DC-CAN creates 10 public access nodes, for networks that could look like Bloomingdale's. (Brooke Hatfield)

Like many new things in Bloomingdale, the plan to create a neighborhood-wide free wireless Internet cloud involves Big Bear Café at 1st and R streets NW. But where the café’s liquor license fight highlighted divisions within the gentrifying neighborhood, this plan began with a whiskey-fueled conversation about how to transcend them.

“A few neighbors sitting around the café saw that there was a communications gap,” explains Hugh Youngblood, a tech entrepreneur who has since taken over café owner Stuart Davenport’s seat on the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission. If they could at least get everyone access to a popular neighborhood e-mail list, they reasoned, that would go a long way toward filling the digital void.

The problem: Though Big Bear hosts laptop-toting hordes, many neighbors lack home Internet access. The relatively simple fix: With a few dozen routers at $60 apiece—and access to the city’s fiber optic network—Youngblood et al could create a Wi-Fi cloud around 1st Street NW. “We just said, let’s start giving away free Internet,” Youngblood remembers.

The actual process was a bit trickier. At first, they tried to put a signal tower on top of McKinley Technical High School in nearby Eckington, but that was deemed unworkable. Then they thought they might be able to do it from Dunbar Senior High School on New Jersey Avenue NW, but security concerns led the city to offer only a tiny trickle of bandwidth—not enough for the Big Bear crew to wire a whole neighborhood.

Finally, the group gave up on city assistance, turning to a local IT company that could get them a commercial broadband subscription. They set up “gateway” routers at Big Bear and in Rustik Tavern and then started knocking on doors to ask whether homeowners wouldn’t mind hosting a free “repeater.” For a few hundred dollars in hardware and about $800 a year for broadband, a six-block long stretch of houses now has WiFi access—for much less than the cost of individually subscribing each area household to Verizon or Comcast.

For Youngblood, wiring the neighborhood is worth it because of what he can then build on top: Through his company, Youngblood Capital Group, he hopes to develop a “smart grid” in the area that could support things like solar energy systems. “You build the network, and then you’ve got this fertile field you can grow everything in,” he says.

In the not-too-distant future, however, groups like the one in Bloomingdale may not have to pay Comcast or Verizon at all. Last year, the city received a $17.4 million in federal stimulus money for a fiber optic network designed not for the city government but for the public at large. Such grants were sprinkled around the country as part of the Obama administration’s broadband initiative, but most are in rural areas. D.C. will be the biggest city to build its own consumer-oriented network.

The catch? The D.C. Community Access Network (DC-CAN) will be what’s called a “middle mile” network, which is just a central communications backbone. Private businesses and non-profits, from large cable companies to grassroots initiatives like Bloomingdale's Broadband Bridge, are supposed to provide the “last mile,” which brings the Internet to consumers.

That makes DC-CAN the first meaningful opportunity to break the Comcast-Verizon duopoly that’s governed broadband communication in the District since Uncle Sam and the courts allowed big carriers to run small providers out of the market. But DC-CAN, scheduled for completion in 2013, is going to need some entrepreneurial moxie: So far, the big two haven’t expressed interest in participating, and only five relatively small companies answered the District government’s request for information on the network.

“Right now they’re in the stage of, if we build it, would you come?” says Martha Huizenga, a partner at one of those companies, the independent Capitol Hill- and Dupont Circle-area provider D.C. Access. “And we’re like, ‘Yes, we will come, but at the right price.’”

—

This isn’t the District’s first attempt to create a municipally-supported wireless network to help low-income residents. The last such plan, alas, failed before it started. In 2006, then-D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams’ administration asked companies to bid for the right to build commercial wireless transmitters on District-owned streetlights and buildings—with permission to access D.C.’s own fiber optic network. Winners, though, would be obliged to offer free wireless services in needy neighborhoods. Nobody even bid, and the plan died.

Williams’ effort came as municipal wireless schemes were flopping nationwide. Private carriers tapped to build systems in cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia found the projects to be much more complicated and expensive than they had anticipated. As telecom giants put out research attacking city-supported consumer broadband systems as anticompetitive, local governments abandoned Wi-Fi ambitions. Other critics speculated that, in a business like Internet service, government programs would never be able to adapt to rapid year-to-year changes in technology.

But another District-run wireless effort shows the city is no slouch in that category. DC-NET, a six-year-old high-speed fiber optic system for public institutions, has earned a stellar reputation, winning a national award last year for city broadband networks. It’s good enough that the federal Office of Personnel Management pays the District to use it—a rare example of the feds purchasing anything from the D.C. government—and still saves money over the commercial carriers.

The big companies, though, are still serious competition. In a competitive bid process, the national nonprofit group One Economy chose Comcast over DC-NET as the provider on a $1.2 million, federally-funded effort to provide wireless Internet services for 1,500 District public housing units. Residents who subscribe will pay nothing for the first two years, and then $10 per month after that.

Meanwhile, the city’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer says it has no money to fund projects like Bloomingdale's in other areas. A similar effort in Anacostia, for instance, is still waiting for someone like Youngblood to step up and foot the bill. Not every neighborhood has a benevolent resident entrepreneur and legions of bloggy types who feel entitled to Wi-Fi in bed.

Fortunately, these kinds of projects are set up to thrive without government watering: The more invested communities are in creating their wireless cloud, which requires neighbors to know each other and work together, the longer they’re likely to last. For that reason, the New America Foundation, which has been a cheerleader for community wireless projects, sees them as superior to any kind of subscription service, hosted by telecoms or not.

“The Internet is not something that people should have to sign up on,” says the foundation’s Preston Rhea. “The Internet is something that people can actually help produce and create."

Developer Jair Lynch looks on at a community presentation. (Darrow Montgomery)

There have been so many plans for development of the McMillan Sand Filtration Site that if you put them together in a slideshow, it might make for a dramatic film—except with no clear heroes or villains, and no happy ending. Yet, at least.

The most recent main characters are trying to provide one. In their first attempt nearly three years ago, Jair Lynch Development Partners and Bethesda-based townhouse builder EYA failed spectacularly to gain community buy-in for their plan to develop a whole new neighborhood—complete with housing, retail, and office space—on the fenced, 25-acre site that lies just south of the Veterans Administration hospital, along North Capitol Street and Michigan Avenue.

This kind of thing is usually Jair Lynch’s jam. The former Olympian (gymnastics, silver medalist, 1996 Atlanta games) has built a powerhouse firm over the last 12 years by working on what he calls “neighborhood assets”: Libraries, affordable housing, hospitals, schools, non-profit headquarters. Operating out of a rowhouse office on U Street, he’s become known for navigating sensitive projects like the redevelopment of subsidized housing into mixed-use buildings at Northwest One adjacent to NoMa and Mount Vernon Triangle.

This time, the process went awry, dealing Lynch a setback on the biggest project of his career. But instead of abandoning it, this fall, Lynch, EYA’s Aakash Thakkar, and office developer Adam Weers of Trammell Crow came back with a trio of eminent planners and community engagement professionals—paid a total of $79,000 by the city, which is fronting predevelopment costs and taking on a greater role in management decisions—who could start a new conversation about what neighbors wanted, and turn around a plan they could understand.

That concluded Saturday morning in the basement of All Nations Church on North Capitol Street. The latest plan is prettier and more detailed, with more thought behind its park space and preservation of the site’s bizarre-looking structures that sit both aboveground and below. Even longtime McMillan watchers admit it’s an improvement.

Lynch, et al., should hope so. Now, they need neighborhood support more than ever; the city has less and less money for more and more projects ($60 million was pledged for McMillan, but Vince Gray’s administration will decide how fast it gets doled out). Meanwhile, key retailers like grocery stores are popping up all over the city, making McMillan even less competitive as a destination than its relatively low-income demographics would indicate. Public enthusiasm could help put them over the edge—and at this point, it all depends on whether Lynch, Thakkar, and Weers can gain their trust.

—

A view of the new park, looking northeast.

The community member who’s arguably been the most influential in McMillan’s development—or non-development—is already a lost cause. “The bottom line is, we and the community are still disappointed,” says Tony Norman, who helped get the McMillan site designated as a D.C. landmark, and still chairs sits on the citizen group set up to advise the project in 2007. “The plan that they came out with is the same one that we rejected the last time.”

The irony of Norman’s opposition: Reassured by the participation of historic preservation experts with the Alexander Company, he originally backed Lynch’s bid for the project. But when the team came back in 2008 with a dense development program that didn’t make particularly imaginative use of the site’s historic elements, activists felt betrayed, and sued the city twice for documents detailing discussions with the developers.

To a large extent, the process got bogged down in details and ratios of parks to built space, while the developers failed to offer a compelling enough vision to people who might have been won over.

“I think jumping to technical reports, and jumping to very, very specific things, like is it two units or is it four units, it skipped over the healing process,” Lynch says. “People weren’t ready to give their ideas. They were ready to say ‘no.’”

In some ways, though, the aborted process and ongoing tension reflects the neighborhood’s unfamiliarity with how development usually works—residents further downtown, for example, just have a lot more experience with what happens where in the regulatory alphabet soup. Even though the city funded preliminary traffic and stormwater management studies for McMillan a year earlier than required, some neighbors want final reports before signing off on a project that will bring thousands of new residents, cars, and jobs.

The result is a lingering cloud of wariness.

“There should be nothing that y’all can’t produce,” says Bloomingdale Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner John Salatti. “Nothing. As long as you’re withholding documents, there’s always going to be that sense of, well, what is it that you’re trying to hide?”

—

Closeup of the north gardens.

To re-start the process, the developers knew they’d have to get out of the spotlight. That part was easy.

A new team included Maurice Cox, who preaches "democratic design” from a professorship at the University of Virginia, and lent the four community meetings an air of dignity and legitimacy that effectively neutralized some of the most disruptive neighborhood regulars. While the developers relaxed in jeans and sneakers, working on laptops and greeting newcomers, Matt Bell of master planning firm Ehrenkrantz Eckstut and Kuhn and landscape architect Warren Byrd Jr. of Nelson Byrd Woltz ran small group sessions, and even sat down later with interested neighbors for one-on-one evening “salons” at the Big Bear Café in Bloomingdale.

The process won over Alain Joseph, who lives a few blocks south of McMillan. When participants in one meeting were given stickers to place on different elements of the design they liked, he put all of his on an amphitheater, which he’d spoken with Byrd about incorporating. When he saw the final design, Joseph was thrilled.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s better than I could have imagined!” he says. “I felt like a king! If you could see how long, how spacious it was—all I wanted was a little corner, and they gave me half a football field!”

For two nights, Weers, Thakkar, and Lynch also did small group sessions at the Big Bear. The three of them at the head of a big table—none of them white, all smiling, all D.C. born and raised—did their best to convey sincerity, and make the case that density is essential to making it all work. At one point, a woman asked about their long-term commitment to the project. Thakkar took on the question as if he’d been waiting for someone to pose it.

“A lot of companies will get an entitlement and sell the land to somebody else,” he told her. “I can guarantee that these folks you see here, barring something unforeseen, will be with this project five years from now, seven years from now.”

They don’t mention the fact that, despite the re-started process and promises of a blank slate, certain elements were predetermined. At first glance, Tony Norman is right: There are 7.33 acres of green space, compared to eight last time, and 1.75 million square feet of building space, almost exactly the same amount as before. There’s still the same basic layout of tall office buildings on the north end, multifamily apartment buildings in the middle, and townhouses to the south.

Still, some elements are better. All the aboveground historic structures will be preserved for potential reuse, several different parks are planned in detail, and office buildings have been pushed away from the northeast corner to make room for more green space.

The funny thing is, the two-year delay itself may have made for a different project, because conceptions of how urban development should be done—and how it can be financed—have evolved, even in a relatively short time. Lynch points out that successful densified grocery stores have recently disproven the need for vast surface parking lots, and also, more residents want to stay and have families in formerly-marginal areas now rather than automatically bolting for the suburbs.

“Could this same team have worked out three years ago?” Lynch muses. “I don’t know, because people may have been thinking ‘I’m going to cash out with another home equity loan, and I don’t really have to worry about this.’ Or ‘I may not be worried about schools at all,’ because schools may not have been part of the lexicon of what we’re thinking about.”

What’s next? The team will make its case to Gray’s administration, and hurdle its way through two Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, the Zoning Commission, the Historic Preservation Review Board, and National Capital Planning Commission. They will beg retailers to lease space, put their best foot forward with investors, and plead with residents to help them advocate at every step of the way.

Some of the people who have been waiting the longest are the ones who haven’t come out to every meeting, and who wonder whether anything will ever come of it. Like Clara Luter, 72, who moved to North Capitol Street nearly 40 years ago. She’d like to be able to walk around in the park, instead of around the fence, as she does on sunny days. Looking out across the grassy expanse on Sunday evening, lots of buildings and many more people are hard to contemplate.

“I still can’t put my head around it,” she says, in her doorway. “But I do think it needs to be developed, because we need to use everything we have.”

The old design from 2008.

The new layout.

An unsolicited proposal from Greenvest in 2004, which the city never considered.

]]> http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2010/12/16/the-great-reset-mcmillan-has-bedeviled-developers-for-decades-can-the-latest-try-be-the-last/feed/ 5 http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2010/10/28/new-neighborhood-frinj/ http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2010/10/28/new-neighborhood-frinj/#comments Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:18:07 +0000 Lydia DePillis http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/?p=16148 The District has its share of made-up neighborhood names in between established areas–just ask the Borderstan folks–and Housing Complex just received a novel suggestion for another. You know the intersection of Florida, Rhode Island, and New Jersey Avenues? Reader David Feinstein, who works for the brand consulting firm Beveridge Seay, thinks it doesn't quite fit into LeDroit Park, Bloomingdale, Shaw, or Truxton Circle. So, he suggests an acronym: FRINJ. As in, hey, want to go hang out in FRINJ?

I dunno, it's catchy. We probably won't start using it in regular parlance yet, but being believers in neighborhood self-determination, might reconsider if there were a groundswell of support.

Chef Seth Brady dishes out Bloomingdale's first pizza, paired with Bloomingdale's first beer. (Darrow Montgomery)

On the corner of 1st and T streets NW, tucked just a few feet back from the busy speedway of Rhode Island Avenue, a cream-colored building sat vacant for two years, drawing curious glances from passersby. In the last couple of months, it’s come to life, with construction noises emanating from the inside, and recently, wafts of baking dough and spices. At 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, a few young people sit at the bar chatting with the bartender, a football game playing silently on TV; what sounds like a Jack Johnson Pandora station plays overhead. Soon after 6 o’clock, customers start trickling in—couples, groups, families with strollers, until every one of the dozen or so tables are full, with a waiting list.

Welcome, residents of Bloomingdale, to your first neighborhood bar.

It doesn’t have a sign outside yet, and the patio sits empty (that takes one more permit). But Rustik Tavern is already a revolution of sorts. It started serving a couple weeks ago, with a jam-packed soft opening, and has had standing-room only some weekend nights since. To celebrate the occasion, North Capitol Main Street, Inc., is throwing a party at the restaurant this Thursday with Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr.; all 200 tickets were claimed within a day of the announcement.

“We’ve been waiting seven years to find a place to get a pizza,” says Tim Breen, finishing off a crispy Neapolitan-style crust with his wife and young daughter. That’s how long they’ve been living in the neighborhood.

Rustik’s opening was something of an anticlimax after all the neighborhood acrimony that surrounded Big Bear Café’s application for a liquor license, which first came before the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission last winter. Over the course of several months, Stu Davenport’s aspirations to stay open late and serve cocktails would pit mostly black, longer-term residents against the Big Bear’s mostly white, mostly recent transplant supporters. The ugly public debate burst back onto the surface most recently at last week’s hearing before the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration board, where all the worries about parking, trash, and noise were trotted out again.

Even some of the most vociferous opponents of the Big Bear’s license have nothing but good things to say about the new restaurant, though.

“I think it’s great!” gushes Barrie Daneker, an ANC commissioner who harshly criticized Davenport’s application. “Finally a nice place to sit inside or outside; enjoy a bit of nosh and have a wine or beer. It’s been a long time waiting, but worth it.”

Rustik’s liquor license, though, never came before the ANC—and who knows what trouble they would have given owner Diton Pashaj if he were the first, instead of Davenport. The developing Bloomingdale bar scene is a laboratory for what it takes to bring something new (especially something new with alcohol, and the attendant D.C. licenses, involved) to a neighborhood that desperately wants development, but has qualms about the side effects. In that context, success is composed of one part strategy, one part money, and a tall glass of luck.

—

To the not-especially-plugged-in resident of Bloomingdale, it appeared as if Rustik just popped up fully formed, ready to start dishing out pizzas. To Pashaj, it was a long, silent struggle. Which, more often than not, is the story behind new bars and restaurants—months and months of planning, and just about as much paperwork, goes into each opening.

Pashaj, 29, came to the U.S. from Albania when he was 17, and arrived in D.C. five years ago looking for a “regular, normal, career job.” Not finding one, he settled for a gig as a server in lefty restaurateur Andy Shallal’s Luna Grill. From there, Pashaj quickly rose through the ranks, helping to open Busboys and Poets’ Shirlington location before moving on to U Street NW wine bar Vinoteca.

Three years ago, Pashaj started moving forward with plans to open his own place, writing a business plan for a cozy neighborhood bar with financial backing from his two siblings (sister Ejonta, a project manager for international development company, and brother Auron, who runs a market research company). He started scouting for space in Columbia Heights, and set his sights on a hole in the wall on 11th Street NW north of Park Road, but lost it to another company.

From there, Pashaj decided to shift neighborhoods. He lived in Bloomingdale, and Davenport had talked up the friendliness of the community, the need for something like Vinoteca to give residents the option of getting a drink with friends. That brought Pashaj to prospective location number two: 116 Rhode Island Ave. NW, the site of the former Sylvan Theater. Pashaj worked with the landlord for two months and was ready to sign a lease, but “lost it on a technicality.”

Back to the drawing board. Location No. 3 was a green storefront on 1st Street NW between Seaton Place and T Street, where Pashaj signed a 10-year lease, and sank $3,000 into plans for the build-out. Those plans, in accordance with regulations, included the addition of a bathroom—which the landlord rejected, unless Pashaj paid more to compensate for the bathroom’s eventual removal. Pashaj said no, and the landlord broke the lease.

“See your reaction?” says Pashaj, when my face curdles. “That was my reaction times about a hundred.”

Finally, Pashaj ran into some luck. Across the street, Aleks Duni, owner of Veranda in Shaw and Mount Pleasant’s Marx Café and Heller’s Bakery, had been trying to open a Greek place called Baraki. Duni had locked down the necessary permits back in 2008—making him the first restaurateur in Bloomingdale to get a tavern-class liquor license—but he couldn’t find the loans, in a post-financial-collapse universe, needed to get Baraki off the ground. Pashaj saw an opening, and approached Duni—a fellow Albanian—about taking over his lease and inheriting his liquor license, which only required that he agree to all the terms of the voluntary agreement that Duni had already signed with the neighbors.

Bam, Rustik had an address. But not without taking years off Pashaj’s life.

“For me, this was the last spot in Bloomingdale,” he says. “I was thinking about crashing the idea of a bar. After [the bathroom incident], I thought, ‘Let’s just go invest the money in real estate.’ I was depressed. Trust me, I was depressed every day.”

The process, of course, wasn’t over yet. Pashaj found a chef, luring Seth Brady over from Vinoteca. Then he had to choose a pizza oven, which required multiple trips to a manufacturer in New York City—and putting up three guys in his house while they installed it. His contractor, who said he would take 30 days to finish build-out, actually took four months; Pashaj’s parents, who came to D.C. for two months as the restaurant got close to opening, had to leave before Rustik was finally ready.

And all along, Pashaj tried not to generate too much interest—Bloomingdale’s hopes had been dashed too many times to raise them even further. He was already deluged with e-mails and tweets from people desperate for information about when the place would open, what it would serve, how they could help. And any time Rustik popped up on a blog, something went wrong.

“Not to say that I am superstitious. I’m not. I’m so not superstitious. But it happened four times in a row,” he says. “I mainly wanted to get the work done, and then be more like, here it is, surprise. Enough talk, there’s been so much talk for years now.”

—

Rustik was the first bar to open in Bloomingdale, but it won’t be the last. Others are watching closely to see how the canary in the coal mine fares.

Like Davenport and Pashaj, Colin McDonough and Gareth Croke first decided to open a bar in Bloomingdale because they wanted a place to get a beer within walking distance of home. They have plenty of experience in the industry, at least as employees: Croke and his brother Matt, originally from England, had been raised in the hotel industry and spent their lives doing various jobs in the restaurant business. Croke met McDonough at Adams Morgan’s Tom Tom—not a model for their own place, they promise!—while McDonough was bartending and Croke was working at the now-shuttered Biddy Mulligan’s in Dupont Circle.

Starting their own establishment, christened Boundary Stone, was a more daunting endeavor. If they knew one thing, it was that they had to win over the neighbors, and lock down a liquor license as soon as possible. So after securing a space—they chose the Sylvan Theater on Rhode Island Avenue, many months after Pashaj had lost it—they put in their ABRA application in the spring, and right before their red placards went up announcing the pending application, posted fliers around the whole neighborhood inviting people to an open house. About 130 people showed up.

“It had been pretty much drilled into us that we’d have to deal with it, and it would be a struggle, and so we tried to get out in front of it as much as possible,” says Croke, munching a sandwich at the Big Bear before he and McDonough headed off to work at Fado in Chinatown.

Next came a presentation before the Bloomingdale Civic Association. New restaurants don’t have to ask the approval of community organizations and ANCs, but it’s wise, since either one can protest a license (and ANCs have considerable statutory influence on the ABRA board’s decision). Bloomingdale has it easy relative to neighborhoods like Georgetown, where moratoria on liquor licenses have forced would-be bar owners to buy a license from someone else, sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars. But neighborhood opposition can kill a license just as effectively, so the trio met with Thomas, the local councilmember—support in high places never hurts.

“We were just looking for help in breaking down any combative forces that may or may not be in the neighborhood,” Croke says. In the end, residents did ask for a so-called “voluntary agreement,” which became part of the terms of the liquor license. But they didn’t try to confine the Boundary Stone’s hours, which are the most crucial part of the rules attached to a license, and often the most contested. If the bar couldn’t stay open until 3:00 a.m. on weekends, the legal last call, it wouldn’t make it. (The voluntary agreement Rustik inherited from Baraki means the bar must close by 1:00 a.m. on weekends—Pashaj would stand to benefit considerably by extending those hours, but won’t touch the question of whether he’ll ask to do so).

Now, the Boundary Stone guys are lining up their contractors, and doing what they can to help Davenport finally secure what they got with relative ease. Croke testified on the Big Bear’s behalf at last week’s ABRA board hearing, telling of the crack dealers that used to inhabit the corner of 1st and R Streets before the café started. Davenport, McDonough says, ran into resistance from people who already harbored resentments against the Big Bear and what it represented to a changing neighborhood.

“People already have things that they would love to get out there about this business. And now you give them a platform,” McDonough says. “Whatever angle you wanted, you had that angle.”

Rustik, meanwhile, has taken the pressure off other establishments to open—it’s “taken the air out of the balloon,” as McDonough puts it. McDonough and the Crokes often stop by Rustik, taking note of the lines outside.

Croke smiles, his blue eyes wide. “And we’re like, ‘Awesome.’”

Got a real-estate tip? Send suggestions to ldepillis@washingtoncitypaper.com. Or call (202) 650-6928.

More From This Week's Beer Issue:

• PBR's BFF: A Ride-Along With Pabst Blue Ribbon's D.C. Missionary
• Back to the Future: Inside D.C.'s First New Breweries in Decades
• Casking for It: An Old-Time Beer-Delivery System Makes a Comeback
• Tap Lessons: Advice for the Brickskeller’s New Owners

As for owner Stu Davenport, it's got to be an easier way to make extra cash than getting a liquor license.

Still just caffeine. (Darrow Montgomery)

When we last left Bloomingdale's Big Bear Cafe, owner Stu Davenport was hashing out a voluntary agreement with nearby residents to confine his proposed restaurant's hours of operation. But the early June deadline for that to happen came and went, according to Davenport, and he hasn't heard from the group after a few tries at setting up a meeting (though he says a new draft voluntary agreement was dropped off over the weekend). Meanwhile, neighbor Ed Jones tells Housing Complex that ABRA has scheduled a protest hearing for a few weeks from now. "Neighbors are still concerned about the plans for a late-night establishment in our neighborhood," Jones says.

The Big Bear is keeping busy, though. Davenport says he's seeking a one-day license to put on a community farmers market dinner in August. "We are doing staff tastings with local brewers, and maybe we will do something of beer tasting for the neighborhood in the coming months," he says. "We're thinking this will give us a chance to develop our evening menu and invite people to see what the BBC will be like."

Let's believe it when we see it, hey? (Lydia DePillis)

Could the third time be the charm for Brian Brown?

The NextGen construction executive has been after the firehouse on North Capitol street and Quincy since 2003, submitting an unsolicited proposal before the city was even ready to dispose of the property. The District awarded him the building in 2006, and the future looked bright: Café Saint-Ex owner Mike Benson was to turn it into a brick-oven pizzeria in partnership with XM radio. Alas, Benson pulled out, saying the anticipated cost had doubled.

Two years later, Brown secured another tenant: Twyla Garrett of Cleveland-based Garrett Entertainment Corp., who planned a sleek bar called 2020 Martini, with a Mocha Fusion Coffee Lounge on the top floor. But her investment partner had been Lehman Brothers, and the restaurant concept died with the firm. In the mean time, Brown has spent tens of thousands of dollars of taxes on the building, which still lies vacant and boarded up.

Now, finally, Brown says he has another live one. A new tenant has signed a lease, subject to financing, and plans a sit-down Asian and Indian tapas restaurant called EC12—at 10,000 square feet and over 300 seating capacity, it’ll be the biggest place for miles. He’s optimistic that his bank will sign off, but considering the disappointments he’s has already, there’s no certainty in anything. Even the frustration of a community that’s been waiting for years to see the place developed counts for nothing when it comes to getting a loan.

“In the boom times it did,” Brown tells Housing Complex. “Right now, it's just straight economics. They don't care what your network is.”

Meanwhile, ever since the news of the lease leaked out on a neighborhood listserv, Brown says he’s been getting calls from politicians wanting to position themselves in the middle of EC12’s eventual opening. (Witness Sala Thai, the mini-chain in Petworth that brought out Mayor Adrian Fenty and Councilmembers Jim Graham and Muriel Bowser).

Who’s been calling?

“Everybody. Anybody who's running right now,” Brown says. “Everybody wants to be part of it, because if it's successful, they want to be part of that success.”

Anything but a dry cleaner! (Lydia DePillis)

ANC 5C Commissioner John Salatti is circulating a petition in a last-ditch effort to convince Yong Choe, who bought the corner building at 1821 1st Street last October, to turn it into anything other than a dry cleaners (since there's another dry cleaners just a hop skip away). It reads:

Although we definitely appreciate the owners’ efforts to rehabilitate a long-vacant building and put it back into useful service, we do not support the opening of a second dry cleaning establishment. This area needs a variety of services that we do not have currently and which we as neighbors would support heartily. These services include sit-down, full-service restaurants, boutiques, stationery and card stores, consignment shops, electronics stores, child-care centers, hardware stores, bakeries, delicatessens, diners, pet grooming establishment, vet clinic, bank, etc. These are businesses that we want, that we need, and that we will patronize. We are not likely to patronize another dry cleaning establishment.

The effort, now at 75 signatories, may be too late–all the construction permits had been issued by April, and construction is already well advanced on the cheery lavender-painted building. There's always boycotts, though.

(Photo by Darrow Montgomery)

On a breezy Saturday afternoon, the only sounds in the Big Bear Café at 1700 1st Street NW in Bloomingdale are the tapping of laptops and some hushed conversation, with the occasional shout of a finished sandwich or coffee order from the counter. Ceiling fans whirr overhead. Large open windows make it feel like an open patio, with people spilling out of the café onto the sidewalk.

Shortly after 3 p.m., a group of teens poke their heads in, scoping the serene scene. Suddenly, three of them dart to the counter. One grabs the tip jar. All three race out the open door and down the street. Two patrons jump up and give chase, but no matter; the boys are faster and quickly disappear around a corner.

The pursuers walk back, frustrated. Lenora Yerkes, working the register, hugs them, and is consoled by other patrons. It’s not so much the money in the jar as the feeling of shattered peace and trust. Because that’s the kind of place the Big Bear is: Staffers lent out shovels to neighbors during February’s snowstorms. Since opening in 2007, the café has hosted poetry readings, friendly barista competitions, and champagne breakfasts for people who want to watch the sun rise.

But the tip-jar snatching was a reminder that the Big Bear is still very much alone in the immediate neighborhood, where even after a decade of steady gentrification, the retail landscape remains largely defined by liquor stores and carry-outs. And, in recent weeks, something else has upended Big Bear’s tranquility. Owner Stu Davenport decided to apply for a liquor license.
For all the fanfare that followed the first bonafide sit-down restaurant to open in Ward 8—an IHOP—the fact that Ward 5 is similarly underserved has gone largely unnoticed. Davenport’s plan for an expanded Big Bear menu, including beer, wine and specialty cocktails, would finally pop that cork.

Naturally, the neighbors are worried about getting drenched. “You open up Pandora’s box,” complains Ed Jones, who lives across the street from the cafe. “You open up one bar here,” he says, strolling past several empty storefronts along 1st Street later that afternoon, “and you have a whole lot of bars along this strip here. I’m sure that Adams Morgan wasn’t like that originally. It doesn’t take much to interrupt the pseudo-peace of the neighborhood.”

Davenport, a general contractor who purchased the two-story painted brick building for $400,000 in 2006, has been running the gauntlet of local community groups in recent weeks, campaigning for their support of his expansion plans.

“The idea is to create an environment that’s responsible, that I would want to live next to, and have it be financially viable to stay open,” he calmly told members of the Eckington Civic Association on Tuesday. “And one of the main ways to do that is to expand our menu, and one of the things that we want to add to that menu is alcohol.”

Several elderly ladies in the audience exchanged knowing looks.

Davenport is getting used to the glares.

In early May, he formally brought his plans for alcohol service before the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission 5C. Since Davenport himself is a commissioner, Big Bear employee Yerkes made the case on his behalf, seeking a stipulated license that would allow the cafe to serve alcohol while its official application to the city’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA) is being processed.

The room in St. George’s Church that night was packed with Big Bear supporters. It was a central casting image of the new, comparatively white, Bloomingdale; many thumbing their mobiles throughout the proceedings. They spoke impassionedly of how going to the café had brought the community together, and all they wanted was to be able to go get a glass of wine in the evening, too. Someone in the back held up hastily scribbled signs reading “BIG BEAR YES WE CAN.”

Under pressure from commissioners, Yerkes proferred 600 letters of support from nearby residents, and she claimed to have notified all of the immediate neighbors of Big Bear’s ambitions. But she apparently missed a few. Two detractors stood up to protest, arguing that an alcohol-serving Big Bear would make nearby parking impossible, bring trash and noise, and attract thieves seeking to take advantage of tipsy rubes. The commission tabled the vote, and Davenport began negotiating a voluntary agreement with neighbors that would potentially limit his hours of operation.

“There’s a misconception that if I get 600 people to sign, that constitutes a preponderance of support,” observes Bloomingdale Civic Association president Robert Brannum. “ABRA responds to protests, not shouts of hosanna.”

The quality of life concerns seemed to underscore a deeper fear: a sense that Big Bear’s alcohol program would drag the neighborhood backwards. Before the spot was a café, it was Big Bear Market, which dispensed alcohol just like Sunshine Liquors, still operating across the street.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s black people on a corner drinking beer, or whether it is young white folks on the corner drinking wine out of a pretty glass—it doesn’t matter who’s drinking it, or what it looks like, I don’t want it on my block” says Tracey Campfield, who moved to the area in 1998 (and, like nearly all Big Bear detractors, is African-American). “I have fought the good fight, with drug dealers, and dirty alleys, and rats in the alley, and people drinking on the corners...I don’t want to fight that fight again.”

ANC Commissioner John Salatti, among Big Bear’s biggest supporters, dismisses that fear as irrational. “Stuart turned that market, which was a hellhole, into something nice,” Salatti says. “Now, all of a sudden, him having that option turns us back into the drug-dealing, crack-smoking, 40-ounce land of 1990 or 2000?”

To some long-term residents, Davenport is only piggy-backing on their hard work to improve the neighborhood. “Efforts from people like me, when we came in, of getting rid of the drug dealing that was going on, and getting rid of the theft, made it possible for other people like the Big Bear owner to come along in 2004 and say, ‘Hey, this is a viable neighborhood for my home, as well as my business,’” says Eric Woods, who moved to the 100 block of S Street in 1995. “Coming here in 2004, I don’t see that being a pioneer.”

That’s what it felt like, though, to Big Bear co-founder Lana Labermeier. When she and Davenport moved to the neighborhood six years ago, she felt unsafe walking the streets, and got a dog to protect herself. The couple started the café to provide a place for people to gather, and even then dealt with accusations that they were gentrifying the neighborhood.

“A lot of these same old-time residents felt that this was a place in the neighborhood that seemed to be attracting these young white kids,” she says. “The Big Bear was blamed for being the cause of it. It was the easiest thing to point to.”

Labermeier says the couple had always planned on one day offering beer and wine. But liquor license battles in nearby neighborhoods provided a preview of what they’d have to go through, and she was scrambling just to keep the café afloat. When the former husband-and-wife team eventually split up last year, Davenport moved forward with the alcohol effort on his own.

“Providing liquor is almost like opening up a second business,” Labermeier says. “I was just too exhausted to think about a whole new endeavor.”

Pat Mitchell, president of the nonprofit group North Capitol Main Streets, worries how the Big Bear debacle may impact future development along 1st Street, which the Urban Land Institute recently recommended as a better corridor to cluster new retail and dining establishments than congested North Capitol Street.

“I think it sends a pretty bad message to the business community, really, whether it’s a restaurant or a coffeeshop or a flowershop,” Mitchell says.

A lot of the hullaboo has to do with the fact that the local ANC has never before dealt with restaurants serving liquor, just retail liquor stores (and, as Salatti points out, the ANC hasn't been particularly zealous in regulating those). Given Ward 5’s lack of eateries, and the large amount of expected development in the area, ANC Commissioner Barrie Daneker is currently collaborating with neighboring ANCs to draft common guidelines for evaluating future applications. As a model, he says he’d like to use the state of Rhode Island, where his father uncle was the state liquor commissioner.

Of course, there are working models a lot closer to home: Prolific restaurateur Joe Englert found the structure quite accomodating when pursuing his vast plans for nightlife on H Street NE.

“ANC 6A is a refreshing place to do business because they research a subject and applicants before they jump to conclusions,” says Englert. “Business owners are treated like adults not would-be criminals....Protestants have to substantiate claims and objections and are questioned just as vigorously as applicants.”

Even the arbiters of the process want to see ANC 5C get a proper sit-down restaurant. ABRA community resource officer Cynthia Simms was called to last week’s ANC meeting to better explain the process—but ended up giving her opinion as well: “I promised my director I was not going to say it, but I can’t help myself. I live in Ward 7, and I would die for a restaurant over there where we are! I just would.”

[Big Bear Café owner Stuart Davenport took a more active role in this week's meeting. Please excuse the shaky footage, I'm still getting used to this video thing.]

Last week, the debate over Big Bear Café’s application for a restaurant liquor license in Bloomingdale exploded into the open, with heated discussion at a meeting of ANC 5C that ultimately resulted in the vote being deferred until this week’s monthly meeting.

Both supporters and opponents showed up in force again last night at Catholic University, anticipating a decision. But amid more debate and confusion over Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration procedure, action was pushed off again, pending further discussion of a voluntary agreement between the Café and immediate neighbors.

Over the last week, Café owner and ANC commissioner Stuart Davenport met with nearby residents and hammered out a draft voluntary agreement, which would confine the restaurant’s hours and activities (and, Davenport hopes, avert a protest down the line). But more community members at the meeting expressed a desire to weigh in, and so a timeframe of two weeks was set to arrive at a resolution, before the ANC votes on June 15th. In addition, the Café will need to obtain a zoning exception in order to operate as a restaurant in an R-4 residential area.

The decision to postpone a vote came largely as a result of clarification from ABRA community resource officer Cynthia Simms, who said it would be “premature” to vote on a stipulated license before the Café’s license had been accepted by the ABC Board. A 45-day stipulated license, which allows an establishment to serve liquor during the application period, can only be granted with the ANC’s approval—but can only go into effect after the would-be restaurant has posted the red notice placards indicating that its application is undergoing review.

To some ANCs, this process is old hat—6B, which contains H Street NE, grants stipulated licenses regularly. But in an area that still has no alcohol-serving restaurants, ABRA procedure proved mystifying.

“Are we setting a precedent here?” asked one audience member. “Has this ever been done before?”

“It’s not anything new,” Simms assured him. “It’s been going on for years. It’s actually the law.”

In the mean time, Commissioner Barrie Daneker told the audience, Ward 5 ANCs are coming together to craft common guidelines for how they’ll deal with the flood of new license applications they anticipate with all the new development coming to the area. “In the next five years, they will be coming like gangbusters, like a freight train,” Daneker said.

There was some consternation in the audience over the continued postponement. The biggest applause line of the evening came from Commissioner Gigi Ransom, who questioned those who would protest the Big Bear so vehemently without applying similar scrutiny to problem liquor stores.

“The extent of the protest that I’m hearing here for a restaurant that is known is your community, the person lives in the community, the community basically supports it—I have not seen where y’all have been protesting that huge congregation that’s on the corner of Florida and North Capitol,” Ransom said. “You protest one business, and not look at another one that’s really having an adverse impact on your community right now.”