Washington
Post, Commercial Real Estate: The District
Building Blocks In Anacostia's Bleak Corners, Investors Envision Vibrancy by Dana Hedgpeth, Washington Post Staff Writerr
The 1100 block of Good Hope Road, in the heart of
Anacostia, is a scarred piece of land.
A broken clock hangs above the entrance of a boarded-up
liquor store. Weeds and graffiti have overtaken the
dilapidated row houses next door. Around the corner,
barbed wire and a chain-link fence protect a hodgepodge
of vehicles at a small construction company.
But this rundown tract is also being watched as one measure of whether a hoped-for revival of Anacostia is finally taking root -- something D.C. officials insist will follow from the proposed new baseball stadium in Southeast, development of the Anacostia River waterfront, and construction of a new building for the D.C. Transportation Department.
Already, developer Douglas Jemal has staked his claim, buying a half-acre tract at the corner of U Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE. In the shadow of what will be the new offices of the transportation department, he plans to assemble the equivalent of a city block, raze what's there, and put in a residential and retail development that could feature an upscale microbrewery or restaurant at the bottom, and condominiums above.
"Can you imagine if this whole corner was redone and you had a District Chophouse or Rock Bottom brewery here?" Jemal asked one recent afternoon as he stood in brown cowboy boots on the grassy lot, amid broken glass and beer bottles. "You have traffic here. You have residents here. People just need some place to come."
The idea is raising both eyebrows and expectations, revealing some of the tensions likely to arise if private investors take an earnest interest in the neighborhood. A few property owners say they are going to demand a healthy price before selling to developers like Jemal -- or may even try to demand a share of the development profits. The District's historic preservation board is already pinpointing abandoned row houses it wants saved. Some community leaders, meanwhile, are worried that new money will inevitably displace longtime residents.
Anacostia is well-known for its historic downtown, which starts at the corner of Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and runs along a few side streets. The area, called Uniontown in the 1800s, originally housed the all-white workforce from the nearby Navy Yard, across the Anacostia River. The descendants of slaves and freed blacks lived in the nearby Barry Farms section of the neighborhood. In the 1880s, blacks began moving into Uniontown; the home of abolitionist Frederick Douglass is now a major tourist attraction in the area.
In the early 1900s, the main commercial strip was a hub of barber shops, small drug, grocery and hardware stores, and family-owned furniture shops. During the 1950s and 1960s, as suburbs around the District began to develop, white residents left and more blacks moved in. Many of the small shops began to close or followed their customers to the suburbs.
Over the next 30 years, the neighborhood fell from its middle-class perch. Commercial streets became a hodgepodge of check-cashing outlets, liquor stores, and abandoned buildings. Interstate 295 barreled through in the 1960s, giving the area a sense of being little more than a shortcut from the suburbs to downtown. Residents complain about a dearth of proper restaurants amid a relative sea of carryouts that pass food to customers through bullet-proof glass. The area remains troubled by crime, with one-fourth of the city's murders, according to police statistics for the 7th District. But in the last few years, there have been some encouraging trends.
Home values are rising as younger professionals move into the neighborhood and bid up prices. A three-bedroom house at U and 13th Streets SE, for example, was $50,000 in 1987 and sold last year for $240,000, according to Patricia Makin, a real estate agent with Remax.
The average yearly household income in the 20020 zip code -- the heart of Anacostia -- rose to $42,684 last year from $38,343 in 2000, and is above the District's median of $40,000, according to statistics compiled by the D.C. Marketing Center.
More important is what lies ahead. D.C. officials say they intend
to start construction of the new transportation building, at the 1200
block of Good Hope Road, within the next two years. The quasi-public
Anacostia Economic Development Corp. is slated to begin work this summer
on an $18 million office building slated for the same block. Together,
the two buildings are expected to create the sort of critical mass
of daytime traffic and pedestrians needed to support private retail
development.
D.C. officials say they expect an estimated $200 million worth of
public and private investment to be made in Anacostia over the next
five to ten years to renovate storefronts along Martin Luther King
Jr. venue, improve a library and put a light rail system into the area.
Metro is trying to interest developers in a grassy lot next to its
Anacostia station. A Giant grocery store -- one of the few major grocery
chains that operate east of the Anacostia River -- is expected to join
a retail project in Congress Heights. .
The District's Anacostia Waterfront Initiative calls for a multimillion-dollar
redevelopment of the shores of the river into parks, housing and retail;
there is also a new study that is expected to look at moving the headquarters
of the U.S. Coast Guard onto the sprawling grounds of St. Elizabeths
Hospital on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
"There hasn't been enough daytime consumer traffic to get retailers
to come," said Albert R. "Butch" Hopkins Jr., president
and chief executive of the Anacostia Economic Development Corp.
David Nikolow, who has owned a liquor store at the corner of 16th
and Good Hope Road SE for 14 years, said he sees the neighborhood changing
already through the shift in what customers want.
"Before I used to sell very little wine, and now I sell good
wines from California, Chilean and Australian wines," he said. "In
the last two years, I've seen the customers changing from mostly poor
to more middle class. We're not the ghetto here like people think.
We drink coffee and we want those same kind of amenities as other neighborhoods."
Louis S. Rizzo, president of Curtis Property Management Corp., the
largest landowner in Anacostia, said he is waiting to see the District's
transportation building finished before he pursues plans to build shops,
restaurants and condos on a parking lot he owns a few blocks away on
Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE.
"We've already got about 1,000 people a day coming in and out
of our buildings," said Rizzo, whose company owns a medical office
building and leases space to the D.C. Lottery Board. "But to get
a retail market, we need more people. . . . Having some office buildings
will do that."
The talk of redevelopment in Anacostia and the fact that there were
no other major developers active in the neighborhood attracted Jemal,
who holds a portfolio of 7 million square feet of office and retail
space in the region. He is best known in the development industry for
revitalizing the 800 block of F Street NW and renovating the old Woodward & Lothrop
building at 10th and F Streets NW.
In 2003, Jemal paid $575,000 for an empty lot and a warehouse at the
corner of U Street and Martin Luther Jr. King, and laid plans to assemble
several adjoining parcels.
"I saw despair in the area and nothing going on. . . . That spells
opportunity to me," Jemal said. "When I started buying along
Seventh Street, it looked like this. . . . There was nothing for people
to come to. Here, it's kind of the same. I can do something with this."
Jemal's arrival in the neighborhood stoked the hopes of longtime residents
and small-business owners such as Tony Cole.
"He's the answer to this place right here," said Cole, one
recent afternoon as Jemal stood on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in
front of some abandoned buildings. Cole and his mother own Cole's Cafe,
a popular restaurant and a fixture of Anacostia social life.
"Whattya doing in my neighborhood?" Jemal asked as he shook
hands and gave Cole a bear hug.
"This is my neighborhood," Cole laughed. "You put the
spirit in it."
Jemal's plans won't proceed without challenges.
Alberto Gomez, a native of Colombia who runs a small construction
business in the 1100 block of Good Hope Road, said he is reluctant
to sell. He said he bought the rowhouse he uses for his office and
the parking lot next to it -- about 14,000 square feet -- for less
than $250,000 in 1990.
"I don't know if he's getting mine," Gomez said, just after
he saw Jemal pass on the street under his second-story window. "I
don't want to get displaced."
Nikolow, who, along with the liquor store, owns a closed auto radiator
shop next to Gomez's business, said he is more than ready to cash in.
"If he offered enough money, I'd consider it," Nikolow said.
D.C. preservationists, meanwhile, said they want to make sure three
abandoned row houses in the same area are saved. Jemal said the buildings
are in such bad shape he can't salvage them entirely, but could possibly
preserve the facades. The buildings are owned by the District.
Once new development comes into the neighborhood, some small-business
owners said they are worried about being pushed out as rents go up.
Ann Cobbler-Fields, 33, opened a clothing store for women in the 1300
block of Good Hope Road SE in November. She said she pays about $1,700
a month for her 2,000-square-foot shop -- well below the going rate
for a retail spot in downtown Washington. Her bright yellow shop, called
La Threads Couture, sells such items as a pair of tight-fitting jeans
with splashes of pink and orange paint on them for $21.99; a jean mini-skirt
with belts on it for $17.99; and a black purse with blue and green
beads for $27.99
"I had a dream to do a clothing store in this neighborhood because
there's not much here," said Fields, who grew up in the area and
now lives in Prince George's County's Temple Hills. "It helps
the people here because not everyone has a car to get to the malls
in Maryland or Virginia." She spoke as two teenage girls came
into the shop to ask her about a pair of cropped, bell-bottom jeans
they had seen in her window.
Yavocka D. Young, executive director of Main Street Anacostia Inc.,
a program to improve streets and storefront facades, said she wants
to see more businesses like La Threads come into the neighborhood.
"I want to see the quality of life drastically improve," Young
said. "The neighborhood has been in dire straights for so many decades.
We want a change for the better."
"We've waited so long for amenities to come to our neighborhood. . . . It's a viable area to put business," said Lendia Johnson, who has lived on Howard Road in Anacostia for more than 30 years and serves as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner for the neighborhood. "But I do worry that folks who've lived here for so long will have to move if so much new development happens at once and they can't afford it."
