Park View, D.C.

The west side of Georgia Avenue, looking south from Princeton Place

Does Georgia Avenue need a Business Association? Ginia Avery, of Ginia L. Avery & Associates, a marketing and advertising firm, certainly thinks so. Avery has been working to organize small businesses on Georgia Avenue north of New Hampshire Avenue for some time. At the March 23, 2011, meeting of the Georgia Avenue Community Development Task Force (GACDTF), she came to encourage those in lower Georgia Avenue to join. Avery has continued her involvement in the GACDTF in the hopes a Business Association would take root.

Enter Jeremy Gifford. Gifford is currently renovating the former Huron Pharmacy building at 3628 Georgia Avenue in order to bring a new neighborhood eatery to the area. He, too, believes that a Georgia Avenue Business Association would be an asset for the commercial corridor.

A resident of Bloomingdale, Gifford values communities and understands the importance of being actively engaged in them. These days, you’re likely to bump into him at any number of community meetings, whether they be ANC, civic association, or the GACDTF.

As fate would have it, Avery and Gifford finally connected at the October 26, 2011, GACDTF meeting and Gifford jumped at the chance to become involved. As he sees it, Georgia Avenue is one project and should have a solid master plan from Maryland to Florida Avenue. Recognizing that that is an impossibly long stretch of road, he suggests that perhaps an association could be structured with task forces or subgroups that focus on particular areas of the avenue.

While the new organization is still in the early stages of forming, the idea of a business association is not new. During the first half of the twentieth century much of lower Georgia Avenue was served by the Park View Business Mens’ Association. Neighborhoods further north had similar organizations. Later, the Lower Georgia Avenue Business and Professional Association was an active presence in the 1980s and early 1990s. But such an organization has been absent from lower Georgia Avenue for over a decade.

In following up with Gifford after the meeting, he stated that his “gut tells [him] there will be pockets of business that want to get involved” initially. To keep the momentum going, and to help form the organization, Gifford has offered to be the point of contact for interested business owners, who can reach out to him via email.