The Tennis Zone building at 2319 Wisconsin Avenue, NW in Glover Park is up for lease. The upstairs was the site of a police sting operation and drug bust in late 2016 as new tenants operating an "art gallery" were arrested and pleaded guilty to using the gallery as a front for marijuana distribution (see July story here). The building owner, Remy Esquenet, has been offering the two floors plus a large basement for lease. The future of Tennis Zone is uncertain in Glover Park at the moment, though Mr. Esquenet says the business is welcome to stay if plans go through to rent the 2nd floor separately to Yoga District (see the 7 yoga options in Glover Park) Back in 2015 Esquenet sought an additional tenant for the 1st floor while planning to move Tennis Zone and owner Ravi Shankar upstairs. That plan did not materialize. The drug business apparently was wildly successful upstairs until the tenants got busted, and unfortunately it seems legal retail is not as profitable in Glover Park. I'll leave that up to you to draw conclusions.
Tennis Zone and Mr. Shankar do get good reviews and he has loyal customers who rave about his skill, but retail is a tough business in our high rent neighborhood with limited window-shopping foot traffic. If we want such business to stay and thrive in Glover Park we need to support them. Restaurants with substantial alcohol sales though do fairly well here. Now that the liquor license moratorium has been lifted (for restaurants but not bars/nightclubs), another possible candidate for the space would be a restaurant with alcohol sales. The property is advertised as potential restaurant space with potential expansion of the 1800 square foot finished space to include a large rear patio, though such an endeavor would require substantial vision and planning. Stay tuned to see if it's tennis/yoga or a new restaurant.....