Washington D.C. Development News

[StevenW]

484 ft. ?

[MasonsInquiries]

anybody home????....lol.

[StevenW]

it sure seems like it.................................................................................

[NovaWolverine]

www.arlingtonvirginia.com/index.cfm/5231
they still have 1815 N. Moore Street is still supposed to be 491 ft.

This is a decent site with the developments going all over arlington.

[StevenW]

Cool. Why don't they just go ahead and make it an even 500 ft.?
So close....................

[NovaWolverine]

I know I don't have a clue, I'm not sure what the FAA regs. are nut that may have something to do with it.

[pepperjack]

Originally Posted by StevenW

First of all, let me say, "Welcome to the Forum, pepperjack."
Also notice the "Baltimore Development News" Thread.

As for your question, I'm not sure.

Thanks. I check in on the Baltimore thread every once in a while. Not regularly enough to have had the urge to post. Plus I still know DC a little bit better at this point, having only moved away this past March, and still working down here in VA.

[StevenW]

Originally Posted by NovaWolverine

I know I don't have a clue, I'm not sure what the FAA regs. are nut that may have something to do with it.

I know, but it's just 9 more feet!.

[Molo]

Originally Posted by MasonsInquiries

anybody home????....lol.

I predicted this would happen many moons ago!

[NovaWolverine]

JBG pushes forward in Silver Spring
http://washington.bizjournals.com/wa...14/story4.html
Joe Coombs
Washington Business Journal
November 11, 2005


The JBG Cos. appears ready to own a larger piece of Silver Spring's downtown skyline.

The developer has earned final approval for a residential high-rise on East-West Highway that will offer 457 apartment units and about 14,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.

Work could get started on the 15-story Silver Spring Gateway project by the end of the year and deliver in late 2007, says Gene Smith, a JBG project manager. Smith would not disclose construction costs associated with the project and says JBG is still accepting bids for the work.

Chevy Chase-based JBG (www.jbg.com) also is close to finishing the Silverton condominium complex, a 210-unit development next to the planned Gateway project.

A grocery store that was in JBG's initial plans for the Gateway development is now out of consideration.

Negotiations with Harris Teeter (www.harristeeter.com) representatives to bring in a 47,000-square-foot supermarket fell through, and JBG subsequently altered the site plan.

"It just didn't work out," Smith says.

Even though the Gateway development is only a block away from a Giant Food-anchored shopping plaza, the plethora of residential projects coming to the neighborhood will create a need for more supermarkets and other stores, says Robert Kronenberg, a planner with Montgomery County's Planning Department (www.mc-mncppc.org).

Within a quarter-mile radius of the Gateway site, hundreds of condominium units are in the pipeline in downtown Silver Spring, including Centex Homes' 151-unit Portico complex on Fidler Lane and a 96-unit complex on East-West Highway proposed by District-based Perseus Realty (www.perseusrealty.com).

"It would have been nice to have the grocery store," Kronenberg says, "but that's something we can't control. There's definitely going to be a demand for it over there in the near future."

JBG is reserving 58 of the 457 units at Gateway for affordable housing, according to the site plan application filed with Montgomery County.

The complex also will include 655 underground parking spaces.

Retail tenants are still being determined, but Smith says a restaurant may be included.

[NovaWolverine]

N. Virginians crowd public transportation
By Heather Greenfield
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 8, 2005


More Northern Virginia residents are taking a stand, literally, for public transportation.
Morning commutes aboard the Virginia Railway Express (VRE) often are standing room only as that system reaches capacity. Many bus routes are that crowded, too.
Overall public-transportation ridership grew last year to 128 million trips for Northern Virginia residents, up 3.3 million from a year earlier. The figure from the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission (NVTC) includes the VRE, Metro and eight local bus systems.
Although public-transit usage increased nationwide, the jump in Northern Virginia was nearly double the national average.
"It's a stunning statistic," said Gerald E. Connolly, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. "With enough resources, we could significantly expand that."
He said gridlock is the reason people are turning to mass transit.
In neighboring Loudoun County, Cheyenne Cashin of Sterling is careful to be at her bus station 10 minutes early to make sure she gets one of the 55 reclining seats for her 45-minute trip to the D.C. law firm where she works.
Ridership on the Loudoun County bus system increased 31 percent last year and has nearly doubled since 2003.
"I just don't want to fight the traffic. It's just too much stress. I like having my time to read or take a nap," said Miss Cashin, a bus rider since the late 1980s, before Loudoun County took over the program.
Arlington County's ART bus service saw ridership grow with 116,000 more trips. The Fairfax Connector buses had a half-million more passenger trips.
The only service that did not grow dramatically was the VRE, which officials warn is at capacity.
"You can't get more rail cars until you get more money," said NVTC Executive Director Rick Taube. "The Virginia General Assembly says it would like to pay 95 percent of the public transportation costs not covered by the federal government or fares.


"To meet its own target, the state of Virginia should be providing twice as much for transit as they do," Mr. Taube said.
Instead of paying 95 percent of the uncovered costs, Mr. Taube said, the state typically pays closer to 40 percent.
He said state funding jumped to 63 percent for fiscal 2006, but would fall to 25 percent by 2007 if the legislature does not act.
"It puts us on a little bit of a roller coaster and makes it impossible for transportation systems to plan," Mr. Taube said.
Because of the high stakes in the next legislative session, NVTC board members will have a careful eye out today, as all 100 seats in the House of Delegates are up for election.
"If we can elect some more transit-friendly delegates, that will be a help," Mr. Connolly said. "Now, 14 percent of transportation funding in the state goes to transit. That needs to be expanded."
NVTC Chairman Paul Ferguson said he hopes to see half the money go to transit, but he realizes that is unlikely.
"There is talk of expansion for VRE," Mr. Ferguson said. "It would make sense to put money into that."

[NovaWolverine]

Smart Growth in Montgomery: Fitting More Groceries in the Same Bag

By Roger K. Lewis

Saturday, November 12, 2005; Page F05

How can 15 pounds of groceries be packed into a 10-pound grocery bag? Get rid of some of the groceries? Get a bigger bag? Do a better job of packing?

A favorite rhetorical query often voiced by planners and architects, this metaphoric dilemma aptly summarizes smart-growth challenges facing Montgomery County. The groceries are the projected increase of population and employment in the county. The bag is the capacity of the county's existing real estate resources to absorb future growth.


Montgomery County, which is Maryland's most populous political jurisdiction and most potent economic engine, will add 170,000 jobs and need almost 100,000 new housing units by 2030, according to forecasts reported by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission.

Demographic trends also point to an increasingly aging population, with less than a quarter of new and existing households expected to include schoolchildren. Consequently, county planners anticipate that as much as 60 percent of future housing growth in Montgomery County will be condominium and rental dwellings rather than single-family homes on individual subdivision lots.

Likewise, the county foresees millions of square feet of additional non-residential development -- places of employment, shopping, schools, recreational and cultural facilities -- being built in the next 25 years.

Meanwhile, the county's boundaries are fixed. But county leaders have essentially made the "bag" smaller by imposing additional capacity constraints. Most important of these is the 1980 creation of the unique Agricultural Reserve.

Encompassing 93,000 acres in the county's northern and western sectors, the Agricultural Reserve includes a third of the county's land area. With density in the sacrosanct reserve limited to one dwelling per 25 acres, new residential and commercial development has stayed within "down-county" and I-270 corridor areas -- Bethesda, Rockville, Gaithersburg, Silver Spring, Wheaton.

Thus, the amount of groceries is growing and the size of the bag is immutable. The only thing left is to do a better job of packing -- and that is precisely what county planners intend to do.

Last Monday, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission sponsored a conference to talk about the challenge. To catalyze discussion, the commission distributed a planning framework subtitled "Revitalizing Centers . . . Reshaping Boulevards . . . Creating Great Public Spaces." The subtitle implicitly identifies existing physical problems plaguing the county, offers possible solutions to those problems and suggests strategies for managing future growth.

Topping the all-too-familiar list of county problems are severe traffic congestion and inadequate road capacity. Added to this are lack of road network connectivity and pedestrian-hostile arterials such as Rockville Pike, Georgia Avenue and University Boulevard. Other problems identified include a shortage of affordable housing and the existence of underused, unattractive strip shopping centers scattered throughout the county.

Despite some innovative zoning initiatives, pervasive single-use residential and commercial zoning has produced many isolated enclaves and neighborhoods. Zoning-induced physical segregation not only deters social interaction but also engenders car dependency and guarantees clogged arterials.

The commission's report observes that existing master plans and zoning laws would legally permit much of the projected growth if all county land were built out to maximum allowable density. But the patterns of uses and densities adopted in the 20th century won't lead to the kinds of communities envisioned for the 21st.

So the commission proposes "a new planning paradigm."

Its provisions include:

Instead of large-area master planning, small-area, neighborhood-based, fine-grain planning would "direct growth inward and upward." There's no choice: Future growth must entail redevelopment of existing properties, and at higher densities. Commercial centers and surface parking lots, covering thousands of county acres, would be especially targeted for revitalization.

Infill development and redevelopment not only must yield higher densities, but also must include residential, commercial and non-commercial uses to ensure round-the-clock activity. Equally critical is designing animated public spaces, whether plazas or streets. Given pedestrian-oriented activities and ease of pedestrian movement, many people would choose to live near where they work and shop. And if each resident and worker reduced daily automobile trips by only two a day, the aggregate drop in traffic would make a significant dent in highway congestion.

Transit-oriented development, at Metro stations or along light-rail or bus lines, likewise demands dense, diverse land use. Yet transit still complements an interconnected road network. Because people will continue owning and driving cars, building ample, transit-related parking structures is essential.

Segments of the county's automobile-dominated arterials should be transformed into tree-lined "boulevards," shared public spaces that are attractive, that accommodate both cars and buses, and that are safe and inviting for bicyclists and pedestrians. Imagine Rockville Pike as a boulevard with tree-shaded sidewalks abutting buildings and storefronts instead of parking lots.

With its ordinances on adequate public facilities and moderately priced housingand with its Agricultural Reserve, Montgomery County has long been viewed by other jurisdictions, regionally and nationally, as a model of enlightened, progressive planning. And pursuing the new "planning paradigm" clearly shows that it intends to maintain its reputation.

Yet little will change unless the county's political leaders, property owners, businesses and voters buy into the new paradigm. This is not an easy sell. Rewriting development rules to radically reshape familiar physical environments requires new thinking and new attitudes, achievable only through sustained public education. Because many jurisdictions face the same dilemma confronting Montgomery County, and because -- despite recent public criticisms of the planning system's management -- it is the model, let's hope the county is successful in helping its residents pack those future groceries into an attractive grocery bag.

Roger K. Lewis is a practicing architect and a professor of architecture at the University of Maryland.

[NovaWolverine]

One Urban Panorama Fades, Another Rises
Church of the Rapture and Paradise Liquor are Washington relics. As the future moves in, they prepare to leave their corner behind. The first of two parts.

By Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 13, 2005; Page A01

On the second floor of a battered building on the corner of 14th and T streets NW, more than 300 worshipers are caught in the driving syncopation of drums and organ. Church of the Rapture has occupied this corner for three decades. Beyond the doors of the Pentecostal storefront, the sun is out and the iPod people walk by. A real estate agent hammers in a "For Sale" sign pointing to a T Street rowhouse that six years ago sold for $282,000 but now has granite counters and is going for $839,000.

Upstairs in the church, the music oscillates, and the worshipers are out of their seats, some so deep in the spirit that their shouts of "Yes, Jesus" and "Hallelujah" become bursts of unrecognizable syllables.

"I thank God for this church and we can express ourselves," a pastor says when the music quiets. "No one to pull your coattail and make you sit down. We are in a beautiful place, saints, free as a bird flying over this building. No one will hinder us. I see prosperity all over the church."

Not only spiritual prosperity. The church that started with nothing more than a sweat-stained tambourine and a small group of followers had just sold its property for $10 million. Its pastor and founder, known to her congregation as the Honorable Doctor Theresa Garrison, a high school dropout with prophecies and visions, closed one of the most lucrative deals in the 14th Street real estate boom. Church of the Rapture was going condo.

How much longer would Paradise Liquor be holding down the other corner? The grimy package liquor store is where $2 half-pints of Velicoff are shelved behind bulletproof glass and the customers have names like Bo-Bo, Snipe, Jerome, Miss Brenda, Koo-Koo and Peanut. Now Koo-Koo is standing at the counter next to a young blond man who's asking for fresh limes.

"Fresh limes!" says manager David Lee. "These people are so picky! Nothing is good enough like it is."

Church of the Rapture and Paradise Liquor are two stubborn relics from a bygone era of a bygone city. This year, after decades of sharing the same tattered geography, both decided it was time to go. The future of the neighborhood stared at them from across the street: the steel-cut letters that said "Saint-Ex" and smoked glass windows that revealed a bistro crowded with white people.

Soon there will be luxury lofts in the spot where Pastor Garrison hollers about the end days, a prediction that in one sense is coming absolutely true.

* * *

It has been more than a decade since the crosswinds of urban renewal started blowing across Shaw, once the crown jewel of black Washington that slipped into blight and is now being re-imagined by baristas and purveyors of tapas. Race and class are colliding on dozens of other blocks in a city where demographics are shifting by the month, but 14th and T represents something else: that split-second before the curtain drops on one era and rises on another.

This corner has turned before. The young Duke Ellington used to carry his sheet music here in 1917 as he rounded for home at 1816 13th St. In the 1940s, the Sunny South Market was a corner grocer that catered to the working-class and Howard University faculty members who lived nearby. On the other corner stood Club Bali, where Billie Holliday played, and all along the side streets, tea lights were strung in backyard gardens in makeshift after-hours clubs.

History turned again on a balmy night in April 1968 when the radio at Peoples Drug Store on 14th and U announced that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. It was a block south, near 14th and T, that some of the first store windows were smashed, unleashing days of rioting that left 95 businesses destroyed in black Washington's commercial Mecca.

One Urban Panorama Fades, Another Rises
After the riots, 14th and T was a boarded-up marketplace for heroin and numbers. The beautiful Bali club operated as Jack's Lounge until 1976, when the owner was slain in his back office. Heroin gave way to crack cocaine. Prostitutes worked out of the second floor of the liquor store building. It was hard to imagine that Sarah Vaughan had once sung "A Night in Tunisia" here. Garrison called it "Sodom and Gomorrah" when she bought the building on the southwest corner in 1974 and made it her church. Arena Stage bought the Bali building in 1985 to use for its Living Stage theater company.

In the late 1980s, urban pioneers began snapping up nearby houses at rock-bottom prices, and multigenerational black families were suddenly neighbors with white gay men and other bargain hunters, a demographic trend that only gathered in strength. In a 10-year period, housing costs doubled, then tripled.


Fourteenth and T remained essentially untouched until 2003, when Cafe Saint-Ex arrived, bringing Dutch lager to a crossroads that was home to the 40-ounce. Replacing an Ethiopian restaurant and Laval's Good Food To Go, Saint-Ex was a cause for celebration for some, an elegy for others. "It was like Saint-Ex was putting its flag down on the moon," says Rachael Storey, a documentary filmmaker who lives nearby and misses Laval's.

Now, the conversion from rough-and-tumble intersection to a smooth-blend urban utopia is in full gear. On a recent afternoon, in the swirl of a single moment:

"MAYOR WILLIAMS IS A SELL-OUT," someone has written in pink chalk on the sidewalk on 14th, a frequent refrain of those who accuse the mayor of giving away the city to real estate developers. Brownie and Daisy troops are holding camp at Church of the Rapture while they still can. The rhythms of Latin cumbias bounce down the alley from a mechanic's garage, and a car with fender-rattling hip-hop pulls up to the curb outside Paradise Liquor. The packed No. 52 bus door opens, and the driver shouts for his passengers to get back and make way for new ones.

Crossing at the light is a ragtag youth baseball team wearing T-shirts that say "The Art of Hustle." Dropping mitts and blowing bubbles as they pass the sleek new furniture boutique with a $4,000 couch in the window, they are herded home by their coach, 19-year-old Jeremy Drummond. "Y'all keep acting like this, and y'all can just write off McDonald's," he shouts.

Drummond, a sophomore at Temple University in Philadelphia, has lived in the neighborhood most of his life. "It seems every time I come home from school, there's a new high-rise going up. A lot of families have moved away."

Burning in the sky above is the Church of the Rapture sign, illustrated with a cross and the flames of hell, shouting: "NOW! IT IS TIME TO COME TO CHURCH AND TO GOD."

Blinking back at the church is the liquor store sign that says, "Welcome to Paradise."

* * *

At Church of the Rapture one Sunday morning, the blinds are partially closed against 14th Street below. Rows of good church shoes sink into the seafoam green carpet. On the pulpit there are three ornately carved chairs, but they are rarely used. The pastors sit down with the people, which is why members love this church. Many describe themselves as "country people" though they live in places such as Forrestville and drive Ford Explorers. What they mean is that Church of the Rapture is the roots of who they are.

Services last five hours. The drummer keeps a gallon jug of water at his feet, pounding out a military beat unique to Church of the Rapture. The music ranges from old-timey gospel to Christian contemporary to a free-form frenzy. The service thrives on the unexpected.

On this morning, Brother Irving is called to testify. He is wearing a royal blue suit. He is deep in prayer, and then the spirit takes over and he hops across the carpet on his invisible pogo stick. Four men surround him, a circle of safety to make sure he doesn't hurt himself. The organ pounds and someone grabs a tambourine. Chairs empty and a swirl of human passion erupts: heads thrown back, tears streaming, people shaking and clenching their fists. Mr. Robinson, the quiet doorman, shouts "Hallelujah" in a high, broken voice, and Minister Darryl comes over and tenderly wipes his face with a handkerchief. Two D.C. paramedics arrive and take a woman out on a stretcher. Children doze peacefully.

Brother Irving returns to the front, his white cuffs peeking from his blue suit as he raises his hands, flattening his palms in the air as if against some imaginary window pane. "Deliverance is in the building," he announces.

Garrison is out sick, so her husband, Lawrence, does the preaching. Even when she misses church, she keeps an Oz-like presence over the congregation, issuing decrees through her co-pastors. One day she sends word that all women should wear stockings to church. This morning, her husband merely mentions her name and the congregation applauds.

Garrison grew up in the District's Clay Terrace public housing, where as a teenager she preached at tent revivals and in church basements. In 1967, she started the Free Evangelistic Church on the corner of Eighth and G streets SE near the Marine barracks, one of the first female preachers in the city. Her style was raspy and ferocious, and her big wide eyes intensified the experience. In 1974, Garrison shocked her congregation when she announced that they were moving across town to 14th and T. "People said, 'Fourteenth and T, are you crazy?'" Althea Jackson remembers. "You just didn't come up here, especially at night." But Garrison convinced her congregation that they were missionaries and there were souls to save. The church paid $220,000 for the old Adams-Burch restaurant supply company building.

From 14th and T, Garrison began broadcasting the Freedom Revival Hour on WYBC-AM. Men sat on one side and women on the other, with Garrison up front, her straightened hair flipped low over her forehead, her sermons full of pragmatic prayers for the federal city. "God, I want to be a GS-14," she preached during one of her broadcasts. In those days, some members lived close enough to walk to church or take the bus. Others were joining the exodus to the Maryland suburbs.

In 2000, as the real estate market surged, Garrison considered selling the church but decided instead to stay and renovate. Problems followed with contractors and a pastor who took money. The church struggled with debt. Parking grew worse as boutiques opened on 14th. During Thursday-night prayer services, the Black Cat nightclub across 14th was rocking just as hard as the church. Garrison's preaching against homosexuality was no longer theoretical; the neighborhood had become one of the gayest in the city. Garrison put the church on the market and sold last spring.

As the search for a new property begins, the congregation is spared details, but tantalizing hints are dropped during services. "I see where we've been, and I seen where we are going," says Charlton Woodyard, who is involved in the sale of the church and the search for a new location. "When you see where we are going, whoo-whee, this is a new day!"

The churchgoers are frozen in a humble, working-class mindset. At collection time, the organ plays softly as Pastor Penny takes the microphone and urges, "Give what you can, saints, and if you can't give, just touch the basket."

When church is over at 2 or 3 on a Sunday afternoon, they pour out onto the 14th Street sidewalk, holding keys and Bibles, in no hurry to go. Most of the license plates are from Maryland. For many, Church of the Rapture is their last tie to the city. "It's going to be unbelievable when we ride through here," says Theresa Reliford. "'Oh, there was our church, and look at it now.'"

Some of the children run up to the KFC on the corner. A man in a three-piece suit with slicked-down hair walks past the Sunday brunchers at Cafe Saint-Ex eating organic eggs and polenta and then past a male couple walking arm in arm.

Woodyard is not sentimental about leaving. "D.C. had a lot of black churches back in the day," he says. "It's not that way anymore. It's a business now. This is an occupied territory."

Friday afternoon at Paradise is like the old days. The bell on the door jingles madly and customers are lined up at the check-cashing window. A woman with "Daddy's Girl" tattooed across the back of her neck wants two Red Bulls and a pack of Capris. At the far end of the counter, a woman in a pressed nurse's uniform purchases two money orders and two postage stamps.

Alfredo from the used car lot across 14th comes in wearing his mirrored sunglasses, leaning down toward the opening in the bulletproof glass, flashing three fingers and whispering in his Spanish accent, "I got a Honda Accord, man, just for you."

Inside Paradise, the linoleum floor is peeling up in hunks. Kids throw their bikes in the doorway when they come in to buy cold drinks after school. Trembling hands peel off a few bills to pay for a fifth of gin.

This is David Lee's turf. For eight years, he has been crammed behind the bulletproof glass with Prince Albert's Cherry Vanilla, Slim Jims, aspirin, phone cards, Ensure, Snickers bars, Philly Blunts, batteries, peach snuff and studded condoms. Lee was born in Korea but grew up in his parents' corner store in a low-income black neighborhood in Chicago, which explains his Asian homeboy dialect. He wears his hat cocked and his Nikes beaming white. He lives in an apartment in Annandale with his wife and a new baby, but Paradise is home. Lee describes the early years as "a pay-per-view special." Back then, he would leave the window to fight when someone challenged him. Now he is 41 with a bum leg, and the world beyond the bulletproof glass has become unrecognizable. Not long ago, he observed several dogs being led around by one person. Someone explained the concept of dog walkers to him. "Like a human babysitter," he says, bewildered. "That's when I know this neighborhood is really going down the hill."

Paradise received its formal death sentence last year when a new landlord bought the rundown building for $900,000, raising the monthly rent from $2,460 to $8,000, an impossible increase for Byung In Min, the owner of Paradise. His 10-year lease expires this fall.

The beginning of the end really started two years ago when the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission and others who live nearby -- sick of public urination, drunks sleeping in the grass and empty half-pint bottles glittering in the gutters -- presented Paradise with a 22-point voluntary agreement. Lee couldn't believe the clout of the neighborhood group. Basically, Paradise had to give up its ghetto ways or lose its liquor license.

The three-page agreement put it this way: "Licensee agrees to attempt to better serve the needs of the neighborhood residents by selling upgraded, quality products including but not limited to corked wines, juice mixers and other food products, etc."

The list of demands called for Paradise to stop selling single beers, single cigarettes, rolling papers and to-go cups. No more cheap black shopping bags. One of the neighbors brought Lee a bag from a Dupont Circle wine store as an example.

Lee says the loss of single-beer sales -- the 40-ounce in particular -- severely cut into profits. Longtime customers accused Lee of turning his back on them. "They tell me, 'Oh, you trying to be with them high-class white people now,' " he says. To entice the upscale market, Lee started ordering imported beers he had never heard of, $12 bottles of wines with corks, and single-malt Scotches such as Dalwhinnie for $39.99. He brought in Tia Maria coffee liqueur gift sets.

But higher-end customers failed to materialize in large enough numbers. Residents such as Louis Patierno, a mortgage broker who lives a block away, patronize stores that have adapted to the new flavor of the neighborhood, such as the Whitelaw Market on 13th and T, which started stocking Ben & Jerry's ice cream and better wine and listened to Patierno's request for "more table crackers, less pork rinds, please."

Lee refuses to take down his bulletproof glass, another request the beautification people wanted. Still too dangerous. So for nine hours a day, he works the area of a gangplank with two helpers. At the far window, Sang Choi runs the lottery machine. Customers are convinced that the bespectacled Choi is gifted with numbers. "No, I want him to do it," a customer insists, pointing to Choi. And there is Nega Mengisto, an Eritrean employee whose halting grasp of English includes phrases such as "Hennessy Privilege."

Business is so slow in the afternoons that they sometime just stare at one another. The priestly Choi paces the gangplank with his hands folded behind him. Lee chain-smokes. Mengisto, wearing the Hypnotiq T-shirt a liquor salesman gave him, stocks the cooler with pints of Christian Brothers for the after-work rush.

With time running out on 14th and T, the owner of Paradise spends his days searching the District and Maryland for a new location, somewhere deeper into the urban neighborhood not yet touched by gentrification. "Me and black people, we kick it off better," Lee says. "'Thank you, baby,' this and that. Whites, I don't know how to approach these people or serve these people. I get this feeling I'm doing something wrong. Maybe it's my own self-conscious. I say, 'hello' or 'thank you.' There is no expression on their face."

One day a young man comes in and says, "We're making mojitos."

When Mike Benson opened Cafe Saint-Ex two years ago, he loved the idea of starting a bar around the corner from where Duke Ellington lived. Benson envisioned a place where musicians, artists, bartenders, punks, lawyers and bicycle messengers could hang out on a corner as they do on St. Marks Place in the New York's East Village. The dream came true, for about five minutes. Now the changes that Benson helped ignite on 14th and T are obliterating his original vision. He watches a parade of cabs pull up to his bar and drop off customers in spaghetti-strap dresses. Real estate listings use the bar as bait ("Within walking distance of Cafe Saint-Ex.") for the new lofts and condos going up all around.

Saint-Ex is being visited by a khaki aesthetic. "The bridge and tunnel crowd," as one waitress calls them. The people from Reston.

But guess what, says John Snellgrove, the general manager, who one Saturday night is checking ID's at the door. They aren't coming from Reston. "They all live here now."

To combat the influx of suburbia, Saint-Ex discontinued its trendy Pabst Blue Ribbon nights. Benson wants the deejays downstairs to keep playing his favorite Manchester Brit pop instead of the crowd-packing hip-hop. The art school graduate is 6-foot-3 and wears combat boots and a modified Mohawk. At 39, he looks like a Sex Pistol by way of Chapel Hill. His employees lean toward tattoos, motorcycle chains and arty black glasses, and on their breaks, they read books entitled "21st Century Modernism: The 'New' Poetics."

When Benson and his wife, a lawyer, moved to the neighborhood in 1997, he saw that culinary choices below U Street were limited to $7 Salvadoran or soul food dinners and African restaurants with gambling and khat-chewing on the down-low. No one had yet served up the bowl of garlicky mussels and frites that the newcomers were craving. Hip retailers had already opened south on 14th, Home Rule being the first in 1999. On the southeast corner of 14th and T was the red-brick glory of the former Sunny South Market from the 1940s. Benson became interested in the space in 2002 when it was occupied by an Ethiopian restaurant. He approached the owner about buying his lease. So perilous were the racial sensitivities about white interlopers taking property that Lawrence Guyot, a community activist, went to see the restaurant owner. "I wanted to make sure the black man was not forced out," Guyot recalls. "I got that in writing. He was not forced out."

Using his house as collateral, Benson borrowed $200,000 and strung together a group of investors, including a handful of bartenders, some pitching in as little as $5,000. They dug out the basement and worked around the clock, going seriously over budget renovating the building. Benson wanted his place to look like one of the old cavern bars along the Seine River in Paris and would name it after the French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery. On opening night, their assets drained, one investor ran across the street to Paradise Liquor to buy four bottles of Stoli and four bottles of Absolut, maxing out the last available dollars on his credit card. Opening night was a smash.

Now one of the developers for the Church of the Rapture loft project has approached Benson about opening a bar in the ground floor of the condo.

Benson shrugs. "I'd rather that be the case than another Starbucks."

One night at Saint-Ex, someone leaves a flier on a table that says "Save Our Black Neighborhoods." The flier calls Ward 1 council member Jim Graham "Gramzilla, the black business killa" and says Graham is trying to "destroy our beloved Black neighborhoods and families."

The next afternoon, the flier sits on the bar in front of bartender Demetrios Tsiptsis. "Cities cannot be ghettos anymore," Tsiptsis says. "It's not feasible. I always tell people, 10 years ago this was a ghetto. Years before that, it was a thriving black community. Years before that it was occupied by whites, and before that, Indians."

"Gimme two Stella Artois," a guy says, pulling out a platinum United Airlines credit card. Liz Phair's "Whip-Smart" is playing on the iPod mix. A large chalkboard displays the handwritten names of epicurean beers: Tilburg Dutch Brown, Coniston Bluebird Bitter.

The flier just sits there, unnoticed among the clink of glasses inside Saint-Ex.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

[NovaWolverine]

Housing Surge and Resurgence
New Homeowners Changing Southeast Neighborhoods

By Robert E. Pierre and Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 7, 2005; Page A01

The 65 new brick townhouses of a development called the Townes at Hillsdale sit high on a hill and offer their residents expansive views of Washington's monuments and the river beyond. The manicured lawns and cul-de-sacs would not be out of place in Montgomery or Fairfax counties.

But this development is in the District -- not in Northwest, but east of the Anacostia River, in a vast expanse stretching from south of the 11th Street Bridge to Bolling Air Force Base that has been known mostly for its negative attributes: crime, poor schools and unemployment.

In recent years, however, a steady stream of couples and thirtysomethings has left the Maryland and Virginia suburbs to settle in homes like these, which were built on the site of a 1960s-era apartment complex where drug dealers once ruled and stray bullets regularly disturbed the peace.

Since 2000, more new housing developments, totaling nearly 8,000 units, have been built in the area -- which includes the neighborhoods of Anacostia, Barry Farms, Congress Heights and Shipley Terrace -- than anywhere else in the District except near downtown.

Most of the new homes are designed for families with low or moderate incomes and are financed in part by the D.C. government at a time when housing in many neighborhoods in the region is too expensive for all but the most affluent. An increasing number, like the Townes at Hillsdale, are privately developed and charge market prices that, by the standards of other parts of the city, are a bargain.

It is a remarkable turnaround for an area that lost thousands of residents in the 1990s, and there are other signs of a resurgence. The first new supermarket in recent memory this far south in the District is slated to open at Alabama Avenue and Stanton Road SE, raising hopes that dining options will soon expand beyond franchise fried chicken and Chinese takeout.

While other D.C. neighborhoods have experienced a similar boom in residential construction in the past decade, here there is one major difference: The racial composition, more than 90 percent black, has stayed the same in these communities that make up what is now Ward 8. The middle-class newcomers are primarily African American, with a smattering of whites, Hispanics and Asian Americans.

Maliik Turner, 31, a manager at a high-tech firm that does government contracting, is typical. Turner rented an apartment in Columbia Heights in Northwest Washington for seven years but knew he could not afford the rising prices of houses in that neighborhood. He wanted a short commute to his job near the Pentagon, so two years ago he and his 30-year-old wife, who works as a dental hygienist in Bethesda, paid $199,000 for a brick townhouse in the Townes of Hillsdale on Howard Road SE, just off Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.

"This is the last area in the city that had affordable housing," said Turner, as he washed his silver sport-utility vehicle on a recent Sunday afternoon. He said he is undeterred by the continuing poor performance of the District's public schools. He said he and his wife will probably put their daughter, who is 2, in a private school.

Homes in the development sell for the upper $200,000s -- a moderate price in the current market but a fortune to many in a ward where the median household income is $26,000.

That leaves some housing advocates and potential home buyers worried that the working-class families who have traditionally lived in the area are seeing their options dwindle, even with the influx of what the D.C. government calls "affordable" housing.

On Howard Road, where the Hillsdale development was built across the street from 60-year-old brick rowhouses occupied in many cases by the original owners or their children, the issue of class and income is perfectly framed. The only shopping on the street is a gated strip mall with a corner convenience store that sells everything from behind bulletproof glass. The middle-class homeowners of Howard Road worry about keeping their yards neat and their property values rising, but they are surrounded by thousands of renters who are barely making it.

The disparity fuels anxiety.

"Who can afford it?" asked Delva Dandridge, a crossing guard for the public elementary school next to the Townes of Hillsdale. Dandridge said she earns less than $20,000 a year and lives in Southeast.

D.C. officials insist their plans for more affordable housing and development can improve neighborhoods like Ward 8 without displacing residents.

"We don't want to create areas of the haves and have nots," Stanley Jackson, the District's deputy mayor for planning and economic development, told a recent meeting of Democrats in Ward 8, where he is a longtime resident. "Our goal is not to have people feel like they have to leave D.C. Our residents don't have to feel threatened with the newcomers and change."

Change is clearly what the D.C. government has in mind. No other part of the District has so much land ripe for development -- from riverfront property along the Anacostia to the former National Guard encampment of Camp Simms to more than 300 acres at St. Elizabeths Hospital -- and such ambitious ideas for what to do with it.

There are plans for new retail and commercial developments at St. Elizabeths, the Anacostia Metro, and the waterfront in both Southeast and Southwest. Among the proposals is a light rail system connecting Anacostia to downtown and a possible soccer stadium at Poplar Point on the banks of the river.

The Anacostia River has long been a symbolic dividing line in Washington, with residents on the eastern shore feeling that residents in Georgetown and Adams Morgan and Capitol Hill got the better of everything because D.C. leaders cared more about the whites who lived there.

The term "east of the river" seems to imply one homogenous place. But it includes two separate wards -- 7 and 8 -- that are home to about 130,000 people.

Many of them live in neighborhoods that have struggled with grinding poverty and crime since the late 1960s, when thousands of poor families were relocated to public housing there from other parts of the District, sending many black and white middle-class families fleeing to the suburbs. But the region is also home to stable, upper-middle-class communities like Penn Branch and Hillcrest, with houses as grand as any in the city.

The most recognizable community in Ward 8, and east of the river, is Anacostia. Its boundaries are amorphous, depending on who is asked, but generally extend from the intersection of Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, with Alabama Avenue to the east and Suitland Parkway to the south.

The area's largest developer, Chris Smith, who has some 3,600 housing units east of the river, saw promise in some of the District's poorest areas as far back as 1990, when he decided to focus on building and renovating there. "It was seen as all that was wrong with the city," he said during a recent tour of the area. "We thought we could change the image."

The company's first project for sale, the Townhomes at Oxon Creek at Mississippi Avenue and 19th Street SE, sold out quickly in the mid-1990s. It attracted black residents who had moved out years earlier to Prince George's County in search of a calmer suburban life but also a large number of longtime residents of the ward who had always rented.

Smith now plans to turn the former Camp Simms into a multimillion-dollar project of 75 single-family houses that are expected to start in the mid-$300,000 range. A new Giant grocery store on the site is expected to open in 2007. Residents are pushing, in addition, to attract sit-down restaurants like Applebee's or Outback Steakhouse -- a part of the mix that will be needed to attract and keep residents moving from areas with better amenities.

He cautioned that the going has been slow and probably will not get any easier. "Logan Circle took 25 years to take off," Smith said.

For the past year, Darrin Davis, a real estate agent for Prudential Carruthers Realtors, has led occasional weekend tours of homes for sale in Anacostia. Davis said one of his real estate colleagues jokingly asked him if he was going to have a police escort for a recent Sunday afternoon tour. "I said, 'You haven't been here in a long time,'" Davis said.

Overall crime in the area covered by the 7th police district is down 57 percent since 1993. Homicides have dropped by a similar amount, to 54 last year from 133 in 1993.

On a recent Sunday, Davis had 18 pages of homes for sale east of the river and four African American women showed up for his two-hour walking tour. Two women were college graduates in their 20s, each looking to buy her first home; another potential buyer was a fortysomething lawyer for NASA who had just moved to the area from Atlanta; the fourth was a computer consultant who was looking for an investment property for her and her lawyer husband.

The first stop on the house tour: a shotgun rowhouse, built in 1905, in historic Anacostia at 13th and W streets SE. Price: $274,900. A few years ago the same houses would have been roughly $125,000.

Tiffany Armstrong, 28, who rents an apartment in Laurel, got the message.

When the tour got to Hunter Place Condominiums, a few blocks off Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, she didn't hesitate to sign a $250,000 contract for a three-bedroom unit. Armstrong got one of the last remaining luxury condos. The renovated units, in what was an abandoned apartment building eight months earlier, sold out in two weeks.

James Bunn, who owns a strip of buildings on the avenue about a mile from the Hunter Place complex, sees opportunities in the newcomers. His tenants include a hodgepodge of shopkeepers, including a sprinkler company upstairs and a barber shop and hip-hop clothing store on the first floor.

"I've seen this neighborhood go from good to bad to terrible, and now it's rebounding," Bunn said. "You're not going to have to worry about kids writing on walls and people throwing trash anymore. It's going to get more like Georgetown over here."

Still, there are no shortage of examples of how far Ward 8 has to go.

Take Bryan Place in historic Anacostia, where Mauricio Ticas, a 36-year-old pharmacist technician and his partner, Tommy Beckner, spent much of the summer cleaning up beer bottles, candy bar wrappers, trash and rusted car parts that littered the alley next to their $175,000 rowhouse. Behind their house sits a boarded-up apartment complex.

Ticas, a native of El Salvador, kept his Dupont Circle place but moved in this summer with Beckner, a 24-year-old mortgage loan officer from Northern Virginia, to Southeast Washington. The couple is adjusting to their new community. "Being a snob from Northwest, I'm not used to being pulled over for roadblocks," said Ticas, who said he has had to stop on his way home at checkpoints set up by police.

But, he added, he has rebuffed efforts by neighbors to get him to report people acting suspiciously in alleys. "We didn't move to this area to call the cops on people," he said.

Hannah Hawkins, a community activist who has lived on Howard Road for more than two decades, is concerned about whether her new neighbors will become involved. "You can't come into our community and be silent," Hawkins said. "You have to make a difference."

Maliik Turner, the high-tech specialist, has his own concerns. About five months after he had moved with his family into their new house, gunshots were fired through the front door and windows. No one was home and no one got hurt, but he admitted, "I was wondering, 'Did I make a mistake?'"

Still, he is bullish on the neighborhood. "You can tell it's changing and getting safer," Turner said. "The bad element is moving out. They can't sustain a lifestyle over here."

[90 degrees]

Is the purple line for the metro moving along at all?

[NovaWolverine]

Stadium's Modern Design Is Clear Winner on Council

By David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A01

A much-anticipated design for a new home for the Washington Nationals features glass, stone and steel as the primary materials and departs sharply from the popular red-brick throwback ballparks.

The design will not be released for several weeks and still could be modified, but Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) and key city officials have given the nod to the modern look.

In briefings over the past week, the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission presented a projector show to Williams and several D.C. Council members containing drawings developed by the stadium's architectural team, led by Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum Sport of Kansas City, Mo.

The stadium, which will be along the Anacostia River in near Southeast, features an exterior wall largely made of glass and broken up by limestone portals, according to city sources who have seen the drawings. Aspects of the design create a translucent quality, offering fans inside views of the surrounding neighborhood and teasing those outside with glimpses of game activities.

People who have seen the working version say the ballpark will open to the northeast and afford views of the Capitol -- but only from a limited number of upper-deck seats and the press box.

It provides 78 luxury boxes in two stacked rows and 3,000 club seats between first base and third base, affording high-paying patrons prime views. Some of the club seats and a restaurant would be in the lower deck behind home plate.

Beyond the outfield, architects have placed another restaurant and a public walkway, designed to be open to the public even on days when there are no games.

Two cantilevered ramps leading to the upper decks contain viewing platforms from which fans can pause to take in sweeping scenes of the city -- the federal monuments to the north and the Anacostia River to the south.

Outside the stadium, a slender, angled building for offices, probably for the team, juts from the stadium from behind the home plate stands. Two large aboveground parking garages are situated to the north of the stadium.

As for the playing field, the deepest part of center field is 408 feet, the sources said.

The city plans to build the 41,000-seat stadium and related infrastructure on several city blocks near South Capitol Street SE and the Navy Yard at a cost of $535 million, most of it public money.

In separate briefings, Williams, D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D) and council member Sharon Ambrose (D-Ward 6) told commission officials that they are comfortable with the designs, the sources said.


Stadium's Modern Design Is Clear Winner on Council
"I thought it was nice," Cropp said yesterday. "It's different and unique. It's very modern."

Sports commission Chief Executive Allen Y. Lew has declined to release the drawings, but officials said the designs could be made public within a few weeks.

Williams "liked it," mayoral spokesman Vince Morris said. "He thought it was very unique, really distinctive. . . . We're getting to a point where he feels like he's seeing designs he's comfortable with. When he feels ready to go, we'll release it."

The only holdout among city leaders who have seen the stadium designs was council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who has long pushed for a red-brick ballpark. Evans demanded that the commission present him with an alternative design in time for a public hearing on baseball matters before the council Nov. 28, sources with knowledge of the meetings said.

"Jack was like, 'No, no, no!' " said one city source involved in the discussions. "He thinks it looks like an office building."

Morris stressed that no final decisions have been made.

"Until we have a final design, then most things are still on the table," he said. "That's why the mayor reached out to Sharon and Jack and Linda. He wanted to share with them what he knows."

Cropp has told Evans that the final decision on the stadium will be up to the mayor, as the council does not get involved in voting on the design of public buildings.

Nevertheless, Evans has argued that a largely brick stadium could be cheaper than the current designs and has asked for a cost analysis, the city sources said.

Sports commission officials have been concerned about the stadium's budget, saying that costs have risen since initial budgets were prepared more than a year ago, in part because of the soaring cost of materials. This week, city officials negotiating a lease agreement for the stadium with baseball officials asked the league to contribute $20 million for underground parking, saying the budget could not cover that.

[NovaWolverine]

By Paul Schwartzman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 30, 2005; Page B01

Trees would be planted, hiking trails rerouted and traffic allowed to continue rolling along one of Rock Creek Park's busiest weekday stretches under a broad proposal introduced yesterday by the National Park Service.

The plan for Rock Creek Park includes recommendations that are likely to win wide support, including the renovation of the Nature Center and Planetarium and removing stream blockages to ensure that herring and shad can migrate north to a Maryland lake to spawn.

But one proposal that prompted immediate criticism would keep open to weekday traffic a two-mile stretch of Beach Drive, between Joyce and Broad Branch roads, that is popular among bicyclists, skaters and pedestrians. That section would continue to close on weekends.

Adrienne A. Coleman, Rock Creek's superintendent, said the Park Service had determined that most of the general public, as well as a host of civic and elected officials, favored keeping the road open during the week.

However, the Park Service proposes that the speed limit along that stretch of Beach Drive be reduced from 25 to 20 mph and that traffic bumps be added to make drivers slow down. "The point is designing a plan that takes in consideration all the different interests," Coleman said after presenting the plan at a news conference at the Nature Center.

Peter Harnik, a founder of the Peoples Alliance for Rock Creek Park and who attended the news conference, said he did not believe that the measures would improve safety along a stretch that draws 18,000 vehicles daily during rush hour. "We wanted to hear that the National Park Service would treat this as more of a parkland than as a commuter thoroughfare," Harnik said.

D.C. Council member Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4), whose ward includes neighborhoods adjoining the park, countered that surrounding areas would be inundated with traffic if the park was closed to motorists. "This is a win-win," he said. "The overwhelming majority thought it should stay open."

The federal plan is the first to present a long-term vision for the 115-year-old federal park, a preserve of woods and creeks, winding roadways and trails that comprises more than 3,000 acres and stretches from the District's midsection to the Maryland border. The proposal, part of a federal effort to draft management plans for national parks across the country, is the culmination of nine years of air and water quality studies, traffic analyses and a review of more than 6,000 comments submitted by the public.

The plan, Coleman said, would cost at least $14.8 million, and that figure is largely for renovations to existing buildings, such as the Peirce Mill complex and the Peirce-Klingle Mansion. She said the Park Service has not initiated cost analyses for completing other recommendations.

Reducing the speed limit along Beach Drive could happen shortly after Feb. 15, the deadline for the public to submit reaction to the plan. But most aspects of the proposal, Coleman said, could take years to accomplish and would occur as funding became available.

"All of it will eventually happen," she said, referring to the proposals. "The way this seems to go, even though we may not get the funding in the year we ask for it, eventually we do get it."

The plan recommends that the Lodge House, now a U.S. Park Police substation on Beach Drive, be converted to a visitor center. The police would move to an office outside the park or to a new substation that would be built inside it.

Parts of the plan are general, such as the recommendation to restore un-vegetated areas so that trees can be planted. It also suggests that hiking, biking and horse trails be relocated from steeply sloping areas to prevent erosion.

Coleman said she was unable to cite specific trails at this time.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said the plan is necessary to preserve "one of the great neglected wonders of our country."

"We have trivialized this park, residents make too little use of it, and tourists don't know where it is," Norton said. "Neither the city or the federal government has bothered to make maximum use of it. The problem is that it had no plan and it's in a state of great deterioration."

[pepperjack]

it doesn't matter what the stadium will look like, if it never gets built.

[NovaWolverine]

It'll get built, it has to or they'll move. But we have 'til the '08 season to have it built. They will for sure get it built. They already have proposed plans and pretty much have property.

[pepperjack]

But they only have until the end of the December to get the lease deal done. Plus there is the possiblity of a new mayor backing out of the deal (looking towards Sharon Cropp...)