The Chinese Shops of Walmart in Georgetown Mall??

Yesterday (I said this somewhere else on this blog, too) I had to renew my DC drivers license.  As I've done for years, I went to the DC DMV office on the ground floor of the fancy "The Shops of Georgetown" mall on M St. NW, just past the intersection of M and Wisconsin.  It's always been a great place to shop:  J. Crew, Ralph Lauren, Comfort Shoes, F.A.O. Schwarz, Victoria's Secret, Brookstone.  They even had a bookstore there maybe 10 years ago.

Yesterday, the place was almost empty.  No, not because it was the Tuesday afternoon after the Thanksgiving shopping orgy.  The eponymous shops were almost all empty and dark.  Huh?  Was it closing?  Looked like it.  Comfort Shoes was selling out the last of its shoes at $19/pair (or was that apiece??).

Of all the things I've read about or seen in DC the past couple of years, this was the scariest!  I don't remember reading much about this in the WashPost.  Or online.  I contacted the blogger who writes Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space.  What is going on with this?  He replied:

Redev. process is underway.  Not sure what they will do.  It was held up for years in courts between two developer competitors.  Someone else bought the mortgage. 

For the most part, this "mall" doesn't work on the interior, because people go to Georgetown to be outside and walk the streets, not to spend time in a mall.  Because it was unsuccessful, by default it became a place for independents, which is not how malls usually work. 

The mall-ness is likely to be removed, in other words, the interior will be redeveloped into a conglomerated space. 

Hmmm....well, what if WalMart were to take this over and open each of their departments as a SEPARATE SHOP?  And if, as has been suggested, DC's
Chinatown is a lost cause.  It's now mostly "Gallery Place" or the "Verizon Center" with its two pro basketball teams (the Wizards--men--and the Mystics--women) and the Capitols hockey team. WalMart has been running into flak in its move to open a big box store here in DC.

So....how about this?  Let's let WalMart take over the EMPTY Shops of Georgetown mall, make each department a separate shop, and staff it with Chinese workers as befits a store that sells merchandise made mostly in China?  They can call it the "Chinese Shops at WalMart in Georgetown Mall."

All of this has made me think that the so-called "slow/bad economy" is really the result of the 1% watching out for themselves and playing us like a flute.

Better get ready to enjoy fish heads and rice and other 3rd world delicacies.  Goodbye to Clydes and oysters and hamburgers and french fries.