When I first started this job five-ish months ago, the first person I sat down with to start figuring out the world of D.C. real estate and development was reporter-blogger Shaun Courtney, then with DCMud. Fresh off the Obama campaign, she quickly took the site to a new level of professionalism, explaining who was bulding what in the city, and how.

For the past few months, she’s been readying a news site for Georgetown, the first D.C. outpost of the AOL-owned hyperlocal network Patch.com. After starting in towns in suburban New Jersey and Connecticut, the project is mushrooming all around the country, and starting to crack into carefully-chosen communities within cities as well as small towns (City Paper alumnus Will Sommer will be planting one soon in NoVa).

The Georgetown Patch launches this morning, adding to an already–dense local media landscape in that most gossipy and retail-rich of D.C. neighborhoods—now able to know more about itself than ever before.