Anns Beauty Supply held on as Navy Yard transformed. Now the shop may close.
In the early days of Ann Reed’s time on L Street SE, her beauty supply store didn’t look out of place.
A Baptist church occupied an adjacent lot, while a boarded-up deli sat on a corner across the street. Her building, which she moved into between 2005 and 2007 — she can’t quite recall — was an unassuming two-floor storefront with pink brick and a green awning.
By late 2007, a luxury apartment complex was under construction next door — a harbinger of how Navy Yard, a waterfront neighborhood just south of Capitol Hill, was beginning to change.
Four years later, the vacant deli had been razed. Then the church disappeared. More apartment buildings rose on the surrounding blocks until the modest storefront of Ann’s Beauty Supply and Wigs became a stark outlier in a sea of shiny, new development.
Nearly two decades after Reed opened her store here, she is ready to retire and sell or lease her building to anyone who offers the right price. Her shop, one of the oldest in the neighborhood, served as a time capsule of a bygone era as Navy Yard transformed from a run-down, industrial eyesore to one of the most modern and expensive parts of the District.
The area’s changes have been “good for the neighborhood,” Reed said Wednesday. “But I think it’s like this kind of business does not perfectly fit in.”
Inside the store, bottles of hair oils and dyes line shelves, extensions of every color and length hang on hooks, and wigs adorn dozens of mannequins. When Navy Yard resident Von Reed stopped in Wednesday, Ann Reed helped him pick out hair scrunchies and rubber bands — telling him with a laugh: “I have everything.”
Shops like Reed’s are a cultural touchpoint for Black women, who say their hair needs seem like an afterthought at most major chains. But women of different races, as well as men, patronize Ann’s. Local residents appreciate having a beauty supply store nearby, Von Reed said, rather than having to catch a bus to the next closest option across the Anacostia River.
“She is the only one in this vicinity, so that’s what makes this place amazing,” Von Reed, who is not related to Ann Reed, said after paying for his $8.45 purchase.
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Before Ann’s moved to its current location, Reed rented space in Southwest Washington’s former Waterside Mall for roughly 25 years. Her business was successful, she said, but the complex eventually became slated for redevelopment. In 2004, she bought her building in Navy Yard so that no one could force her out again.
The neighborhood was largely undeveloped at the time after years of use by the U.S. Navy for building weapons and ships. Scrap yards, concrete plants and strip clubs abounded, with few residents.
“When I got here, there were no tall buildings. Even that hotel was a little ditch,” Reed said, referencing a hulking Marriott across the street.
The neighborhood started to change rapidly in 2005, when the federal government turned over most of the area to private developers. Industrial buildings and a low-income housing project were torn down, and Nationals Park and a new headquarters for the Transportation Department soon moved in — spurring an explosion of residential towers and waterfront eateries.
The resulting demographic changes were dramatic: In 2000, about 77 percent of Navy Yard residents were low income. By 2016, that population had plummeted to 21 percent, according to a study from the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity. The neighborhood’s total population surged from about 1,825 to roughly 4,664 in the same period.
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Four blocks from Ann’s, Albert Oh runs Cornercopia, a deli he opened in 2009 in the shop his parents once ran as a corner store. Most of the businesses from his parents’ era were gone about a year after the Nationals moved into their new stadium in 2008, Oh said.
Now his shop, along with Ann’s, is one of the only remaining long-standing businesses amid Navy Yard’s soaring towers.
“Every time my parents come to visit from California, they’re always amazed by how much it’s changed over the years,” Oh said. “Even between a couple of years, it’s, like, drastic changes.”
Developers have offered to buy Reed’s building several times over the years, but she said they never quoted enough money to make it worth it to her. If she were to pack up her store again, it would only be to retire.
Still, it hasn’t been easy for her business to succeed in Navy Yard. Less foot traffic, fewer Black residents and the rise of online shopping have made it hard to consistently turn a profit. Reed said she can’t afford to hire employees, and her store is open five days a week — rather than six — now that more people work from home post-pandemic.
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Tori Collins used to walk by Ann’s every day on her way to the office, often stopping in to buy a specific kind of shampoo or conditioner for Black women that chains were unlikely to carry. Sometimes, she said, she complimented Reed on refusing to sell to developers, seeing it as a sign of the power that small-business owners have to maintain their communities’ character.
Collins, 44, said she appreciates Navy Yard’s newer businesses but wishes she could also visit more establishments that were there before she moved to the area in 2014.
“There’s a certain amount of balance that’s needed for communities to have,” she said. “That’s definitely going away.”
Edward Daniels, the area’s advisory neighborhood commissioner, said his ideal scenario would be for Reed to lease her space to another minority-owned business. If she sells to a developer, he said, that company could easily erect a much taller building on the land.
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“We do have very few legacy businesses that are here,” Daniels said. “Some have moved into newer buildings, things like that, but overall, there’s not much left of the Navy Yard that you would see from 15 years ago or 20 years ago.”
Above Reed’s store, Ammiel Anderson has leased space for his barbershop since 2020. Anderson, who sometimes buys products for his business at Ann’s, expects he will be able to stay if Reed leases out her shop. But he knows a sale of the whole building might force his business to move.
“I’ve got other options and avenues that I can take,” he said. “But I’d rather stay here.”
While some potential purchasers have expressed interest in the building, Reed said she has not yet accepted an offer. She doesn’t think another beauty supply store could make it in that space, now that the neighborhood has changed so much.
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A restaurant or a doctor’s office could probably do well, she said, but it doesn’t much matter to her who takes over the property. She’s open to working with any renter or buyer who will pay enough that she can trade working for gardening, spending time with her grandchildren and visiting family in South Korea.
Besides, Reed said, her more than 40 years in business have already paid for her three daughters to attend college — what she wanted from the store all along.
“I think,” she said, “I pretty much fulfilled my dream.”
Monika Mathur and Marissa Lang contributed to this report.
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