Business & Tech

Chevy Chase Pavilion Still Under Wrap, Fall Opening Anticipated

Work continues on the Chevy Chase Pavilion, but posters hanging in the temporary passageway through the building hint at grander spaces to come.

 

Gone are the couches and small-scale art exhibits that used to be inside the Chevy Chase Pavilion, the large office and retail building at the corner of Wisconsin and Western avenues in Friendship Heights.

Instead, the ground floor of the building has been kitted out with a labyrinth-like hallway guiding patrons in a dust-free environment around the messy, $32 million renovation work at the center of the building.

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From the construction entrance on Wisconsin Avenue, one may get a glimpse at the renovations inside—but a better indicator of what the renovated building will look like is the set of posters that line the walls of the dust-free hallway.

The posters indicate a soaring, light-filled, colorful space. According to a press release from building owner Clarion Partners, the interior will feature a 30-foot-by-60-foot "synchronized LED wall designed to display various colors and graphics, and unlike anything else in the area." 

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New businesses will include Range, a new restaurant by celebrity chef Bryan Voltaggio. According to Bethesda Magazine, the nearly 275-seat restaurant—a $10 million project that includes an open kitchen, wine store, coffee and raw bars, bakery and giant rotisserie ovens—required almost a year's worth of negotiations between Voltaggio and Clairon Partners. Voltaggio signed the lease last February for the restaurant's second-floor location, .

The building also will be home to The Civil Lounge—a cigar lounge from W. Curtis Draper Tobacconist. Small plates will be supplied to The Civil Lounge from Range, according to the Washington Business Journal.

Not many stores are open inside the Chevy Chase Pavilion at present. CVS is open, as is J. Crew, which is not accessible from inside the center of the building. Ritchie & Co. Shoes is open, but Ann Taylor closed for the renovations on Aug. 4, according to a sign hanging in the building. 

There is no firm deadline for when the renovations will be completed. 

"[The] project is quite complex and significant in scale," Clarion Partners spokesperson Suzanne Franks wrote to Patch. "Work on all of the separate elements that will comprise the finished [building] is proceeding well, but we can’t provide a firm completion date with any specificity."

Range was originally scheduled to open in mid-September, but that date has been pushed back to mid-November, Bethesda Magazine recently reported.


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