on the waterfront developments that surged in the 1980s–or a retooled Indianapolis Union Station, for that matter. Like those efforts (most of which have since closed), the Wharf is largely the brain child of a single development team and their partnership with the City.
In its defense, the Wharf seems carefully poised to weather the retail apocalypse (even though, at this point, I’d still say about 40% of the retail spaces are vacant) because it has learned from some of the mistakes from previous festival marketplace iterations. First of all, it diversified its architecture: it doesn’t look like it was conceived by a single entity, and I’d imagine a different architect designed each building. Second, it largely meshes with the existing street grid, making it appear less of an anomaly and less contrived. Third, it has a huge mixed-use component: residential, hotel, music venues, multi-story restaurants, and I believe there’s some office in the mix (or will be). Do these factors prove that the developers of the Wharf have learned from the mistakes of the past? Obviously that remains to be seen. Previous commenters think the next major recession will be the real crucible.