Residents Fear Bank Boom Is Leaving D.C. None the Richer

The residents were sorry when the duplex movie theater closed, but they saw a silver lining. Maybe a new cafe would open, or a Vietnamese restaurant, or even a bookstore.

So what’s coming to Tenleytown in Northwest Washington and angering neighbors?

Not a liquor store or a nightclub, the usual sources of any community’s agita, but a veritable pillar of the economy, one that is commandeering storefronts across the city: a bank branch.

Not unlike the seven branches already open within a half-mile of the Outer Circle theater’s former site on Wisconsin Avenue.

“It contributes nothing to the community,” resident Jonathan Bender said, grousing about Commerce Bank’s plan to open where he once watched foreign films. “We already have tons of banks. It replaces one of our last vestiges of funkiness.”

District officials initiated a campaign this year to lure A-list retail to Washington, places that would keep residents from trekking to the suburbs to splurge. But their vision of a shopper’s paradise is running headlong into a reality that has emerged at cosmopolitan corners across the country: a proliferation of bank branches.

original post By Paul Schwartzman