No end in sight with D.C.’s makeover boom
As secretary of State in the late 1700s, Thomas Jefferson laid out the initial design, including “public walks” for the area between the Capitol and what is now known as the White House. The capital’s first city planner, Pierre L’Enfant, envisioned a grand boulevard, home to academies and lecture halls to enlighten and entertain, connecting the legislative and executive branches of the government.
Instead, Pennsylvania Avenue and the blocks just north of it became lined with boardinghouses and hotels where members of Congress resided. The open-air Center Market sold foodstuffs, manufactured goods and even slaves. Gambling establishments and music halls, not lecture halls, were the most popular forms of entertainment.
And like many center-city areas across the country, this one fell on hard times over the years. As fewer shoppers ventured downtown, preferring modern suburban malls closer to home, the city’s most prestigious department stores, Garfinckel’s and Woodward & Lothrop, closed their doors.
By the mid-1990s, panhandlers and prostitutes roamed Jefferson’s “public walks,” and Ford’s Theatre, the site of President Lincoln’s assassination, was surrounded by blocks of boarded-up buildings and graffiti-covered storefronts.
“It was dreary,” said Anthony A. Williams, Washington’s mayor from 1999 through 2006. “I thought it was embarrassing that the nation’s capital, within blocks of the White House, had drifted into despair.”
Now this once-blighted area, rechristened Penn Quarter, has been transformed into a thriving business district with high-end residential developments, a vibrant night life and the third-most lucrative downtown office market in the country.
But this urban renaissance has revitalized the area so quickly that the city and developers are under pressure to continue capitalizing on downtown’s high-priced commercial market while meeting the growing demands of residents for an affordable and livable environment.
The 138 blocks of the Downtown DC Business Improvement District, which includes Penn Quarter, have nearly 100 restaurants, along with boutiques, galleries, museums and theaters.
Among its attractions are the restored Old Patent Office Building, which houses the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian’s American art collection; the new Harman Center for the Arts, which marries the classical Shakespeare Theatre Co. with a 21st century performance space; and the popular International Spy Museum, which explores the history and tradecraft of intelligence and is headed by a 36-year veteran of the CIA.
“It’s a vibrant, inviting and bright place,” said Richard H. Bradley, executive director of the Downtown DC BID.
That wasn’t the case 10 years ago, said Miles E. Groves, director of the Downtown Neighborhood Assn. The bustle of business during the day drifted into desolation at dusk, as drug dealers and prostitutes took over the streets.
“It was a place where you didn’t want to be at night,” Groves said.
As mayor, Williams sought to reverse this downward spiral through the Downtown Action Agenda, a public-private partnership. Its goal was to build off the district’s economic boom to invigorate a strong residential, retail and entertainment destination.
The Downtown DC BID worked with the city and developers, using tax abatements, bonds and land subsidies to encourage investment in residential projects as a means of supplementing the already strong office market, said Gerry Widdicombe, the group’s economic development director.
Anchoring this development was the MCI Center, a $200-million sports and entertainment facility that opened in 1997. Now known as the Verizon Center, and home to the NBA’s Wizards and the NHL’s Capitals, the building will have welcomed over 24 million patrons when it celebrates its 10th anniversary next month.
“We used to sit around and wait for federal handouts . . . until we finally started to do what other cities do: Invest in themselves,” Widdicombe said.
From 1996 to 2006, according to the BID, that investment totaled $8.2 billion -- for 16.9 million square feet of new and renovated office space and 3,308 residential units. Jobs in the area grew to 177,000 in 2006, from 120,000 a decade earlier. For fiscal 2007 alone, the area generated $740 million in local taxes and other revenue.
But the rapid growth of the office market has outpaced the ability of the city and the developers to deliver some essential residential services, Groves said. There has been no comprehensive survey of the area’s demographics since the 2000 census, which Groves said ignored the dramatic downtown population boom and prevented the city from getting a clear picture of the downtown living environment.
“We have a mixed-use environment that is more focused on commercial development than on the fact people live here,” Groves said -- noting, for example, that there is no full-service grocery store.
In addition, he said, the area’s growing popularity has pushed out many of the small shops and galleries that had been enticed by cheap rents.
“It makes it very difficult for the small and independent folks to survive,” Groves said.
The city and the developers are working to iron out conflicts between commercial occupants and residents over such issues as better street lighting and time restrictions on construction and trash collection, Widdicombe said. BID employees provide some extra sanitation and street services, and plans are in place for a Safeway as a part of CityVista, a new complex of retail shops, condominiums and rental apartments.
Bradley said that 20% of the residences at CityVista will be classified as “affordable housing” for low-income individuals, with rentals below the market rate. The price of new one- and two-bedroom condominiums averaged about $350,000 to $650,000 in 2006, according to the BID.
Shopping remains an issue, said Karen M. Sibert, the BID’s communications director. Even though several national stores, including Banana Republic, Barnes & Noble and Bed Bath & Beyond have opened downtown, the area still lacks a centralized shopping district.
Rather than having stores disjointedly dotting the ground floors of office buildings, Sibert said, the BID hopes to create several contiguous blocks of retail to help restore downtown’s shopping core.
Three large retailers -- clothiers H&M; and Zara and furniture store West Elm -- have taken ground-floor space in the restored Woodward & Lothrop building on F Street, the heart of the city’s traditional retail area.
The BID celebrated its 10th anniversary last week with a gala at the Harman Center. These days there are few vacant properties ripe for redevelopment in Penn Quarter, but Bradley said he did not see the renewal slowing down.
“We are now a very different kind of place a decade later,” he said.
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