The Uptown Theater's Marquee Is Still Dark. The Block Around It Isn't.
September 24, 2026
September 24, 2026
Walk down Connecticut Avenue past the Cleveland Park Metro stop and you'll pass two addresses that tell opposite stories. At 3421, a rooftop bar is pouring drafts under string lights most nights of the week. At 3426, almost directly across the street, a boarded Art Deco facade has said nothing new to the neighborhood since March of last year.
Both buildings changed hands with big plans attached. Only one of them has opened.
Highlands Tavern took over the old Cleveland Park Bar & Grill space at 3421 Connecticut Avenue NW and opened its doors before the end of August. The concept comes from Ki Yoon, co-owner of Magruders, and George Grau, a D.C. native and Culinary Institute of America graduate who runs the scratch kitchen. Jeffrey Diaz, a former D.C. restaurant owner himself, took the general manager role and built out the beverage program. Chicago-born chef Mathew Douglas, previously with a well-known local restaurant group, leads the kitchen.
The menu leans into what a neighborhood tavern is supposed to do: wood-fired pizzas, burgers, handhelds, a kids' menu, and twelve drafts on rotation alongside a full non-alcoholic list. The building itself got a full renovation rather than a quick coat of paint, and the multi-level layout now includes an expansive rooftop that the ownership team has already positioned as the go-to spot for Notre Dame football this fall.
A few numbers worth knowing if you're planning a visit this season:
From lease to open doors, this was a fast turnaround for a full-building renovation.
The Uptown Theater has been sitting dark since March 2020, when AMC's lease expired and the pandemic closure became permanent. That alone wouldn't be unusual. Plenty of single-screen movie houses closed for good around the same time. What makes the Uptown different is how long its comeback has been treated as inevitable and how little of that inevitability has actually landed.
The building carries real weight. Warner Brothers opened it in 1936, and over the following decades it hosted the world premiere of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 and Jurassic Park in 1993, along with a Star Wars re-release that packed the house in 1997. In 2022, the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board added it to the National Register of Historic Places.
A group of neighbors and hospitality veterans tried to buy time back for the theater in 2023, proposing a nonprofit multi-venue model with a screening room, event space, and bar. They raised half a million dollars in three days. The Pedas family, which has owned the building since its Circle Theaters days, didn't accept the offer.
The Washington Post reported in October 2024 that Sandro Kereselidze and Tatiana Pastukhova, the husband-and-wife team behind the experimental art space Artechouse, signed a 20-year lease and announced plans to turn the Uptown into some kind of arts venue. By March 2025, PoPville reported that a liquor license application appeared for the address, describing the plan as "a multipurpose establishment that will serve as a cultural art center for immersive art, performance, and theatrical experiences," with an occupancy load of 350.
Since then, nothing public has moved. PoPville checked in on the project in July of this year and summed up the time since the filing in three words: "crickets since March 2025."
Neither business did anything wrong here. But the gap between them says something real about how projects actually get delivered on this stretch of Connecticut Avenue.
Highlands Tavern is a restaurant replacing a restaurant. The zoning, the plumbing, the basic bones of a commercial food-and-drink space were already in place from the building's life as Cleveland Park Bar & Grill. A new operator with capital and a build-out plan can move through permitting and construction in months when the underlying use never changes.
The Uptown Theater is a different kind of project entirely. A 20-year lease and a 350-person occupancy plan for "immersive art, performance, and theatrical experiences" make it a more involved project than a straightforward tenant swap.
None of that means the Uptown won't open. It means the theater and the tavern were never running the same race.
Highlands Tavern isn't the only recent arrival on this stretch. Buffalo & Bergen, the bagel shop that built a following at its original location, opened a Cleveland Park outpost this year with pastries, hot pockets, and pizzas added to the bagel lineup, giving the corridor another all-day option within walking distance of the Metro.
Community life on this block hasn't been waiting on the theater either. Cleveland Park Day returned on June 7 this year, organized through District Bridges with an outdoor vendor market, live music, and a Kids Zone that drew families out for an afternoon on the avenue. It's a small annual marker, but it's a useful one: the neighborhood's calendar of gatherings runs on its own schedule, independent of whichever storefront is between tenants that year.
If you've been checking the Uptown's windows every few months hoping for a sign, the honest update is that there isn't one yet. The last real movement was a liquor license placard from March 2025, and permit filings like that tend to be the earliest public signal before any announcement of an opening date. Keeping an eye on new filings at 3426 Connecticut Avenue NW is a better bet than waiting for a press release.
In the meantime, the tavern side of the block is very much open for business, and the rooftop is worth a look before the weather turns. Cleveland Park's main street has always had a way of filling gaps faster than its biggest headline project gets resolved, and this fall is a clear example of that pattern playing out in real time.
If you're weighing a move to this stretch of Connecticut Avenue, or you already call it home and want a read on how the neighborhood is actually changing block by block, Wydler Brothers spends its time watching exactly this kind of detail. Start the conversation and request a personalized consultation whenever you're ready to talk through what's next for your home in Cleveland Park.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
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