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Two restaurants chosen for District office building
January 6, 2012
The Washington Post Capital Business
Two restaurants chosen for District office building
The District government has selected two restaurant operators to open locations in a city office building in the Benning neighborhood of Northeast Washington, in what could serve as a test-run for bringing new food options to the area around St. Elizabeths Hospital.
The D.C. Department of General Services chose the two restaurant operators in December to fill 4,500 square feet in the ground floor of the Minnesota-Benning Government Center, a 232,000-square-foot, five-story office building at 4058 Minnesota Ave. NE that houses the city’s jobs agency, the Department of Employment Services.
The first is Cohn’s Hospitality and Management Academy, a café and job training program founded by restaurateur Paul J. Cohn. Cohn’s company, Capital Restaurant Concepts, is behind J. Paul’s and Georgia Brown’s.
Cohn would open next door to the 1,500-square-foot Eclectic Café, a new restaurant concept from the former owners of East River Bagel, a fixture of Minnesota Avenue until its closing in 2011.
Under Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), the District has targeted retail and hospitality as industries to find opportunities for unemployed residents — particularly in neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, where unemployment and poverty rates run higher than elsewhere in the city.
If the deals for restaurants in the Minnesota-Benning Government Center are successful, they could provide a blueprint for how the city government might deliver restaurants and retail to areas around St. Elizabeths Hospital, where a new headquarters for the U.S. Coast Guard is being built for 3,700 employees, but where there are few jobs or places to eat lunch.
Cohn’s restaurant would be part culinary and part workforce education. For a year or more he has planned a culinary and hospitality institute that would offer training for District teens interested in learning kitchen management, purchasing, marketing and accounting.
Darrell Pressley, a spokesman for the general services agency, said the culinary institute would fill 3,000 square feet of the building and work closely with the jobs agency to employ District residents.
The D.C. Department of General Services chose the two restaurant operators in December to fill 4,500 square feet in the ground floor of the Minnesota-Benning Government Center, a 232,000-square-foot, five-story office building at 4058 Minnesota Ave. NE that houses the city’s jobs agency, the Department of Employment Services.
The first is Cohn’s Hospitality and Management Academy, a café and job training program founded by restaurateur Paul J. Cohn. Cohn’s company, Capital Restaurant Concepts, is behind J. Paul’s and Georgia Brown’s.
Cohn would open next door to the 1,500-square-foot Eclectic Café, a new restaurant concept from the former owners of East River Bagel, a fixture of Minnesota Avenue until its closing in 2011.
Under Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), the District has targeted retail and hospitality as industries to find opportunities for unemployed residents — particularly in neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, where unemployment and poverty rates run higher than elsewhere in the city.
If the deals for restaurants in the Minnesota-Benning Government Center are successful, they could provide a blueprint for how the city government might deliver restaurants and retail to areas around St. Elizabeths Hospital, where a new headquarters for the U.S. Coast Guard is being built for 3,700 employees, but where there are few jobs or places to eat lunch.
Cohn’s restaurant would be part culinary and part workforce education. For a year or more he has planned a culinary and hospitality institute that would offer training for District teens interested in learning kitchen management, purchasing, marketing and accounting.
Darrell Pressley, a spokesman for the general services agency, said the culinary institute would fill 3,000 square feet of the building and work closely with the jobs agency to employ District residents.
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