Mount Vernon Square

The Mount Vernon Square neighborhood now goes by the name Mount Vernon Triangle. I moved here in 2010 and have seen the neighborhood go through an incredible transformation. It was a good place to live before, with great access to two metro stations and lots of buses. It's a great place to live if you have different family members commuting to opposing sides of the city or if you know your commuting destination will change in the future. The city vista development with the Safeway and Ace Hardware means you can get all your necessities at your fingertips. All those things that drew me to the community are still true, although the neighborhood changed a lot since I first moved in--in both positive and negative ways. There are lots of new apartment and condo buildings. New restaurants and bars are popping up faster than I can keep up with going to them. The neighborhood has become a lot busier and it's a lot more difficult to find a parking spot than it used to be. It's nice to have so many choices of restaurants in very near-in walking distance. It's not so nice to have to deal with the drunken happy hour crowds on my way home or contend with evidence of people having gotten sick on the sidewalk when I am trying to walk my dogs. All the people out and about definitely contribute positively to the neighborhood feeling safe, but also can create a lot of noise. The neighborhood feels like much more of a party/nightlife destination than when I first moved here. A lot of people seem to move here for very short periods of time, which weakens the neighborhood feeling and, I suspect, is part of why I see people less likely to care about public and common spaces, which is very sad to me. A lot of the apartment buildings do short term leases and corporate housing offers to keep occupancy high, which I doubt will change in the near future as there are more buildings going up and renting out all the units continues to be a competitive business. My family is moving out of the neighborhood because we are looking for a more stable, community-oriented neighborhood, but the MVT has been a good home for a long time, and I can see why people like it. I hope that as development continues it will add more services for long-term residents (medical offices, a dry cleaner, small retail,etc.) instead of more bars and restaurants.

This neighborhood is similar to Shaw in that it has dual sides. On the one hand you can find great housing for cheap, but on the other you can find... um.... not so great housing (crime, poverty, etc). For just as cheap. So be wary, homeowners to be.

I'd prefer to look at the positive aspects of the neighborhood. Mount Vernon Square has some fantastic bars and restaurants. Passenger is the most well known, but just down the road, in the summer, theater people flock to Fort Fringe, a sort of after party for the Capital Fringe Festival, that has just gotten the green light to become a bar in its own right. This might be a questionable venture, if you know how much money theater people usually have.

Of course there is also the Convention Center, which constantly has a stream of people coming and going. For all of Mount Vernon Square's supposed questionability, it also has a lot that is positive.

Not long ago Mount Vernon Square was a forgotten neighborhood. And it is no wonder: it sits at the corner of two wards and three police districts. In such a no-man’s land, you would expect there to be problems with vacant lots and prostitution. For a while this was true. Yet in recent years, Mount Vernon Square has been shedding such a reputation. One by one the vacant lots have been cleared and had buildings put up in their place. Nice condos have replaced blighted, boarded up bungalows. The neighborhood association is doing quite a bit as well, getting the local police to increase patrols and rid their area of prostitution. Apparently, they have had considerable success.
Of course, Mount Vernon Square still doesn’t have a huge amount of services, and a few vacant lots still remain. But with the neighborhood groups as strong as they are, there’s good reason to believe that this will not be the case much longer.
Two other things bear mentioning: the new DC convention center just opened up in Mount Vernon Square, and with it a lot of jobs were added to the area economy. Because the neighborhood has been neglected so long, many people can afford to live and work here. Also, there are two Metro stops close by, so commuting out of the neighborhood for a job is quite easy.