Walk south from Chevy Chase Circle on Connecticut Avenue this week and you will pass a room that did not exist three months ago. Walk the other direction, down Wisconsin Avenue toward Friendship Heights, and you will pass a storefront that used to be a national chain restaurant and now sells German sports cars. Both streets carry the Chevy Chase name. Neither is changing for the same reason, and neither is changing on the same schedule.
That distinction matters if you live here, because the two corridors solve different problems for different reasons, and treating them as one continuous strip means missing what actually opened, closed, or got announced in your own zip code cluster this year.
The Storefront That Sat Dark for Years Finally Has a Tenant
The clearest change is on the DC side. Wheelhouse, a Chesapeake Bay-themed restaurant from Georgetown Events Hospitality Group, opened June 10 at 5714 Connecticut Avenue NW, just south of the Circle in the space that used to be Wine & Organic Market, next to the Citibank branch. The building had been dark for years while foot traffic between the Avalon Theatre and the Circle passed it without much reason to stop.
The restaurant is not a small addition. At 4,500 square feet with 211 seats, a 33-foot bar decorated with sailing flags, indoor and outdoor seating, and a separate takeout window that also serves ice cream, it is built for repeat use rather than a single occasion. Founder Bo Blair told Bethesda Today he modeled the concept on Millie's, his Spring Valley restaurant that functions as something close to a neighborhood living room. The menu leans into that theme with sailing-language dishes like the Topsail Caesar and a French dip called The Jib.
Wheelhouse is not the only reason that block reads differently than it did in the spring. BirdSong, the modern Thai restaurant chef Kitima Boonmala opened at 5507 Connecticut Avenue NW in 2025 after replacing Blue 44, earned a spot on Washingtonian's list of the region's best restaurants for early 2026, with dishes drawing on boat-noodle traditions and her family's noodle shop history in Ayutthaya. A few doors down, Skin Stories, an appointment-only facial studio founded by estheticians Sydney Fernebok and Jessica Vural, opened at 5506 Connecticut between Parthenon and Mamma Lucia. None of these are large by DC standards. Together they turn a stretch that used to require planning into one you can drift through on a weeknight.
There is a longer-horizon piece too. The District selected a development team, Rift Valley Chevy Chase LLC, in January 2026 to redevelop the Chevy Chase Civic Site at 5601 and 5625 Connecticut Avenue NW. The plan on the table includes a new library, a community center, roughly 177 mixed-income homes, and ground-floor retail. That project is years from opening its doors, but it tells you the corridor's momentum is not limited to restaurants.
Six Blocks South, the Turnover Looks Nothing Like That
Cross into Maryland and the story on Wisconsin Avenue reads differently, not worse, just different. The Cheesecake Factory at 5335 Wisconsin Avenue closed for good on January 24, 2026, after 34 years in the neighborhood, with the company citing an internal review rather than any single external cause. The Heights, a food hall at 5400 Wisconsin Avenue that had drawn Michelin-starred chefs and a James Beard Award nominee among its original tenants, closed permanently in August 2025 after less than two years in business.
At the same time, The Collection at Chevy Chase, the retail center at 5471 Wisconsin Avenue steps from the Friendship Heights Metro, added Porsche Studio, Brooks Brothers, and Bright Horizons childcare this spring. Dunkin' opened nearby at 2 Wisconsin Circle with murals by local artist Cory Bernat covering the building. The pattern on this side is not a food hall filling a gap the way Wheelhouse did on Connecticut Avenue. It is a shift from mid-market dining chains toward destination retail and services aimed at people who already work or live in the immediate building cluster.
Here is what that split looks like side by side:
| Connecticut Avenue (DC side) | Wisconsin Avenue (Friendship Heights side) | |
|---|---|---|
| What closed | Nothing major in 2026 | Cheesecake Factory (Jan. 2026), The Heights food hall (Aug. 2025) |
| What opened | Wheelhouse (June 2026), Skin Stories (2026) | Porsche Studio, Brooks Brothers, Bright Horizons (spring 2026) |
| What it's built for | Repeat neighborhood dining and errands | Destination shopping and services near the Metro |
| Anchor that hasn't moved | Avalon Theatre, Chevy Chase Farmer's Market | Clyde's of Chevy Chase, Junction Bistro |
Why Both Sides Still Feel Like the Same Neighborhood
None of this means one side is winning and the other is fading. Clyde's of Chevy Chase, on Wisconsin Avenue since the 1980s, is still booked out most weeknights and still the answer for a raw bar the regulars already trust. The Chevy Chase Farmer's Market on Broad Branch Road runs Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. regardless of what is happening six blocks in either direction. The Avalon Theatre, the District's only independent nonprofit movie theater, keeps running its Weekend Family Matinees and Senior Cinema Thursdays the way it has for years, and its business member program still connects moviegoers to nearby restaurants for a full evening out.
What changed is the range of reasons to be on either street on a given day. Before June, connecting an evening out on Connecticut Avenue took some planning. After Wheelhouse and BirdSong, a resident near Barnaby Woods or Hawthorne can string together a Wednesday-through-Sunday rotation without leaving the corridor. On the Wisconsin Avenue side, the reasons to stop have shifted from a sit-down chain restaurant toward errands tied to a car purchase, a work wardrobe, or dropping off a toddler at daycare on the way to the Metro.
The Fall Calendar Bridges Both Sides
A few dates on the calendar this September pull both corridors together rather than reinforcing the split:
- September 12 — Art All Night Chevy Chase runs from 4 to 10 p.m., organized by Chevy Chase Main Street, spanning galleries and storefronts along the DC side.
- September 19 — Chevy Chase DC Day runs from 1 to 4 p.m., timed to bridge summer into the fall shopping and dining season.
- Every Saturday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. — The Chevy Chase Farmer's Market continues on Broad Branch Road, the one fixture that has not moved regardless of what opens or closes around it.
None of these events require choosing a side. They are built around the idea that Chevy Chase residents already move between both corridors during a normal week, even if the businesses on each one are answering to different customers and different landlords.
What This Means If You Live Here
The practical takeaway is not that one street is thriving and the other is struggling. It is that "Chevy Chase" as a single commercial identity stopped being accurate somewhere in the last twelve months, if it ever was. The DC side is filling in around long-vacant storefronts with restaurants built for repeat visits. The Maryland side is trading a national chain and a short-lived food hall for retail tenants tied more to destination shopping and the Metro stop than to a Tuesday-night dinner decision. Both are legitimate, ongoing changes. Neither tells you the whole story on its own.
If you have only been paying attention to one side because it is closer to your front door, this fall is a reasonable moment to walk the other one. The Circle is smaller than it feels on a map, and most of what changed this year is within a ten-minute walk of it either direction.
Payam Bakhaje has spent more than two decades working transactions across DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia, including properties along both sides of corridors exactly like this one, where a few blocks and a jurisdiction line can mean two very different sets of rules, timelines, and expectations. If a move in or around Chevy Chase is somewhere on your horizon, Payam Bakhaje is worth a conversation before you start comparing listings on your own. Let's Connect.
