New Pizza Spot, Custom Fuel, Opening Tuesday on Georgia Ave by Howard University Looks Awesome

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by Prince Of Petworth January 5, 2014 at 10:22 pm 17 Comments

2301 Georgia Ave, NW

A few weeks ago we noticed major progress at Custom Fuel pizza coming to Georgia Ave near Howard. These are the same folks who reopened at 17th and Pennsylvania Ave, NW back in August. They are opening the Georgia Ave location this Tuesday Jan. 7th. Check out how nice the space turned out:

You can see their menu here.

Looking south toward Potbelly

Anonymous

This is excellent. I’m glad they’re finally opening. I’ll be a regular customer for sure. This are needs a lot more retail and clean restaurants… Hopefully Howard U. will get on the ball and start opening up their long neglected real estate and change this neighborhood for the better.
- Anonymous
  
  Howard U isn’t about to do anything on its own – they simply don’t have the funds to do so. They do own quite a bit of land, however, which they’ll have to start selling off in order to help make up some of their operational losses. Given that it’s taken this long for them to even admit that they’re in a financial crisis, I’m not hopeful that this will happen anytime soon.
  - JoeEsq74
    
    My $.02 –
    
    According to Moody’s the hospital loses money but Howard has a projected balanced budget for 2014.
    http://www.howard.edu/financialservices/documents/MOODY'S%20COMPLETE%20REPORT.pdf
    
    Howard does not need to sell land they just have to enter into the proper development partnerships. Howard operates in an interesting ‘space.’ If Howard enters into a development deal with market rate housing (i.e. $2,000 month 1br apartments) they would catch all kinds of heat for being ‘insensitive to the needs of the community they are supposed to serve.’ This is always a source of tension among leadership, Alum and even students. Should they seek to be more mainstream, take only the best students or should they take the kid who is not quite as polished but who would be the first person in the family to go to college?
    - Anonymous
      
      To be fair to Howard, it seems that the Howard Town Center failure is not completely Howard’s fault: http://assets.bizjournals.com/washington/pdf/Howard%20TC%20Decision.pdf
Anonymous

Yummy! This place is so good!
brookland_rez

That building has hosted various different fast food places over the years. At one time there was a Five Guys.
- Anonymous
  
  didn’t know that… guess it just couldn’t make a go at it? I’m surprised that the Howard students don’t keep places like that open, easily.
  - That MAn A
    
    While you normally dont see them close down that 5 guys was there a pretty long time
    
    i used to cut class and go there in high school lol
    
    a frind from sidwell would come scoop a few of us from gonzaga and enjoy an early evening off
  - brookland_rez
    
    Not sure why it closed. I got real sick one time eating there though. I went after going to a show at 9:30 club. I was sick the entire day the next day, vomiting like every 15 minutes for the entire day. Never went back after that.
bb

I’m still holding out for a neighborhood Chipotle. I haven’t been overly impressed by the Fuel pizza downtown – Bacio will remain my default.
- cw
  
  Bacio has amazing pizza :)
  - Anonymous
    
    Whoa whoa – lay off the hyperbole! I like Bacio just fine, but it’s far short of “amazing”.
    - Anonymous
      
      i would agree with the “amazing”. love me some bacio.
AP

This place is awesome! I work right next to the one on Pennsylvania and seriously struggle to not go there every time I forget my lunch (or think of pizza and the lunch I brought becomes suddenly unappetizing). The kicker is that I live by Howard so this will truly become a day-long struggle.
Howards RE

Its a poorly kept secret that GWU makes more money every year off their real estate as a landlord, than they make in total tuition. Now, that stretch of Georgia Ave that Howard is on, isn’t Foggy Bottom, but it has been incredibly valuable RE (and growing more so every day) for more than a decade, and it is really shocking how much yearly revenue they are leaving on the table.

Howard has a shade over 5 acreas of parking lot surrounding 2 nearly abandoned warehouses (one serves as a kinda art studio) below Euclid, between 9th and Sherman.

They have 5.5 acres of mostly unused parking lotsNorth of W, between 8th and Georgia, and another 3.5 acres of again, mostly unused parking lots for their two dorms off Barry Place. Thats 14 acres of unused parking lots an/or abandoned warehouses. Thats the low hanging fruit, there is probably another 5 acres of relatively easy redevelopment and consolidation of underutilized facilities the could do.

That retail strip they do own along Georgia is underutilized and pretty low rent.

At base valuation for the unimproved land at simple taxable value is approximately 125 million just for that, not that I think they should just sell it and walk away. That would be a huge mistake. Howard is sitting on a gold mine. They need to partner up with a developer and work out a long term land lease or revenue sharing arrangement because they are leaving tens of millions a year on the table.
- Anonymous
  
  Exactly. Howard needs to get into some partnerships and charge market values for commercial and residential space. Then use their real estate proceeds to help underwrite the costs of running a research institution. The best way to “give back” to their community is to ensure that Howard manages to stay open for another hundred years as an affordable institution of higher learning for POC.
Katniss

Well they are open and giving out free pizza they started at 5 so hurry before they’re all out….

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