According to a report released Tuesday by the Washington, D.C. Economic Partnership, the District's population is growing quickly — numbers now are at their highest point since the 1970s — and as the city's population increases, so, too, does D.C.'s millennial population.
WDCEP's Senior Vice President of Research and Real Estate Chad Shuskey says that the population has been growing since back in 2005, but that millennial growth specifically has been booming for about seven years. While WDCEP hasn't yet disclosed 2016 numbers, 37 percent of D.C.'s 2015 population was made up of young professionals, compared to 34.4 percent in 2010.
The report says that D.C.'s population as grown by 76,000 since 2010. That's a 13 percent increase, bringing the total population up to over 681,000 people.
With millennial and general population growth increasing so quickly, D.C.'s commercial real estate is growing along with it, Shuskey said.
According to the report, 7.6 million square feet of retail space have been constructed since 2001, and there are 1.3 million square feet currently being built. The Southwest Waterfront, Capitol Riverfront and Fort Totten neighborhoods will see the most retail and restaurant expansion this year, it said.
Businesses around the District are expanding to meet the growing demand, says WDCEP. The growing populations mean far more real estate delivery, said Shuskey, and that's leading to the revitalization of certain neighborhoods, like Mount Vernon Triangle, which saw a 32 percent increase in population and H Street NE, which had a 17 percent increase.
The report profiles 54 D.C. neighborhoods from all four of the District's quadrants, covering commercial and residential growth, resident demographic data and notable investments in the area. It's designed to promote business expansion throughout the city, Shuskey said.
"The target audience is the business community, which can range from the smallest startup to a national business that wants to see other locations they could invest in or potentially open a location or expand into," he said.
Shuskey says two of the biggest factors behind the growth are births — he says there were around 9,000 to 10,000 births in the last year — and international migration.
"It's a live, work, play kind of atmosphere," he said, noting that D.C.'s entertainment and amenity options have developed rapidly in the last few years.
"Going back decades, the old adage was you build a factory... and people come to where the jobs are," Shuskey said. "But now, people are choosing to live where they can have that live, work, play atmosphere.... and that's amenity-based, [it's where] there's retail and restaurants."
Image used via CC0 Public Domain - Credit tpsdave
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the name of WDCEP's Senior Vice President of Research and Real Estate. His name is Chad Shuskey. The article has been updated to reflect the changes.
