Best (or Worst) New Neighborhood Moniker: Silicon Hill

• December 16th 2011

by Shilpi Paul

Back in October, UrbanTurf made a vain attempt at coining a new neighborhood moniker based on the city’s growing tech scene.

DC-born daily coupon company LivingSocial’s playful new 26,000 square-foot office at 918 F Street NW (map) had just been recognized as one of the World’s Coolest Offices by Inc. magazine. With Facebook around the corner at 1155 F Street NW (map), Groupon at 509 7th Street NW (map) and Google at 1101 New York Avenue NW (map), Penn Quarter was in need of an appropriately techie, Silicon Valley-inspired nickname. New York City has Silicon Alley, Silicon Beach is starting to catch on in LA, and Portland has even been nicknamed Silicon Forest.

After a bit of brainstorming (perhaps not enough), UrbanTurf came up with one that we thought captured the spirit of DC: Silicon Hill. Yes, tech startups are dispersed around the DC area, with iStrategyLabs and others in Dupont, a startup hub in Northern Virginia, and Penn Quarter isn’t really on any kind of hill. Still, the word “hill” is already in one of the city’s most widely-used nicknames, so we deemed it fitting. But that did not stop commenters with suggesting a variety of other options, including Silicon Lobby, Silicon Quarter and Silicon Square.

Well, with recent news that Ted Leonsis and Steve Case are creating a $450 million fund to seed DC-area startups and the possibility that Microsoft could come to the St. Elizabeth’s campus, the city will need a techie moniker soon. We’re sticking with Silicon Hill…and Wikipedia has already taken notice!

Previous Best Of 2011 entries:

• Best (And Most Ridiculous) Real Estate Rumor of 2011: R. Kelly Apartment Hunting on Capitol Hill
• The Best Listing of the Year For Well-Paid Lobbyists

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/best_or_worst_new_neighborhood_moniker_silicon_hill/4783.