Book-minded people around the District have picked up on the closing sale now taking place at Candida’s World of Books in Logan Circle, right on the almost uniformly chi-chi 14th Street corridor. Just another casualty among indie businesses in this epoch of Barnes & Noble and Target? Yes, partially, according to owner Candida Mannozzi: “The margins are thin,” she says.

But there was another factor here, says Candida, and it’s a familiar one to small businesses in a gentrifying city. It’s called the crane drain: For about a year and a half, says Mannozzi, construction on a large retail and condo building just to the south of Candida frustrated her efforts to get customers. “It’s very difficult to be visible with cranes in front of me,” she says. “The construction was a stranglehold on us. Even though most of it is done, it’s too little too late.”