B2 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, JUNE 7 , 2022
Suburbanites are working, and spending, close to home
than two years of mostly working
from home.
Losing the commute has left
many with a n extra 30 minutes to
three hours a day to eat out, shop
and relax closer to home, along
with money saved on gas, park-
ing and transit fare. As many
suburbanites happily cling to the
flexibility of telework, d evelopers
say, some are craving company
and a change of scenery. Others
want to avoid the office but also
seek refuge from distracting chil-
dren or WiFi-hogging room-
mates.
So suburban developers and
retailers are working to provide
ways to escape home, be around
others and, most important,
spend newfound time and mon-
ey.
“If they’re working from home
Tuesdays and Thursdays, they’ll
spend [nearby], when before they
spent that money near their
work,” said Sebastien Aubouin,
research director for McLean-
based Rappaport.
They are new customers like
Shannon Strang, who uses lunch
breaks from her IT consulting job
to walk and play with her ram-
bunctious 1-year-old pandemic
pup, Max. Strang said she moved
to the Mosaic District shopping
and restaurant development in
Fairfax County from a Falls
Church high-rise for a more fun
place to work from home full-
time.
She said she cooks more or
grabs a bite from the Chipotle or
Panera down the street from her
apartment — time a nd money s he
used to spend getting to, and
buying lunch near, her office in
Tysons.
“I can spend more time work-
ing or with free time rather than
being stuck in traffic three hours
a day,” said Strang, 42. “I hang o ut
here a lot.”
Neighborhood retailers are
eyeing the money she and others
are saving on the commute, in
addition to the thousands of dol-
lars that office workers typically
spend annually in restaurants,
bars, clothing stores, entertain-
ment venues and other busi -
nesses. In many cases, coffee
breaks, h aircuts a nd happy h ours
that used to happen near down-
SUBURBS FROM B1
town offices have moved to the
suburbs.
“Downtown Bethesda has
thrived while downtown D.C. has
really struggled,” said McLean
Quinn, chief executive of Bethes-
da-based developer EYA. “That
contrast has to be a function of
the population shifting its pres-
ence.”
In the Washington region and
nationally, the trend is most
striking in higher-income inner
suburbs, where more residents
have computer-centric jobs suit-
ed to remote work — and money
to spare.
Hailey Quigley, a consultant,
and Rory Shinnick, a graphic
designer, said they’ve been meet-
ing most days for the past year to
work together on their laptops at
the Mosaic District — outdoors i n
good weather and in a coffee shop
when it’s rainy or cold.
They buy coffee and breakfastmost mornings and sometimes
lunch — costs they said they’re
willing to pay to w ork around a nd
bounce ideas off a close friend
while creating some separation
between work and home. Quig-
ley, 26, said she appreciates skip-
ping the commute f rom R eston to
her Rosslyn office and saving $16
each day on parking.
“A ll my m eetings are s till virtu-
al, and most of my clients are still
remote, so there’s not much need
to go in,” Quigley said as she
sipped an iced coffee in the devel-
opment’s outdoor co-working
space. Beneath the table, Shinn-
ick’s lab mix, Benny, tussled with
a boxer, Ziggy, whom Shinnick,
24, watches.
“It’s the human element,”
Quigley said of working in p ublic.
“It boosts your mood.”
The new weekday demand, de-
velopers say, has helped subur-
ban shopping centers and enter-tainment districts reach and in
some cases surpass 2019 sales.
The pandemic also accelerated
long-standing trends toward
walkable suburban develop-
ments and the “third place” —
public gathering spots like coffee
shops and bookstores, where
people can connect beyond home
and work.
Less-frequent commutes also
prompted some city dwellers,
particularly younger people and
young families, to move farther
out for more space and outdoor
living during the pandemic,
bringing new customers to the
suburbs.
Brian Cullen, founder of Ash-
burn-based Keane Enterprises,
said weekdays around his down-
town D .C. condo still feel relative-
ly quiet, while “out in the sub-
urbs, it feels like there’s d efinitely
more activity.”
Ta p In Golf in Leesburg, an
indoor golf simulator facility that
Cullen’s company opened this
spring in Loudoun County, s erves
food and drinks and has high-
speed WiFi. Cullen said he wasn’t
surprised to see weekday golfers
arrive with laptops in tow and
cellphone ear buds in place.
“I think people want some-
place else to go, even if it’s not
every day,” he said. “It’s happen-
ing anywhere there’s good WiFi
and a decent vibe. ... I think it’s
just getting out of the house.
Working from home all the time
can get stifling.”
Michael Majestic, of Bethesda-
based Willard Retail, which owns
and manages 20 mostly subur-
ban shopping centers across the
Mid-Atlantic, said he’s hopeful
that remote workers and others
seeking “retail therapy” will sus-
tain bricks-and-mortar stores hit
hard by online shopping. Like
many Americans, he said, subur-
banites seem willing to spend
more on coffee, cocktails or any-
thing that connects them with
others and combats pandemic-
induced isolation.Majestic’s company plans to
add a bocce ball court with out-
door picnic tables and WiFi at its
Cascades Marketplace shopping
center in Sterling to entice re-
mote w orkers to spend more time
and money.
“It will b e small,” Majestic said,
“but sometimes that’s all you
need to do to create a sense of
place.”
Mosaic District’s developer set
up “Mosaic Niche,” an outdoor,
tented “community workspace”
tucked amid shops and restau-
rants, last fall. The developer,
D.C.-based Edens, touts it as an
“extended work-from-home
space” and a “community buzz-
ing with creative energy.”
The idea has been so successful
there and at Edens’s Union Mar-
ket in D.C. that the company has
expanded it to Charlotte and is
considering it for more sites
across the country. Every 1 per-
cent of additional time spent
on-site translates to 1.3 percent
more money spent, said Edens
chief executive Jodie McLean.
“People want to innately be-
long t o a community a nd feel part
of something bigger,” McLean
said. “We’re seeing, without ques-
tion, more laptops at our places
during the day. We’ve always
thought of ourselves as a ‘third
place.’ Now we also think of our-
selves as a second place — as
people’s home offices.”
Stuart Biel and Mike Ennes of
North Bethesda-based Federal
Realty said suburban develop-
ments are also benefiting as
Americans have reconsidered
during the pandemic how to bet-
ter control their time, including
by commuting less and making
shorter trips to shop and social-
ize.
Weekday foot traffic this year
has been up about 10 percent
over pre-pandemic levels at two
of Federal Realty’s major devel-
opments in Montgomery County:
Pike & Rose in North Bethesda
and Wildwood Shopping Centerin Bethesda, Ennes said. Custom-
ers also are spending 6 percent
more time during visits, and ten-
ants’ sales are up in the “high
single-digit range” over 2019, he
said.
Retailers are taking note.
High-end restaurants, coffee
shops, barber shops and bou-
tiques that once focused on ma-
jor downtowns such as D.C. and
Manhattan are pursuing loca-
tions in suburbs like Bethesda,
Arlington a nd Darien, C onn., Biel
said.
“I think they’re aware or realiz-
ing that their customers are like-
ly to be spending more time
closer to where they live,” Biel
said.
Some suburban businesses, in-
cluding hotels, event spaces, in-
door restaurants and gyms, are
still f ighting to r ecover from early
shutdowns and regain cautious
customers. Even before the pan-
demic, retail was suffering as the
country had more such busi -
nesses than the population could
support, experts say. Suburban
shopping districts that relied
more on their own significant
office space also have been slow-
er to bounce back.
Developers say they’re not cer-
tain how long the shift from
office to home will last. Many say
they expect that employers will
take several years to reconsider
their office space needs as leases
expire and they determine how
often workers need to appear in
person. The timing, experts say,
also will depend on the emer-
gence of new coronavirus vari-
ants and when a looser labor
market might give workers less
say in where they log on.
Bob Gibbs, a Michigan-based
urban-planning and retail con-
sultant, said some suburban
shopping centers faced foreclo-
sures amid early pandemic shut-
downs and a surge in online
shopping. Now, he said, he’s see-
ing suburban apartment com-
plexes getting new coffee shops,
small food markets and shared
workspaces. Similar businesses
are popping up at the edges of
single-family-home neighbor-
hoods.
But most people working from
home probably won’t spend as
much as they did at their favorite
coffee or lunch spot near their
office, he said.
“People working from home
have a lot of places to go,” Gibbs
said. “When they decide to go o ut,
they have cars and they can go
anywhere. They’re not a captive
market.”Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this
report.SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST
Sarah Leonard, 35, gets some work done on her laptop alongside her dog Theo, right, at Bark Social in North Bethesda last month. In area
suburbs, retailers and developers are adding amenities such as outdoor working spaces, hoping to draw remote workers and their dollars.“Downtown Bethesdahas thrived whiledowntown D.C. hasreally struggled. Thatcontrast has to be afunction of thepopulation shifting itspresence.”
McLean Quinn, chief executive of
Bethesda-based developer EYABY MARTIN WEIL
AND PERRY STEINThe first infection with a virus
from the family that includes
monkeypox has been reported in
the District, city officials said.
The resident is isolating and
“does not pose a risk to the
public,” the D.C. Department of
Health said.
The case of orthopox, the fam-
ily of viruses that includes mon-
keypox, was reported Saturday in
someone who said they had re-
cently traveled to Europe, accord-
ing to the department.
The samples that were collect-
ed have been sent to the Centers
for Disease Control and Preven-
tion for further testing and con-
firmation of the monkeypox vi-
rus, the Health Department said.
During a news conference
Monday, Thomas Farley, D.C.
Health’s senior deputy director of
community health administra-
tion, said the District’s possible
monkeypox case was not surpris-
ing:
“We know that this is an out-
break that is occurring in Europe
and the United States. With more
attention to this, more people will
be identified, so we expected that
sooner or later, we would have a
case, and we now do have one.”
There have been two othersuspected cases that were tested
in the D.C. Health Department’s
laboratory, but those tests were
negative for orthopox, Farley
said. The suspected monkeypox
case was the first positive test for
the local lab. Further confirma-
tion of a monkeypox infection
will be done by the CDC, probably
within days, Farley said.
Monkeypox is a rare but poten-
tially serious viral illness that can
be transmitted from person to
person through direct contact
with bodily fluids or monkeypox
lesions. It is difficult to transmit
and easier to contain than virusessuch as the coronavirus.
Monkeypox rarely is fatal, and
because of its similarities to
smallpox, it can be treated with
antivirals and vaccines stock-
piled in the event of a smallpox
outbreak. Vaccines can be admin-
istered shortly after exposure to
prevent serious illness.
There are 25 confirmed cases
of monkeypox in the United
States, the city’s Health Depart-
ment said.
It was not immediately clear
how likely it was that any or-
thopox infection would be mon-
keypox.THE DISTRICTPossible monkeypox case is reportedCYNTHIA S. GOLDSMITH AND RUSSELL REGNER/CDC/ASSOCIATED PRESS
An electron microscope image from 2003 shows monkeypox virions
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