A Bethesda company played a key role in making the Arts District hip.

The Washington Post profiled the people behind Streetsense, the company which helped bring Busboys and Poets, Elevation Burger, Yes! Organic Market and Chipotle to the shopping area along Route 1.

The story also explains how they helped develop the concept for the Spice 6 Indian restaurant:

Vik Singh was a construction executive when he first heard about Streetsense in early 2011, during his search for a location for a fast-casual Indian restaurant. He’d spotted a site in the Hyattsville Arts District that was being rented out by Streetsense.

“And then I found out that they do pretty much everything,” he said. “We could lease it from them and they would design it, help us with construction, marketing, branding. It’s much easier to deal with one point of contact than with five different people from five different firms.”

It took a little over a year for everything to come together. Streetsense helped Singh pick out the restaurant’s color palette — deep reds and yellows — and designed its logo. They chose a deep blue paint for the eatery’s walls and red cushions for its chairs,

“It saved me a lot of time and headache,” Singh said.

Streetsense is also working on a project in Mount Rainier.