Walk the 3400 block of Connecticut Avenue NW this month and you will see two things side by side that used to run on the same schedule and no longer do. On one side of the street, a storefront that sat dark for the better part of two years finally has butcher paper coming off the windows, a fresh decal, and a countdown that reads "opening day is almost here." On the other side, the marquee that has anchored this stretch of Cleveland Park since 1936 is still dark, still unlit, still waiting on an announcement that has not come.
Residents here have spent years assuming those two clocks moved together. The restaurant scene follows the mood of the block, the thinking goes, and the block follows the theater. What actually happened this year says the opposite. The smaller, less storied address moved first, and moved fast. The landmark everyone watches has now gone dark longer than most of its own premieres ran in theaters.
The Corner That Broke Its Own Pattern
Before 2005, 3421 Connecticut Avenue NW had a reputation, and not a flattering one. The space changed hands almost every year, one restaurant closing and another opening in its place with enough regularity that longtime residents stopped bothering to learn the new name before it changed again.
Cleveland Park Bar & Grill broke that cycle. It opened at that address in 2005 and stayed for nearly two decades, becoming the kind of default answer people gave when someone asked where to watch a game or grab a burger half a block from the Cleveland Park Metro. That run ended in December 2024, when the bar closed its original location and moved six doors down to 3407 Connecticut, taking over the upstairs of Fat Pete's BBQ with an upgraded bar, an enhanced mezzanine, and a new rooftop deck built to hold more than 60 televisions.
The move made sense for the business. It left the original 3421 address empty, and for a stretch of nearly twenty months, that empty storefront became its own kind of neighborhood landmark, the space everyone had opinions about and nobody had answers for.
What Actually Moved In
That wait ends this month. Highlands Tavern is set to open before the end of August at 3421 Connecticut, in the same footprint Cleveland Park Bar & Grill occupied for twenty years.
The people behind it are not newcomers to the neighborhood's food scene. George Grau, a D.C. native and Culinary Institute of America graduate, oversees the scratch kitchen. His co-owner is Ki Yoon, who also co-owns Magruders. Day to day operations fall to general manager Jeffrey Diaz, and the kitchen is led by chef Mathew Douglas.
What they are building reads like a deliberate answer to what the old space did well, refreshed rather than reinvented. The menu runs on wood-fired pizzas, handhelds, and burgers, with a kids menu that signals the owners want families walking in on a Tuesday, not just a game-day crowd. The beverage program includes a 12-tap draft selection alongside signature cocktails and a dedicated non-alcoholic list, and the rooftop bar is being positioned as the neighborhood's home base for Notre Dame football this fall, with full sound and multi-level viewing built into the design.
For a block that spent nearly two years without a full-service restaurant at this address, the timeline is notable on its own. Twenty months from vacancy to a fully built-out concept with a named ownership group, a defined menu, and a football season programmed in advance is a fast turnaround for a single storefront on a residential corridor.
Across the Street, a Different Clock
The Uptown Theater has been part of this block since October 1936, when it opened with a screening of Cain and Mabel. Its single screen went on to host the world premieres of both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Jurassic Park, and it was one of only 32 theaters nationwide to run the original Star Wars on opening day. The building's Waterfall Moderne facade and its neon marquee sign have made it one of the more recognizable pieces of architecture on this stretch of Connecticut Avenue for nearly ninety years.
It closed in March 2020, when AMC's lease came to an end and was not renewed. The building earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 2022, a designation that protects the facade and the marquee even as the interior sits unused.
In October 2024, the theater got new owners: Sandro Kereselidze and Tatiana Pastukhova, the husband and wife team behind the D.C. computer-art space Artechouse. They described plans to reimagine the Uptown as some kind of arts venue built around new technology, though they did not share specifics, and no reopening date has been announced since.
That means the theater has now been closed for more than six years, and the current ownership group has held it for close to two years without a public timeline. Compare that to the twenty months it took the restaurant space across the street to go from vacant storefront to a fully staffed, fully programmed tavern with a named opening date, and the gap becomes hard to ignore.
So Which Clock Should You Actually Be Watching
If you live in Cleveland Park and you have been holding out for news on the Uptown before you plan your fall evenings around this block, the restaurant side of the street is the one actually delivering right now. Highlands Tavern's opening gives residents a concrete, dated change to build a routine around: a rooftop for football Saturdays, a kids menu for weeknight dinners, and a full bar half a block from the Metro that did not exist a year ago.
The Uptown's marquee is still worth caring about. It is a piece of the neighborhood's history that residents fought to protect through a landmark designation, and the ownership group behind it has a real track record building unconventional spaces elsewhere in the city. But nothing in the public record suggests a reopening is close, and treating it as an imminent event has not been accurate for six years running.
The practical read for anyone who lives on Ordway, Macomb, or Newark Street is straightforward. Plan your September around what actually reopened. Keep an eye on the theater because its history earns that, but do not let the wait for one landmark keep you from noticing that the block already changed underneath it.
If you are weighing what a shift like this means for property values or timing along Connecticut Avenue, that is a longer conversation, and one worth having with someone who tracks this corridor closely. Peter Maser has spent 19 years working Northwest D.C. and the surrounding Montgomery County submarkets, and welcomes the chance to talk through what neighborhood momentum like this can mean for your own plans. Reach out anytime to start that conversation.
