Businesses Vanish From Once-Vibrant Stretch of Cleveland Park

But many longtime residents and business owners can rapidly tick off a steady stream of stores and eateries that have left, including McDonald's and Blockbuster Video, whose spaces have been vacant for several years.

"I think everyone has the same concern," said Jay Morris, owner of Brothers Sew & Vac, a vacuum and sewing machine store that has been in Cleveland Park since 1977. "When you see vacant spaces, it pulls the whole neighborhood down."

Drawing the most blame is the 1989 zoning restriction limiting bars and restaurants to no more than 25 percent of the area's total linear store frontage, a threshold that the neighborhood has reached. Residents asked for the restriction to ensure that they would have everyday services, such as cleaners and grocery stores, in addition to restaurants and bars, which usually pay higher rents but often bring traffic, noise and parking problems.

The desire to create a vibrant neighborhood mix has led at least four other areas, including nearby Woodley Park to the south, to limit the number of restaurants and bars, city officials said. Georgetown, parts of Dupont Circle and other neighborhoods have a moratorium on new liquor licenses.

Commercial property owners and some residents say Cleveland Park has suffered because it is particularly well suited to restaurants and bars and relatively inhospitable to the small stores that commercial property owners are left to attract. Without Dupont Circle's office space or Woodley Park's hotel visitors, mostly residential Cleveland Park has little foot traffic during the day, when stores are open. The neighborhood comes alive with after-work dining and weekend nightlife.

George Pedas of Circle Management, which owns the Uptown Theater building and the vacant Starbucks and consignment store spaces, said 95 percent of his leasing inquiries come from prospective restaurant owners, but there are not enough spots for them under the zoning limit.

"I'm turning away a lot of people who otherwise would be renting space," Pedas said. "It makes spaces stay vacant longer, and then people ask, 'What's wrong?' "

Making the problem worse, many say, is how the zoning restriction has been enforced the past several years. Even after a restaurant or bar moves out, the District continues to count the number of feet in that building's street frontage toward the limit until a non-food business opens on the site. But that can take years. The Yenching Palace restaurant, a Cleveland Park landmark for more than 50 years, closed in 2007. Walgreens is taking over the space, but it will continue to be counted as restaurant footage until the drugstore opens in about six months.

Linda K. Argo, director of the District's Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, which enforces the regulation, said special restaurant and bar zoning is a legal property right that remains with the owner until the building's use changes. However, Argo said, the agency is considering a way to shorten the wait for new restaurants and bars to open by freeing up a defunct eatery's food zoning as soon as the city grants the building permit for a non-food business to replace it.

Cheh said some sprucing up also would help. She said she secured $1.5 million in this year's D.C. budget to improve Cleveland Park's street lighting, signs and curbs. And $50,000 is budgeted to create a Cleveland Park business improvement district, in which business and property owners will be able to tax themselves and use the money to pay for extra security, street cleaning, public transportation and other services. She said the area also could better market its Metro station as the stop that provides a downhill walk along Connecticut Avenue to the National Zoo.

Bob Kotchenreuther, owner of Cleveland Park Valet dry cleaner for 27 years, said he is confident that the neighborhood will thrive again.

"I think it's just going through a bad time," Kotchenreuther said. "I think it'll bounce back because it's just a great neighborhood."