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WARD REPORTS
(Published January 12, 2004)

WARD 1

D.C. TO UNDERWRITE DEVELOPMENT: The D.C. government is preparing to underwrite a $56 million public loan to help finance construction of a long-delayed retail-entertainment project near the Columbia Heights Metro station. The $140 million DC-USA project, which is expected to include a Target department store, also is slated to receive $43.5 million in taxpayer grant funding through the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

The public loan, being sought through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 108 Loan Guarantee Program, would be repaid over 20 years with new tax revenue generated by the development project. The D.C. government plans to pledge the city’s future federal Community Development Block Grant funding to repay the loan, if new tax revenue is insufficient to cover the costs.

The DC-USA project will be located in the area bounded by Park Road, Irving Street, Hiatt Place and 14th Street in Northwest Washington. Development rights for the vacant land, known as Parcel 27, were awarded to Grid Properties of New York in 1999 in a controversial decision by the District’s now-defunct Redevelopment Land Agency.

Plans for the project have been modified since that time. Originally, the plan called for a 650,000-square-foot complex that included retail, an indoor ice skating rink and a 1,200-space underground parking garage at a cost of about $131 million – with taxpayers being asked to provide about $40 million in Tax Increment Financing. The project’s planned ice rink has now been scrapped, replaced with a bowling center. The project’s overall size has been reduced to 540,000 square feet, including a 160,000-square-foot Target store, and its parking garage has been expanded to include space for 1,364 cars.

The developer initially planned to begin building the project in November 2003, but construction has not yet begun.

WARD 2

OLD CONVENTION CENTER SITE LEASED: D.C. City Council has turned over control of the old convention center in downtown Washington to the quasi-public Washington Convention Center Authority, paving the way for its imminent demolition and temporary conversion of the site into surface parking.

The 10-3 vote on Dec. 16 to lease the publicly owned property at Ninth and H streets NW came with warnings from dissenting council members – David Catania, R-At Large, Vincent Orange, D-Ward 5, and Carol Schwartz, R-At Large – that the deal could ultimately cost D.C. taxpayers millions if the site’s temporary use fails to yield enough revenue to cover the costs of demolition and maintenance.

Tearing down the abandoned center is expected to cost about $15 million, and the city still owes more than $30 million on the bonds that were issued to finance the center’s construction 20 years ago. Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi cautioned the council that the deal’s fiscal impact could not be definitively determined due to the city’s ability to terminate the lease with a 90-day notice.

Schwartz further criticized the deal, brokered by the city’s economic development office, as a way to avoid public oversight and to make taxpayers foot the bill for demolition when the Williams administration already has awarded the site to a private development team. The site is slated for future mixed-use development.

"You know what happened here? [Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Planning] Eric Price went to the convention center authority and said, ‘I want you to do this deal and you can do it faster than we can,’" Schwartz charged. "And do you know who gets to approve subleases? The mayor. Eric Price is going to approve those deals. They’ve already cut those deals."

One of the losing bidders for the old convention center site currently is suing the city over a selection process that was alleged to be unfair, overly subjective and capricious. Several civic activists and council members have criticized the process for failing to include any mention of a price that the development teams are willing to pay the city for the site. Mayor Anthony A. Williams also has been criticized for selecting a team that includes the law firm of his personal lawyer, J. Mark Vincent Policy.

Chris Bender, a spokesman for the city’s economic development office, denied Schwartz’s charge that Deputy Mayor Price has engaged in back-door deals over the downtown site.

"No, that’s not true," Bender said. "No, that’s not true," Bender said. "This is an interim use that makes perfect sense. It will be generating revenue for the city from a site that’s now draining revenue."

WARD 3

MANSION SITE ON THE BLOCK: Philanthropist Betty Brown Casey has abandoned her plan to build a mayoral mansion for the District of Columbia and instead has donated the Foxhall Road site to the Salvation Army, which plans to sell the property.

"It was quite a surprise – quite a pleasant surprise – when we received the call," said Maj. Todd Smith, general secretary of the Salvation Army for the National Capital and Virginia Division.

Smith said the Salvation Army "will act very quickly and aggressively" to market the 16.5-acre parcel through a local real estate company and expects the Casey gift to completely fund the organization’s $18.5 million fund-raising campaign to build a community center on the edge of Historic Anacostia. The Foxhall property is expected to sell for at least $20 million.

Casey contacted the Salvation Army in early December, Smith said, and all documents to transfer the deed have been executed. He said his organization approached Casey last spring about contributing toward the planned Anacostia community center.

"She, at that time, had made a pledge to this project of $5 million," Smith said. "Mrs. Casey has been very supportive of the Salvation Army in the Washington area for many years."

In 1992, Casey provided the funds for a new Salvation Army building in Montgomery County, which was dedicated to her late husband, Eugene B. Casey.

The Salvation Army’s East of the River Initiative plans to build a five-story, 46,000-square-foot multipurpose community center at Morris Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE. The center, scheduled to be completed in spring 2005, will house social services, job training, day care and retail uses.

In a statement issued by his office, Mayor Anthony A. Williams called Casey’s gift to the Salvation Army "a wonderful development."

"Her generosity will complement the revitalization efforts that are underway in [Anacostia] and encourage others to invest in neighborhoods east of the river," the mayor’s statement said.

Why the Casey Mansion Foundation decided to abandon its $50 million effort to build and endow a mayoral mansion was not addressed in a joint statement issued Dec. 12 by the foundation and the Salvation Army. Casey was unavailable for comment.

The planned mansion – which Casey announced in February 2001 and planned to name in memory of her late husband – had been criticized by some for its location in one of the District’s wealthiest neighborhoods, while it was embraced by most Foxhall neighbors. However, neighborhood good will was strained by a contentious transfer of adjacent National Park Service parkland to the foundation and suspicions by some that the property was destined to be subdivided for townhouses.

"There’s gonna be one heck of a fight if it’s going to be subdivided," predicted John W. Finney, chairman of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3D.

WARD 4

FENTY BLASTS POLICE CHIEF: Intensifying his longtime criticism of Police Chief Charles Ramsey's performance, Councilman Adrian Fenty says the chief's assertion that crime is down shows he is out of touch with neighborhood policing issues and he should resign.

"We need a chief of police who is more community engaged, who knows what is going on on the front lines in this city – this chief does not know that," the Ward 4 councilman said Jan. 2 during a live broadcast on WTOP radio’s "Politics Program with Mark Plotkin."

Fenty’s comments came in response to Ramsey’s decision to end the "crime emergency" that he declared last August. In recent weeks, the chief has been trumpeting an overall crime reduction in the past year, and a 14 percent drop over the first 90 days of the four-month "emergency" period. The "crime emergency" allowed Ramsey to suspend a portion of the police union’s contract that requires overtime payments to officers whose work schedules are changed on short notice.

"In Ward 4 in just the past week, one man – a bystander – was fatally shot on the 800 block of Jefferson Street NW. Another man was wounded in this incident," Fenty said on Jan. 5. "Last Friday, there was a gun battle in the 5500 block of South Dakota Avenue NE during which a man lost control of his car and crashed into a tree, killing himself and a passenger."

Fenty said another fatality resulted Friday night from three separate shootings across the city. According to the Metropolitan Police Department’s Web site, the new year had recorded three homicides in the city by Jan. 3 – in addition to the two traffic fatalities on South Dakota Avenue, an accident which police attributed to the driver veering into a tree during a "running gun battle" at about 1 a.m.

A total of six homicides occurred in the District during the first nine days of 2004, according to police. Last year’s 250 homicides were down slightly from the 262 recorded during 2002.

WARD 5

TURKEY THICKET CENTER DELAYED: Work has been stopped on a new $8 million recreation and aquatic center at Turkey Thicket, bordering Brookland and Michigan Park, due to the city’s decision to replace the project’s construction contractor.

"I’m told that it will be six weeks to two months before we will actually see building activity going on," said Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Mary Baird Currie, in whose single-member district the center is located.

Currie said city officials told her that the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation initiated the contractor’s removal last month due to problems at the site and that inspections must be performed to ascertain the project’s status before work can be resumed by another contractor. She said most of the "underground work" had been completed by the original contractor.

Parks and Recreation Department officials did not respond to The Common Denominator’s requests for information about the project’s status. Currie said she will schedule a neighborhood meeting when city officials are more forthcoming with details about the project’s disruption.

WARD 6

NAMING METRO’S NEW STATION: The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s Planning and Development Committee has recommended that the new station being built along Metro’s Red Line be named "New York Avenue-Florida Avenue-Gallaudet U."

The recommendation, made Jan. 8 to the transit system’s Board of Directors, followed a series of recent meetings with neighborhood groups to help select the station’s name. The station will have two entrances – on M Street NE and Florida Avenue NE, near New York Avenue. The $103.7 million project is expected to be completed in 2005.

GROCERS VIE FOR SITE: Three grocers – two of them attempting to bring their first store to the District – are competing to build huge gourmet-oriented stores as part of the planned redevelopment of the former Wax Museum site at Fifth and K streets NW.

All three are part of multimillion dollar proposals to bring a mix of retail stores and both luxury and affordable housing to a vacant, publicly owned city block – bordering downtown and the gentrifying Shaw neighborhood – that has long been coveted by local developers.

Officials from California-based Safeway, North Carolina-based Harris Teeter and Philadelphia-based Fresh Grocer all made their pitch to the community Dec. 10 during Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6C’s monthly meeting at the Capital Children’s Museum – complete with three spreads of catered hors d’oeuvres and petit fours.

"This is in no way an attempt to bribe the commissioners," joked ANC Chairman Robert Hall, as he urged members of the public to help themselves to the free refreshments provided by the development teams.

The quasi-public National Capital Revitalization Corp., which is legally charged with selecting a developer for the site, is expected to choose one of the three proposed projects by the end of January.

All three proposals, put forward by development teams headed by major general contractors, include a mix of luxury condominiums and rental apartments with at least 20 percent of the rental units to be offered at below-market rates to lower-income individuals and families. Major differences exist in the project designs, although all include a supermarket, park areas and underground parking.

Safeway, which currently operates 16 supermarkets in the District, has signed a letter of intent to be part of a development team headed by Lowe Enterprises Mid-Atlantic Inc. that calls its planned project "5th & K." Safeway Public Affairs Manager Craig Muckle said the "customized, first-of-its-kind in the District," 55,000-square-foot store would feature a bakery, prepared foods, a salad bar and include an in-store Starbucks coffee shop, Bergmann’s Cleaners and a SunTrust Bank branch.

Harris Teeter, which currently operates six stores in Northern Virginia, is part of a development team headed by Paradigm Development Co. that wants to build "Central Market Commons" on the site. The proposed 50,000-square-foot, two-level supermarket would include a pharmacy, an on-site bakery, florist, winery, deli and sidewalk cafe. Harris Teeter President Fred J. Morganthall pledged to "hire locally" into the expected 100 full-time and 100 part-time jobs that would be created by the store.

The Fresh Grocer, which operates seven supermarkets in Philadelphia, seeks to bring its first store to the Washington area as part of the development team, headed by Akridge Real Estate Services, that wants to build "Mount Vernon Park." Fresh Grocer President Patrick Burns emphasized his company’s "family-oriented" approach to doing business and pledged to hire all of the store’s 170-185 workers, including managers, from the local community. He said he expects his store’s workers to earn between $10 and $20 per hour in a "union shop" and noted that income level would allow them to consider living in the new development as well as working there.

WARD 7

NEW EASTGATE GARDENS PLAN: The D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA) is preparing to resubmit its application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for $20 million in HOPE VI funding to help replace the Eastgate Gardens public housing complex, which was razed in 1998.

HUD rejected DCHA’s previous application to fund redevelopment of the 20.4-acre site in Marshall Heights, near Southern Avenue and Benning Road, as a mixed public-private housing community and cultural arts center.

The new $54 million plan envisions a mix of "grand homes," detached single-family homes, townhouses and duplexes built along tree-lined streets and boulevards that retain many of the area’s existing trees. The 169-unit development is expected to be heavily weighted toward homeownership, with opportunities for public housing tenants to lease-to-own.

The housing authority has partnered with Eastgate Redevelopment Associates, a group of residents relocated from the demolished 230-unit complex, and The Henson Companies for the project. Henson also is associated with the Capital Gateway HOPE VI project currently underway along East Capitol Street near the Maryland border.

WARD 8

HOSPITAL REGAINS ACCREDITATION: Greater Southeast Community Hospital has regained its industry accreditation and may soon be able to bill private health insurers for patient care. The struggling hospital, which has been operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since November 2002, was awarded accreditation "with requirements for improvement" by the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations on Jan. 6 following final review of a survey team’s preliminary recommendation. The accreditation was made retroactive to Dec. 18, 2003, the day after the JCAHO survey team completed its three-day visit to Southeast Washington’s only hospital.

In a statement issued by the hospital, Administrator Joan Phillips said JCAHO’s decision to restore Greater Southeast’s accreditation "certainly helps to validate that we’re headed in the right direction." The statement said the hospital’s management team and staff will continue to implement quality improvements "consistent with the JCAHO report."

Hospital officials did not respond to requests for additional information about the improvements that JCAHO is requiring at the hospital. A JCAHO spokesman said the accreditation process does not permit his organization to publicly disclose those requirements until 30 days after they are presented to the hospital for possible "revision."

"Any organization that receives ‘requirements for improvement’ must, within a stipulated time period, demonstrate that they have come into compliance in that standards area," according to JCAHO spokesman Mark Forstneger.

Greater Southeast, the District’s only hospital located east of the Anacostia River and Ward 8’s largest employer, lost its accreditation last August and almost lost its city-issued license to operate last year due to questions about its quality of patient care and other facility deficiencies. Major health insurance companies canceled their agreements to pay the hospital for patient care when Greater Southeast lost its accreditation.