Fino Italian Restaurant Closed in Georgetown, Moving to Shaw/Mt. Vernon Square

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by Prince Of Petworth September 28, 2012 at 12:00 pm 11 Comments

3011 M Street, NW

Thanks to another reader who spotted this sign announcing Fino Italian Restaurant’s closure in Georgetown and move to 1230 9th St, NW. The sign says they hope to open the new location by the New Year.

1230 9th Street, NW

Any fans of Fino?

The new location is located across the street from the Convention Center and near the Mt. Vernon Square metro stop next to Wag Time:

Anonymous

I ate there a few years back. I really liked it!! Im glad they will be moving closer to my neighborhood.
Anonymous

I know most people on this blog don’t care about or openly despise Georgetown. But I love DC, all of its neighborhoods, having grown up here. What’s happening in Georgetown needs to be addressed- by the neighborhood, the BID, the DC government. What was historically a vibrant nightlife and dining area has truly been transformed by the high rents into a generic shopping mall on M Street.

Look at the places that have closed recently:

Furin’s
Barnes & Noble
Saloun
Garrett’s
Guard’s
Fino

Three of those comprised the vast majority of M St nightlife. You need to have Georgetown as a viable nightlife option. While certain bluehair contigents (who probably partied hard in Gtown in the 60′ and 70’s) will celebrate this, it is not good for the city, or for Georgetown. What will happen is these licenses will become available, and the neighborhood will fight them tooth and nail, rendering them useless or neutered (with hours til 1 am). A concerted effort needs to be made to make Georgetown a vibrant place past 9 pm, like it was for the past 4-5 decades. It shouldn’t just be an outdoor shopping mall, and with developments like the new Georgetown Park mall, it’s scewing towards stripmall status in terms of the types of tenants. Maybe the city can do to Gtown what it does in reverse in other parts of the city- an overlay *limiting* the amount of retailers, keeping 25% of frontage for restaurants and bars.
- Anonymous
  
  The poster above has it right. My parents used to talk about Georgetown as a place where everyone in DC could go to enjoy the nightlife. The Bayou, Cellar Door, Guard’s, Au Pied du Cochon, just to name a few, were places that drew in people of all ages and from different walks of life. Without a variety of restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and the like, we risk turning Georgetown into Singapore on the Potomac.
- Anonymous
  
  Why does Georgetown have to have a viable nightlife option? What is wrong with generic shopping? Let the neighborhood be what it wants/can be and deal with the consequences. It doesn’t have to live up to your expectations. This might be exactly what other residents want.
  - IheartGtown
    
    Georgetown was hip back when everyplace else in the District was a scary ghetto. Given how difficult it is to get there and the fact that it sits on the edge of the city, it makes sense to me that nightlife would move to more central areas with younger populations and better access to transportation. I don’t see anything wrong with Georgetown being a big mall, since we in the city need places to shop. Why not Georgetown? It would be nice to have an area of the city with enough shopping that you could spend a day walking around it, like you can in cities like NY, London and Paris.
    
    As for the restaurant moving to Shaw, I’m happy about that. I actully walked by this place last night and wondered why so many buildings were vacant and what this one would become. It’s great to see areas that have been scary deadzones developing their own vibes. Vive la gentrification!
- andy2
  
  Agree completely with the need to keep neighborhoods vibrant and active throughout the day and night. It is not a problem just for Georgetown – it affects all neighborhoods. If the shopping moves to one neighborhood, then it makes it harder to get people on the sidewalk in others during the day.
  Rents are the big issue. With rents in Georgetown sky high – only big chains can afford the leases. A lot of the businesses that have left Georgetown didn’t leave for lack of patronage (Furin’s, Saloun, Griffin, Neam’s) but rising rents. Same for the early pioneers on 14th. Targeted rent control and property tax easements could do a lot of good in helping small bussinesses – especially those that helped turn blighted neighborhoods into liveable ones and those that make a neighborhood what it is/was.
- Anonymous
  
  Uno’s Pizzeria
  Mie N Yu
CHSC

I walked by this place the other morning and there was a huge crowd of people standing around it (almost entirely middle-aged black men) while four US Marshalls stood in the center of the circle watching as someone opened the door to Fino, which already had this sign posted on it.

Anyone know what the could have been about? Was quite a strange sight. This was at around 9:45 AM a few days ago.
- Q-Street
  
  That sounds like an eviction crew.
dcd

Like the vast majority of other restaurants on Georgetown, Fino is awful. I don’t know why the food is so bad – perhaps because the tourists/bluehairs/suburbanites who frequent Georgetown either have no taste or are captive audiences?
Anonymous

Fino’s lease was up. The property had been sold. The business wasn’t competitive (offering something that enough people would buy that could justify their continued existence in this location). Furin’s: personal decisions on behalf of the owner. The Guards (keeping up with the times). Saloun: honestly. Barnes & Noble: tide is going out on that business.

Nothings’ wrong with Georgetown. 9th Street is a great place to do business. The City is evolving.

I long for things that were, but the reality of change never pleases everyone.

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