Housing Complex

The Rebirth of Ivy City?

Posted by Ruth Samuelson on Dec. 15, 2008, at 6:43 pm

Providence Street Northeast in Ivy City

Eight years ago, City Paper published a story about Ivy City, a long forgotten Northeast neighborhood bordered mostly by train tracks and Mt. Olivet Cemetery. The story’s headline is “Ghost Town.” Look at the above image, and tell me that wasn’t appropriate.

The article described a block with seven of 17 houses abandoned—So much vacant real estate in fact, “that a prostitute known as Country is able to use one semioccupied house as her residence and another fully empty house as her place of business.”

Another fittingly depressing line: “This is what it looks like when a neighborhood gets ready to die.”

But that was 2000. Perhaps 2009 will be a year of rebirth for Ivy City. Check out what just landed in my mailbox:

“[Tomorrow], Mayor Fenty will announce details of a new initiative aimed at redeveloping 37 vacant properties in a six-block stretch of Ivy City into market-rate and affordable housing…

These long-vacant properties have blighted the Ivy City community for years, serving as a backdrop for disinvestment, drug dealing and illegal dumping. The District is using a combination of land subsidies and federal stabilization funds to partner with community-based housing developers and transform this section of the city into a safer, healthier neighborhood.”

The meeting will take place at 3:45 p.m. at the Trinity Baptist Church (1814 Central Pl NE, Washington, DC)

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