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Wooing Radio One
(Published June 28, 2004)

By KATHRYN SINZINGER
Staff Writer

Two D.C. developers say they have the plan that will return excitement, style, grandeur and live entertainment to the historic, but long vacant and dilapidated, Howard Theatre and woo broadcasting giant Radio One's headquarters back to its founder's roots in Shaw as part of a centerpiece development in an area that city planners are calling "Uptown."

"This community has been waiting for decades for the jewel in the crown - the Howard Theatre - to come back to life," Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Alexander Padro said June 24 while addressing a packed auditorium at the D.C. Housing Finance Agency, where city planners presented their recommendations for developing an Uptown Destination District.

Padro, whose ANC 2C constituency included the historic theater's location before 2002 redistricting put the building in Ward 1, challenged city leaders to "get the Howard Theatre project moving within six months." Developer Jonathan Taylor, president and chief executive officer of Kumase Development Group, first submitted his unsolicited proposal to revive the Howard to the city government in 1999. The D.C. government owns the rundown theater, which was added to the national register of historic landmarks in 1974.

Padro and ANC 1B Commissioner Lawrence Guyot, who now represents the area in which the theater is located, are both urging the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development, the quasi-public RLA Revitalization Corp. and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to bypass the normally required competitive bidding process for the three adjacent properties they own to package them for conveyance to a development team headed by Taylor and Roy Ellis, president of Ellis Enterprises LLC.

The developers already have presented their proposal to several neighborhood organizations and to neighboring businesses, which are included in their plan, to garner support. Among those endorsing the plan are ANC 1B, the LeDroit Park Civic Association, the Shaw Main Streets program and the Columbia Heights Community Development Corp. The developers are working with the nonprofit Manna Community Development Corp. and the United Planning Organization to include low- to middle-income housing and a neighborhood hiring/apprenticeship program in their plan.

Taylor said he teamed up with Ellis about nine months ago to create what they are calling the Broadcast Center One-Howard Theatre Cultural Destination Project. The developers are working with Abdo Development, a residential construction firm, and Slattery Skanska Inc., a general contractor that currently is building the New York Avenue Metro station.

Taylor said restoration of the theater "will be privately financed through debt and equity financing." Ellis said "money is not a problem" for moving forward on the project's office/retail/housing component either, with pension funds helping to provide financing, but he acknowledged that a government subsidy for building "affordable" housing and "some tax abatement" are being sought for the project.

The $13.6 million theater component would restore the Howard as a 30,000-square-foot, 500-seat venue for nightly national and local concerts, with a grand lobby featuring exhibits chronicling the days when the world's premier jazz entertainers performed along the corridor that was then known as Washington's "Black Broadway." Also included would be a movie auditorium for screening independent black films, a restaurant and sidewalk café, and a memorabilia gift shop.

The $48.5 million, two-phase office/housing/retail component is proposed for the corner of Seventh and S streets NW, behind the Howard Theatre and atop the Shaw/Howard University Metro station. Phase I would include 50,000 square feet of office space, 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, 100,000 square feet of condominiums and underground parking. Phase II would renovate 20,000 square feet of existing retail space at Seventh and T streets NW, adjacent to the project, and build 150,000 square feet of condominiums above the retail space.

Ellis said all of the proposed office space would be dedicated to headquarters facilities for Radio One Inc., and possibly its new TV One Inc. cable network. Radio One and its flagship station, WOL, moved out of the District to Lanham, Md., in 1997. TV One, a partnership with Comcast that began broadcasting in January, currently leases space in Silver Spring, Md.

Radio One founder Cathy Hughes began her broadcasting career at WHUR in the District and later bought WOL, where she launched the nation's largest African-American-owned radio network on H Street NE.

"We've been working for about four years to get Radio One back to the city," Ellis said. "We're ready to move forward on this."

Ellis and Alfred Liggins, Hughes' son who now serves as president and chief executive officer of Radio One and as board chairman of TV One, met to discuss the project in late May with Eric Price, the District's deputy mayor for economic development and planning. Ellis and Liggins also are hoping to meet with Councilman Jim Graham, D-Ward 1, on July 20.

Graham, who was heckled and booed at the June 24 community meeting when he called for a competitive bidding process to be conducted for the government-owned properties eyed by the Taylor-Ellis development team, told The Common Denominator that he wants to see "a clarification of the proposal."

"If this is a true Radio One proposal … then we should look very seriously at that," he said.

Graham had been supporting an idea, discussed at various community meetings, to help the 9:30 Club build a 5,000-seat concert arena, using the Howard Theatre as its grand lobby and incorporating the land behind it. Neighborhood residents have largely rejected the idea, as have city planners, noting that such a venue would do little to revive the area in daytime and could present myriad neighborhood problems due to the influx of huge crowds at night.

City planners' recommendations for the area including and surrounding the Howard Theatre call for a "performing arts anchor" similar in features and scope to what the Taylor-Ellis development team has proposed.

Reviving the area around the Howard is part of city planners' effort to connect what they are calling a "string of pearls" in the Uptown Destination District. The "Uptown" area is located east of the already-restored, historic Lincoln Theatre on U Street NW and is roughly bounded by Sixth and 13th streets NW on the east and west, Rhode Island Avenue NW on the south and the Banneker Recreation Center/Howard University area on the north.

Also included among the D.C. Office of Planning's "pearls" is a "University District" that would expand Howard University's campus west of Seventh Street NW between W and Bryant streets.

City planners also envision bringing 10-story residential/retail complexes to the Uptown area as part of their revitalization plan.