Momentum Is Building in Downtown Revival
by Maryann Haggerty

From the corner of Ninth and F streets in downtown Washington, where even the porn shops and pawnbrokers have been boarded up for years, look north, south or west and you can see construction cranes.

They are unmistakable signs that, after a long hiatus, development has started up again downtown.

"This is the area where it's happening, where it's all going to fill in," said Adam Bernstein, whose D.C. real estate development company has plans to renovate a cluster of abandoned historic buildings on F Street NW into an office complex. "It will be a total transformation in five years, all the way up F from Eighth to 13th. It's going to have a great feel, a great environment.

Nearly a dozen major private construction projects are under way in the area roughly bordered by Sixth and 15th streets and New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania avenues NW, a neighborhood anchored by the White House to the west and the MCI Center to the east.

And more are on the way. On F Street, for instance, almost every site is in some state of development. Some examples: The Marriot Courtyard hotel at 900 F St.

Construction has heated up mostly because of a resurgence in demand for office space, but also because of the success of the MCI Center and surrounding restuarants.

Because this spate of construction will fill almost all of the available land downtown, what happens in coming months will likely shape the area for decades to come.

Within four to five years, it's a good bet that new and renovated buildings will line the neighborhood's main corridors—Seventh, Ninth, and F streets. Most will be office buildings, providing enough office space for thousands of white-collar workers. There will also be stores, restuarants, movie theaters and apartments.

These aren't the drawingboard dreams of city planners. They're real buildings financed by real money. In the past few weeks, two movie theater chains have agreed to rent space for 30 new movie screens—Landmark Theaters with an eight-screen art theater in an old office building under construction at 555 11th St., and AMC with 22 screens at a planned entertainment complex on Seventh. Seafood restuarants and steakhouses are jockeying for space in the lobbies of hotels and office buildings under construction.

"I will tell you with the conviction of 13 years' experience that it's happening. It's not anymore whether it's going to happen," said John Asadoorian, a retail real estate broker active in the neighborhood.

"The office buildings are going to get built," he said. "They're being built as we speak. The next wave is, what's going to be the flavor of the retail and restuarants?"

Although much of the neighborhood still appears a wreck, it was once the heart of Washington, a place where people came to work, stroll and shop. But the great American flight suburbs that began in the 1950s sent the downtown into a long decline, accelerated by the 1968 riots. those real estate magnates who weren't concentrating on the suburbs built there new D.C. office towers to the west, along the K Street corridor. Shoppers went to the malls, and all but one of the department stores closed.

In the 1980s real estate boom, builders again looked to the east end of downtown because so little land was left to the west. They tore down old, often historic buildings and planned new ones. But in 1989 and 1990, development came to a half because of the rampant overbuilding nationally, leaving a number of downtown blocks more forlorn than before.

In the past eight years, only a smattering of buildings started in the neighborhood—a couple of office blocks, a handful of storefront restuarants and the biggest private project in the city in the 1990s, the $200 million MCI Center.

At stake now is something that politicians, planners, activitists and developers have argued about for decades: Given what is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rebuild what used to be the physical and economic center of the region what will Washington produce? can it become a lively regional hub where people will work, live and play, and where tourists and suburban families will boost the District's tax base by spending their money?

"Within that four- to five-year framework, if we want downtown to be vibrant, we have to figure out ways to include those major attractions that aren't as economic like arts and housing," said JoAnn Neuhaus, a city planner by trade who is director of the Pennsylvania Quarter Neighborhood Association, a group that represents downtown residents and building owners clustered near the avenue.

Rich Bradley, executive director of the Downtown Business Improvement District, a year-old, business-financed group working to increase cleanliness and security, said: "What a lot of us hope will emerge is a sense of place in downtown Washington. Right now it's a set of destinations."

Projects in the works, some of them on sites that have been ignored for years, promise more liveliness than pure office use would bring.

For instance, the federal General Services Administration is negotiating to redevelop two historic locations—Jemal's town house renovation on F Street and the conversion of the historic Tariff Building across Seventh Street from MCI Center into a hotel. The GSA is accepting bids on a third site on a block south of the arena, known as Square 457. Bidders are required to plan for at least 345 residential units there; there's also room for office and art uses.

"When those projects get built, it will be wonderful what will happen around the Portrait Gallery," the Smithsonian Institution museum across from MCI Center, said Ellen McCarthy, a member of the Committee of 100, a planning advocacy group.

Although much of the shape of the area is set, there are a number of key parcels whose fates have not been settled.

One of the most prominent is the old Woodward & Lothrop building on the block bounded by 10th, 11th, F and G streets. The Washington Opera, which backed out of a plan to turn the building into an opera house, has put it up for sale. The building is zoned for retail, arts and entertainment; the opera and activists recently struck a deal that could add housing to the mix.

Also, bids will be solicited early next year for the site of the District's aged Department of Employment Services building at Sixth and Pennsylvania. Further in the future, the site of the existing convention center will become available after the new convention center opens. That's scheduled for 2004, but debate over the four-block site has already begun.

Despite all the activity, it's still possible that development will go bust, as happened in 1990, or that construction will take longer than developers predict. For instance, Clover Cos. of Tysons Corner was proclaiming in September that it would start construction this month on a speculative office building at 930 F St.

About that time, because of turmoil in international credit markets, lenders grew cautious about financing speculative development. Now, Clover has entered into a joint venture with Bernstein Cos., which will provide a substantial chunk of equity for the building. Construction is slated to start in the summer or early fall of 1999, according to Bernstein.

The mix that's emergin isn't what planners laid out in the 1980s, when the city envisioned a shopping district anchored by up to four department stores. now there's just one department store, Hecht's, and others appear unlikely. The neighborhood is also likely to fall far short of the onetime goal of 4,000 housing units.

A shortfall of housing could be a fatal flaw, said Tom Downs, a former city administrator and a past head of Amtrak. He recently stepped down as chairman of the Downtown Alliance amid conflict between members over the direction of development.

"My guess is if we don't make some energetic visionary decisions about downtown, it will be gone in 18 to 24 months. I think the heart and soul of downtown is hanging by a thread," Downs said.

He advocates aggressive use of tax incentives and zoning to foster housing development on sites that might otherwise become all office, a stand that has alienated him from some developers.

But others who have spent years fighting to make sure the neighborhood becomes more than just another office canyon say things are heading in the right direction.

"We have a new downtown. If you look where we were 10 years ago, the make-over is substantial," said Terry Lynch, executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations and long one of the most vocal downtown activists.

He points to the MCI Center and the restuarants that have popped up around it as signs of healthy economic variety, even though this year's National Basketball Association lockout has slowed business.