After seeing the raze permit approval earlier this week for 156 L Street, the former Star Market (aka the "Little Red Building"), I contacted the building's owner for an update on his plans. Mr. Park (whose father used to own Bernstein's Liquors at Half and M SW) says that his plans are now to build just a liquor store; previous plans to include a second-floor deli have been set aside. He's hoping to get a building permit for a new structure within the next month or so, and expects construction to take about five months. So possibly the store could open next spring, though hopefully readers are becoming suitably cautious when hearing development timelines.

This morning there's another look by the Post at Near Southeast this time focusing on the people who have moved to the neighborhood despite the lack of amenities. No real surprises in the piece, other than its aura of a slight sense of bewilderment that people would want to live in an area without it being "finished": "That's left the 2,100 newcomers in freshly painted townhouses and high-concept buildings, with such names as Velocity and Axiom at Capitol Yards, to fend for themselves in what looks like an abandoned construction zone. [...] To outsiders, it seems crazy to pick up and move to a place where the only sit-down restaurants are Five Guys and Subway, the nearest grocery aisle is the refrigerated case at the CVS and happy-hour crowds shoehorn into the lobby bar of a Courtyard Marriott." But: "Yet for everything the Capitol Riverfront is not, it is this: jagged and textured, where so much of Washington is buttoned-down. A relative bargain in a city of pricey real estate. A convivial community happily captured inside its utopia, while more established neighborhoods can be anonymous, stuffy even."