The center would be built on a 25-acre lot known as Camp Simms, the former National Guard training facility that was vacated about 20 years ago. The site – bounded by Alabama and Mississippi avenues, 15th Street and Stanton Road – is two blocks from the planned Congress Heights Metro station, scheduled to open in early 2001.

The development would create the largest shopping and entertainment center in economically depressed Ward 8.

Kevin Williams, chief executive officer of Dominion Development Corp., which is planning the center, said his company is in preliminary stages of negotiating agreements with retail tenants. The minority-owned firm negotiated an exclusive rights agreement with the city in 1995, prohibiting others from buying the city-owned site while Dominion tries to arrange financing to purchase it.

If Dominion can obtain the required financing, Williams said groundbreaking for the center will occur in spring of 1999. Projected costs include $35 million for construction and $7 million for pre-development expenses, he said.

Dominion, established four years ago, is working with Atlanta-based developer Regent Partners to obtain financing, expected to come primarily from private sources, Williams said. Dominion also is applying for a $3.5 million Economic Development Initiative grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which would be matched by city funds, for infrastructure costs associated with the project. Wiliams said he also plans to apply for federal funding for job training programs at the site.

"We want to establish a high percentage of minority employment and contractors," he said. "This is our shopping center. Young people would see their uncles and parents on construction jobs or working in retail jobs."

Williams said the shopping center would create approximately 400 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs in the next three years.

Reduced rent in the 20,000-square-foot clubhouse area would house the Community Equity Empowerment Project, a nonprofit organization which would run job training, literacy and gang prevention programs for youth and adults.

"We want to encourage our youth to get some training and turn away from some of the (negative) things they do out of a need to survive," Williams said. "We want them to do some of the things they hope and dream about but don’t have the opportunity to pursue."

Plans call for the center to eventually include a food court with large-screen televisions and a non-alcoholic sports bar. On-site day care would be available, Williams said, and security measures would include a private security force.

Nonprofit community groups working with Dominion include the Congress Heights Community Association, Ward 8 Business Council, Washington Metropolitan Minority Contractors Association and the D.C. chapter of the Institute for Responsible Fatherhood. Several are likely future tenants of the clubhouse, Williams said.

Over the past 15 years, several developers have expressed interest in the site but were unable to secure large anchor stores as tenants, said Linda Moody, a Ward 8 community activist and school board member.

"There has been a perception that this neighborhood cannot support that type of business," she said.

Residents of the Tobias Henson Apartments, directly across 15th Street from the proposed theater site, strongly oppose the development, said Leona Redmond, president of the Women’s Community Development Corp., which owns the 64-unit complex.

"We know it won’t work," she said. "It’s just a matter of time until it becomes an eyesore and possibly a magnet for unwanted activity. We will go to great lengths to stop it."

She said residents particularly oppose development of the movie theater, which could have 10 to 14 screens.

Redmond said she was instrumental in getting the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development to purchase the land from the federal government for $1.8 million in 1985. Since then, she said, the property has been "a political football, tossed around from one little group to another, none of which had the wherewithal to develop it."

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator