Walk the west side of Wisconsin Avenue between Jenifer and Willard on a weekday around six, and the sidewalks read differently than they did a year ago. There is a line for the Trader Joe's. A jazz trio is audible through the door of a food hall that did not exist in February. The old Mazza Gallerie is gone, replaced by an apartment building whose ground floor is doing more retail volume than the mall it replaced ever did in its last decade.
For residents who watched this stretch hollow out through the 2010s, the last nine months have produced a genuine reversal. The through-line is not a shopping revival. It is that every one of these openings sits on the ground floor of a new residence, and the biggest news of the week confirms the pattern will continue.
The Reversal, In One Sentence
Friendship Heights is being rebuilt as housing with retail attached, not the other way around.
The distinction matters if you live here. A neighborhood built around a regional mall behaves one way. A neighborhood built around residents who happen to have a grocer downstairs behaves differently. Foot traffic patterns shift, evening hours extend, and the retail that survives tends to be the kind that serves people who live within a ten-minute walk rather than people driving in from Rockville.
What Actually Opened Since Last Thanksgiving
| Business | Address | Opened | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trader Joe's | 5335 Wisconsin Ave NW | Dec. 4, 2025 | 7th DC store, ~18,000 sf in former H&M space at Chevy Chase Pavilion |
| Total Wine & More | Residences at Mazza, Wisconsin Ave | 2025 | The District's first Total Wine location |
| TJ Maxx | Residences at Mazza, Wisconsin Ave | 2025 | Reopened after a revamp in the new building |
| Wonder Food Hall | 5300 C Wisconsin Ave NW | March 12, 2026 | 6th DC location, 3,252 sf, 20+ chef-driven concepts |
The Trader Joe's at 5335 Wisconsin Avenue opened on December 4 as the seventh location inside the District. The store filled roughly 18,000 square feet of a former H&M box that had, at various points, also served as a pandemic-era COVID testing center. It became the third grocer in the immediate neighborhood, joining Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh, and it arrived at a Chevy Chase Pavilion where Cheesecake Factory had been the lone remaining legacy retailer.
Across the street at the Residences at Mazza, the redevelopment of the former Mazza Gallerie began move-ins last summer, and both a Total Wine location, the District's first, and a revamped TJ Maxx opened at the Wisconsin Avenue building. A nail salon and a fast-casual salad concept are on the announced tenant list for the same ground floor.
Inside The Wonder Opening
Wonder opened its sixth DC location at 5300 C Wisconsin Ave NW on March 12, letting diners mix and match dishes from more than 20 restaurants and cuisines in a single order for dine-in, pickup, or delivery. The Friendship Heights buildout runs 3,252 square feet with the chain's signature green palette and digital ordering kiosks. Menus at this location draw from Bobby Flay, Marcus Samuelsson, and Michael Symon, alongside Wonder concepts Royal Greens and Alanza, plus Tejas Barbecue and Magnolia Bakery.
For context on how quickly this stretch is turning over: Wonder's arrival came about a month after another food hall in the neighborhood, The Heights Food Hall above Whole Foods, closed after a two-year run. One food hall closes, another opens two blocks away with a different operating model. The Heights was chef-curated stalls. Wonder is a single kitchen delivering 20 brands. Residents get to test which model this neighborhood actually wants.
The August Calendar, In One Note
If you are looking for the one date to circle this week: National Night Out lands on Tuesday, August 4 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the plaza at Wisconsin Place, hosted by the Village of Friendship Heights and the Friendship Heights Alliance, with free giveaways, food, music, and community partners on site. It is a short window. The plaza is a five-minute walk from the Metro. Bring the kids.
The Bigger Story Broke This Weekend
The news the neighborhood has been anticipating for two years arrived on Thursday night. Montgomery County planners unanimously approved preliminary plans for Friendship Commons, a redevelopment of the former GEICO headquarters site. The 5-0 vote was the first substantive planning decision on the 26-acre parcel since 1999.
Here is what "Friendship Commons" actually means as a physical place. The project at 5260 Western Avenue calls for demolishing GEICO's mid-century building and replacing it with 356 multi-family units across three apartment buildings, 180 townhouses, several pocket parks, pedestrian connections to Brookdale Park, and a trail along the property's Brookdale border. Phase two, contingent on the pending Friendship Heights Sector Plan, could add mid-rise and high-rise buildings with retail.
For residents watching from the surrounding blocks, the tree question is the one that will define the next 18 months of construction hearings. The project site is home to 203 large specimen trees; the redevelopment will require removing 34 and impacting 49 others, plus clearing .13 acres of forest, with developers planning to plant two acres of urban forest on the property along with additional plantings.
"The 1998 sector plan does not reflect today's world. Binding conditions from 1998 may or may not still be relevant today, but the balance today should prioritize as much housing as possible."
— P.A. Brown, 17-year Friendship Heights resident, at Thursday's public hearing
The Brown quote captures the fault line. The Village of Friendship Heights and the Brookdale Citizens Association have filed suit against the County Council and Planning Board, arguing that EYA's new plans do not adhere to binding elements agreed to in 1998, and that suit is not yet resolved. Approval on Thursday moves the project forward. It does not settle the lawsuit. Expect construction fencing on Western Avenue to be a 2027 question, not a 2026 one.
What The Development Team Actually Looks Like
EYA and Bernstein Management Corporation are the entities under contract to redevelop the site, taking over from GEICO after the insurer's move to downtown Bethesda. JM Zell Partners represents GEICO in the transaction and will oversee approvals, demolition, and site preparation before the property transfers. That sequence matters because it means the physical demolition of the current GEICO building comes before EYA takes possession. The block will look empty before it looks new.
What Has Not Changed
Some parts of the neighborhood are still where you left them. Clyde's of Chevy Chase is still the reliable dinner room. Hunter's Hound is still the bar you take out-of-town guests to when you want a booth. The Metro still runs the Red Line from a stop that puts you at Metro Center in twelve minutes. Rock Creek Park is still a fifteen-minute walk east through Chevy Chase.
The Friendship Heights Alliance has continued its lower-key programming inside Chevy Chase Pavilion, keeping the Pavilion Pop Up Gallery and the Zuk Pinball arcade running through the retail turnover. If you have not been inside the Pavilion in a year, the first floor is worth ten minutes. It reads more like a community space than a mall now, which is closer to what it was trying to become when Clarion Partners filed for the grocery-anchored repositioning in 2023.
The One-Sentence Version For A Neighbor Who Asks
Trader Joe's opened in December, Wonder opened in March, Total Wine and TJ Maxx are open at the new apartment building across the street, and as of Thursday night the 26-acre GEICO campus has planning approval to become 536 new homes with a trail along Brookdale Park. The neighborhood you moved into is not the one you are living in this month, and the pace is accelerating.
If you own a home nearby and you have been wondering how these changes are showing up in comps, or if you are thinking through the timing of a sale against the Sector Plan calendar and the Friendship Commons construction window, that is a conversation worth having with someone who is tracking each of these approvals in real time. Abrams Residential is happy to schedule a complimentary home strategy consultation and walk through what the last nine months mean for your block specifically.