Takoma Park News
By: Roz Grigsby

A tower crane rising from the depths of the muddy excavation site is a sign that work is underway again at Takoma Central, the long-awaited development at the corner of Carroll Street and Maple avenue on the Takoma Park/Takoma, D.C. line. With the arrival of heavy equipment and a load of steel I-beams, one of the most visible  developments in the Takoma area seems to be back on track. 

Washington Post Capitol Business Blog
By: Jonathan O'Connell

Shortly after Andy Shallal opened Busboys and Poets on 14th Street NW in 2005, he said he began receiving a stream of e-mails and phone calls from residents of the Takoma neighborhood of D.C. and its Maryland neighbor, Takoma Park, a neighborhood long known for its counter-culturism.

Would Shallal, an Iraqi-American whose opposition to the invasion of Iraq helped put Busboys on the map, consider opening a location there?

The e-mails never stopped, and on Tuesday, Shallal decided that he would answer them by signing a lease to open a 6,500-square-foot Busboys in a new retail-and-apartment project at the corner of Carroll and Maple streets NW, near the District-Maryland line and the Takoma Metro station.

The project, by Federal Capital Partners and Level 2 Development, will have 150 apartments upstairs and is currently under construction.

“I think Takoma is a great, progressive community and a place where a lot of our customers already live,” Shallal said. He said he likes to open in neighborhoods that lack community gathering places, which he considers the core purpose of the bar-coffeehouse-bookstore-performance space. “It fits a lot of the things that we serve,” he said of the neighborhood.

Silver Spring Patch
By: Whitney Teal

It's not Montgomery County, but the just-announced Busboys and Poets location in the Takoma  neighborhood of Washington, DC is almost as good.

(Don't hold your breath for a closer location, either—owner Andy Shallal said he is too peaceful to  open up shop in Silver Spring.)

The popular Washington, DC-based eatery just leased 6,500 square feet in Takoma Central, a  mixed-use development at the corner of Carroll and Maple streets, according to a release from  Federal Capital Partners and Level 2 Development, the developers of the $36 million rental-retail-restaurant combo.

The Busboys location in Takoma will be the company's fifth and is set to open in spring 2014, The  Washington Post's "Capital Business Blog" reported. A location in Northeast DC's Brookland  neighborhood could be next, The Post reported.

Takoma, adjacent to nuke-free Takoma Park in Montgomery County, has just the kind of liberal vibe  Shallal likes for his restaurants, which frequently host social justice-minded events and speakers.