As wave of projects begin to sprout, so do disputes
Cross-posted from theWashington Post Written by Jonathan O’Connell
New apartments and shops are spreading into neighborhoods across the Washington region, with developers looking to capitalize on a better-than-average economy and a massive influx of young adults.
Apartment hunters have wider options, more residents have grocery stores in their neighborhoods and, with dozens of new restaurants and bars, Washington has begun to change its reputation as a gray-suit government town.
Many residents are celebrating the changes. But others aren’t.
And as this new wave of development rises, a chasm between its champions and its skeptics is beginning to show.
In Northeast D.C., Ivy City residents have sued to try to prevent Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) from relocating a bus depot for dozens of private buses into their neighborhood to make way for upgrades at Union Station.
In Washington Highlands, one of the poorest parts of the District, public housing residents sued the D.C. Housing Authority out of concern that they would be permanently displaced from their homes when their units at Highland Dwellings were refurbished.
It isn’t just the low income or disenfranchised who are fighting back. In Wheaton, residents turned away a mixed-use proposal pushed by Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D). Residents in Reston have formed an advocacy group, Rescue Reston, and say they have gathered 650 signatures opposing the possible redevelopment of Reston National Golf Course.
There have always been battles between residents and the developers, planners and city officials proposing alterations to neighborhoods. But with the economy gaining steam and apartment construction booming, disputes that faded during the recession are beginning to boil again.
“I think in many ways it’s the same, but now we have many more examples of how these communities are getting screwed over,” said Parisa Norouzi, director of the community organizing group Empower D.C.
‘No trust’
Empower D.C. battled former mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s attempts to close excess schools and lease the buildings to developers, projects that Norouzi said were driven by “gentrification or private profit.” She says those battles have better prepared residents and organizers for disputes such as the bus relocation, which Empower D.C. and residents are fighting in D.C. Superior Court. “At this point, there is really no trust in the process,” she said.
A hearing on the case is expected Tuesday. A Gray spokesman declined to comment.
In other instances, the opponents to zoning changes or development are the well-heeled. Neighborhoods in wealthier parts of Northwest D.C. are raising concerns about parking shortages under proposed changes to the District’s zoning code, while in Reston the concern is a lack of green space should the golf course’s owner try to build a project to capitalize on the construction of two Silver Line Metro stations nearby.
Some Wheaton residents rejected plans to create a mixed-use downtown project because it might resemble the redevelopment of Silver Spring — a success to some but not others. “We know how many small businesses struggled and went out of business in Silver Spring,” Bob Schilke, owner of the Little Bitts Shop of cake supplies, told the Montgomery County Council in February.
Sometimes even the terms used to describe development have have taken on widely different meanings. The D.C. Housing Authority became the envy of other cities in winning seven grants under the federal HOPE VI program, which enabled the District to overhaul blighted public housing projects into mixed-income neighborhoods.
The agency’s renovation of Highland Dwellings, east of Bolling Air Force Base, isn’t a HOPE VI program and no market rate units are even being built. But spokeswoman Dena Michaelson said the agency could have done a better job making that clear to avoid the lawsuit it faced (and since settled).
In a David and Goliath story, the tiny Ivy City community, a low-income African-American neighborhood settled originally just after emancipation, has filed suit against the Mayor and USRC to halt plans to divert hundreds of polluting charter buses into their community for the next 10 years while Union Station undergoes a billion dollar redevelopment.
When residents learned that the Mayor, in the midst of attending ribbon-cuttings and congratulating new homeowners, had authorized the Alexander Crummell School be turned into yet another parking lot for diesel-spewing buses, their outrage turned to action and attorney Johnny Barnes was retained and lawsuit filed to halt the construction. Built in 1911, the school, now in neglected shape, is a national landmark added to the historic registry 10 years ago.
“We will do whatever it takes to stop this parking lot,” said third generation resident Andria Swanson, a plaintiff in the case and President of the Ivy City Civic Association. “We demand that the city stop treating Ivy City as its dumping ground, because we deserve better.”
The Ivy City case has city-wide implications as it will set precedent in areas of law relating to the requirement that Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs) receive special notice and their views be considered with “great weight.”
The suit also hinges on the city’s failure to conduct an environmental impact study for the development of the bus lot, which the Mayor claims is not a “major action.”
Despite not receiving notice, the ANC voted 8 to 0 against the planned bus depot, once they discovered the plan. Other ANCs across the District have joined the opposition by passing resolutions against the bus depot.
Long treated as the city’s “dumping ground,” residents of Ivy City are already heavily impacted by respiratory illnesses exacerbated by heavy truck traffic along New York Avenue and the resulting air pollution. Generations of Ivy City residents have advocated improvements to their neglected neighborhood, and thought better days were coming when the city began investing in new affordable homes and revitalization planning. Yet early this year, the Mayor did an abrupt turn-around, authorizing the purchase of over six acres in the community to consolidate the parking of Department of Public Works’ fleet, on top of several acres of school bus parking already sited in the community.
For decades, the community has sought, and the DC government has promised, the restoration of Crummell School to provide services such as recreation, education and job training programs. Non-profit developers Manna Inc, Mi Casa and DC Habitat bought into the city’s stated goal of revitalizing Ivy City and broke ground on 58 new homes, now nearing completion. New homeowners and existing residents now face potential immediate risk to their health should the Mayor’s proposed charter bus lot move forward. The community is also burdened by overflow parking from Love nightclub, a youth detention center, homeless shelter, a new medical marijuana cultivation site and liquor distillery.
Just last year through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, the DC Department of Housing and Community Development participated in a study that showed 36% of Ivy City and Trinidad residents lacked a high school diploma or equivalent, and 11% are unemployed. The Crummell School is situated in the heart of the community similar to a town hall, and is the last remaining place available to provide the services and gathering space the community seeks.
“Sitting a polluting charter bus lot across the street from residences is an injustice that the Mayor would never consider visiting upon a higher-income or more politically powerful community,” said Parisa Norouzi, Executive Director of Empower DC, a group working to enhance the organizing efforts of residents.
“By definition this is a case of Environmental Injustice,” Norouzi said. “The Mayor should be ashamed of himself.”
Youth from Ivy City from left to right, Stephanie Chloe, Dedrica (Drica) Clyburne, James Batts, Moniya Walker and Santasia (Tay) Scarborough
This summer, Empower DC hired several youth from Ivy City to help organize their community. What follows are the impressions of a few of the participants and a lovely video of Ivy City’s Annual reunion produced by two of the youth, Stephan Scarborough and Amari McCray.
Dedrica: I loved being the assistant community organizer for Ivy City because I used my voice for a better purpose. I feel Empower DC is doing an awesome job fighting for Alexander Crummell School. I got the opportunity to silently protest Mayor Gray’s plan to park 65 Bolt buses on the grounds of the historic Alexander Crummell School. And I feel I was good at getting people involved and wanting to stand up for the community they call home. I am definitely going to continue volunteering for Empower DC to keep the fight going in the community.
Moniya: One thing that I learned with empower DC is that you can always help with stuff. And that it was good to visit and learn new things. Empower DC changed me. I learned that you can always feel comfortable going and talking to an adult and how to have confidence. What I did not like was talking to people and getting people to come to meetings because at times they were rude. But even though people were rude there was a possibility they would attend the meeting. When I first started I was tired of walking around but I eventually got used to it. And I felt so happy when I would attend meetings and people I made contact with attended.
Stephon “Steph” Scarborough at 3.
Steph: Our amazing organization, Empower DC, has taught me a lot and it was a wonderful experience. Furthermore it was pretty excellent that the program was constructive, positive and productive. Our campaign that we are pursing has a good sense of justice and a large amount of significance. I am looking forward to starting an Empower DC band. The band will aim to reach out to people and tell them about our Ivy City community and all the hardships that we endure. Empower DC has been great to me and I will love to stay for future initiatives.
Amari McCray
Amari: My name is Amari. My summer with Empower DC was good while interning with the Grassroots Media Project. The experience was really good for me because I normally would be out with friends stealing bikes. While working with empower DC I learned how to operate the video camera and learned how to film different progressive events.
Written by Darryl Fears, cross-posted from the Washington Post
(Jared Soares/ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST ) – Ivy City resident Andria Swanson near the grounds of the closed Alexander Crummell School.
On any scale, Ivy City is a 98-pound weakling among District neighborhoods. It measures only 1.7 square miles near the Maryland border in Northeast and has some of the city’s poorest residents, with an unemployment rate approaching 50 percent.
But that has not stopped the D.C. government from placing a heavy burden on Ivy City’s scrawny shoulders, making it a base of operations for large projects other neighborhoods shun, “a dumping ground,” residents say.
Ivy City is dotted with parking lots for scores of government vehicles — quarter-ton snowplows, salt trucks, parking-enforcement vehicles and school buses that belch exhaust as they rumble through the streets. Recently, when Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) announced a plan to build a bus depot for 65 D.C-to-New York motorcoaches in the heart of Ivy City, residents said “enough” and filed a lawsuit to stop it.
There is a lot at stake in the showdown between one of the city’s smallest neighborhoods and the mayor. Bus travel is a major boon for the city; ridership rose from nearly 2 million in 1999 to nearly 7 million in 2009, according to the District Department of Transportation’s 2011 Motorcoach Action Plan.
By Luke, Crossposted from DC’s Independent Media Center.
The multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan for Union Station includes an ugly extra: an “Interim plan” to park idling inter-city buses at Crummell School, in Ivy City. Many residents there already have asthma. On the 15th of August, over half of participants in an “open house” at Union Station about the proposed “master plan” were from Empower DC.
This was not a speaking presentation, but rather a collection of tables with information about the planned project. As usual, they were not soliciting any real public input, just saying “here’s what we have already decided to do” while meeting legal technicalities required of such projects.
Children wore dust masks as a symbol of diesel smoke from idling buses. Empower DC T-shirts were everywhere, as were tough questions about parking “Chinatown” buses in an African-American residential neighborhood.
One of the tough questions was my own: where’s the money, an estimated $7 billion, for the project going to come from. The answer was that they don’t know-nobody is admitting to a funding source for the project. Artwork for the proposal shows office buildings built in the “air rights” over the tracks, but relying on the demand for office space for funding is chancy at best in an uncertain economy. If funding evaporates partway through the project, the proposed 10 year “interim” bus parking at Crummell School could become permanent.
Kids in masks, hopefully they won’t have to wear them for 10 years of “interim” bus parking!
Empower DC marches in, security says no but gives up after being ignored.
Who’s in the (open) house? Empower DC dominates event as not many other DC residents show up.
