How popular are the restaurants and stores at National Harbor?

[PotomacCyclist]

I decided to ride across the Wilson Bridge last night and poke around at National Harbor. I’ve only been there once before. I know it was a Monday night, but there didn’t seem to be many people in the restaurants and stores. I’ve also heard other comments about how few people visit the complex. Is this usual? Are there more people on the weekends and on Thursdays?

The bike trail leading from the bridge to National Harbor still stinks. Large sections of it were soaked with water. I don’t know why. The tide wasn’t that high and we haven’t had any heavy rains in recent days. I was riding my mountain bike. I’m never riding to National Harbor on skinny tires until they pave that messy trail.

One of the problems with National Harbor is its location. Or at least the lack of public transportation. I know of some local events that chose not to use their facilities because of the lack of access. Many people in the area don’t have cars. Metrobus is not reliable, especially for longer trips. Metrorail does not have any stations nearby.

I think National Harbor would be more competitive for winning some of the expos for athletic events (the two triathlons, Marine Corps Marathon, Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run, other races) if it were more easily accessible by bike (and not just mountain bikes). Extending Metrorail over to National Harbor would be extremely expensive and difficult but it wouldn’t be that difficult to pave over that stupid bike trail. A paved trail would open up National Harbor to all of the cyclists who ride on the Mt. Vernon Trail and those traveling from Alexandria. It would take more work to open up bike access to the north. The bike trail network in SE DC and in Prince George’s Co. seems to be lacking. They should work on that too.

Topic

[StopMeansStop]

With all of the transportation issues this place has, charging high prices for parking and overpriced restaurants, what does NH have too offer?

[CCrew]

@StopMeansStop 12487 wrote:

With all of the transportation issues this place has, charging high prices for parking and overpriced restaurants, what does NH have too offer?

A nice bike ride across the bridge to Alexandria

[mstone]

A really big window.

[Dirt]

I don’t think NH will join with CABI any time soon. The experience that I’ve heard from many people is that the security people really DO NOT want people riding around National Harbor on their bicycles. It appears that they want you to ride your bike across, lock it up at the end of the bike path, and proceed everywhere in National Harbor by foot. Though I haven’t had any issue with this myself, I have quite a few friends who were asked by the security guys on their electric 3-wheelers to take their bike back to the bike racks and leave them there. When people ignored this and rode on, the security guards followed them and continued to ask them to go back to the bike racks…. that bikes were not allowed inside National Harbor.

The only thing that got Security to back off was when a friend told them that they were going into the coffee place to tell the manager that they were losing customers because Security wouldn’t let them park bikes out front. At that point the security guy got very apologetic and backed down.

That said, My wife and I had a really nice dinner there over the holidays. We went to the piano bar and had a great time. We got a nice room at the Gaylord and had brunch in the morning. It was an awesome night and a perfect way to be festive and not get a DUI. We will do similar things in the future, but we will not likely do it at National Harbor. We’ll find something funky and interesting downtown instead.

[KLizotte]

@Dirt 12511 wrote:

The experience that I’ve heard from many people is that the security people really DO NOT want people riding around National Harbor on their bicycles. It appears that they want you to ride your bike across, lock it up at the end of the bike path, and proceed everywhere in National Harbor by foot. Though I haven’t had any issue with this myself, I have quite a few friends who were asked by the security guys on their electric 3-wheelers to take their bike back to the bike racks and leave them there. When people ignored this and rode on, the security guards followed them and continued to ask them to go back to the bike racks…. that bikes were not allowed inside National Harbor.

I’m really surprised to hear you say this since there are bike racks all over the property. I’ve been there about 4-5 times now and have ridden all over the place without a problem (but I kept to the streets and stayed off the pedestrian areas). Since they have apartments there I presume security is going to have to relax a bit since I’m sure some residents are going to have their own bikes.

[jabberwocky]

@KLizotte 12532 wrote:

I’m really surprised to hear you say this since there are bike racks all over the property. I’ve been there about 4-5 times now and have ridden all over the place without a problem (but I kept to the streets and stayed off the pedestrian areas). Since they have apartments there I presume security is going to have to relax a bit since I’m sure some residents are going to have their own bikes.

FWIW, I’m the friend Dirt is talking about here. Last year I led an early spring ride of a bunch of MTBers from EFC Metro over to national harbor and back. We had maybe 12 people, and when we arrived we stopped to check out the beach area. The place was deserted, but a security guard immediately came over and said we needed to get our bikes off the sidewalk for “safety reasons”, because we might hit someone (which is odd, because we were walking the bikes on the sidewalk). I didn’t see an issue, but I shrugged it off and we got out in the road and rode over to the coffee place for our rest stop.

The same guy came over and started telling us that we couldn’t have our bikes there, that we needed to walk them back and lock them up at the entry. He specifically said a few times that “bikes weren’t allowed here, thats why the racks are all in the parking lot”. I finally got pissed and told him that we were just getting coffee, and that if he continued harassing us I was going to walk into the coffee place and tell them they were losing all our business because he was being a jackass, and that the first thing I was going to do when I got home was email the management of national harbor and let them know the same thing and who was responsible for telling us that “bikes weren’t allowed in National Harbor”.

At which point he got extremely apologetic and said we could have our bikes there, as long as we staying on the center median and not on the sidewalk next to the shop. :rolleyes: I have no idea what the actual policy is there; I’d be surprised if they actually have a “no bikes” rule (which would be monumentally stupid). I suspect it was just some rent-a-cop on a power trip, but I’ve had issues riding over there before with their stupid security folks, so I pretty much wrote it off and haven’t been back.

Which is a shame, because its actually a nice ride.

[Mark Blacknell]

@Dirt 12511 wrote:

I don’t think NH will join with CABI any time soon.

No, because people will realize that Old Town and it’s lack of strip-mall like ambiance is just a 10 minute pedal away. Ruins the whole NH biz plan.

@Dirt 12511 wrote:

The experience that I’ve heard from many people is that the security people really DO NOT want people riding around National Harbor on their bicycles. It appears that they want you to ride your bike across, lock it up at the end of the bike path, and proceed everywhere in National Harbor by foot. Though I haven’t had any issue with this myself, I have quite a few friends who were asked by the security guys on their electric 3-wheelers to take their bike back to the bike racks and leave them there.

This has been my experience, several times (but not every time). I thought it was a fluke the first time. Not so much after the next couple times. Between that and this (why yes, I am beating a dead horse), I’m not keen on supporting them.

[baiskeli]

Interesting fact – a tour group offers bike rental/tours from National Harbor.

http://www.calleva.org/nationalharbor.html

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