Posts Tagged ‘Capitol Hill’

School’s Out

From the outside, the former Buchanan School at 13th and D streets SE looks like it’s been abandoned and never put back to use. The massive, four-building campus has no activity during the day, and a few windows lit up at night are the only indication of what goes on inside. It’s not an uncommon [...]

Pillbox Apartments: Part of Capitol Hill’s Specialty Hospital Going Residential

Specialty Hospital of Washington at 8th and Constitution Avenue NE is a weird one: A big office building in the middle of a residential neighborhood, with pretty much nothing going on during the weekends. While the northern half of the building is a nursing facility with 60 beds, the southern half has been lightly used [...]

Ward Wars

There’s a knock-down, drag-out fight inthe Wilson Building over redistricting, and politically active residents are incensed that they’ll be moved from one ward to another.
“For some, this may seem a logical, easy solution,” says a member of one affected Advisory Neighborhood Commission. “I call it racial gerrymandering and believe it is detrimental to east of [...]

Church Flight on Capitol Hill!

Another church building flips! After 1350 Maryland Avenue NE, the Peoples Church on Barracks Row, and 700 A Street NE either went on the market or have sold, the congregation of Mount Joy Baptist Church at 514-518 4th Street SE is lighting out for Prince Georges County. Altus Realty Partners–the same company that's doing 20-condominium [...]

Do Fence Me In: Capitol Hill’s Potomac Gardens isn’t as dangerous as it was, but its gates remain.

It is by now a familiar pattern in gentrifying District neighborhoods: A brutal, unprovoked attack prompts neighborhood outrage and an examination of what might have caused the violence.
In eastern Capitol Hill, those periodic cycles often center around Potomac Gardens, the 352-unit public housing complex that occupies a full city block between 12th and 13th streets [...]

Under Construction: The Hill Center Fills Out

There's only five months to go until the Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital on 10th and Pennsylvania SE is supposed to have its soft opening, and organizers are finally starting to think about how the place might operate when it's all finished.
The model backers are going for is something close to New York [...]

CityBikes Opening Third Location on Barracks Row

Good news, Tommy Wells: Your 'hood is about to get more bikeable. CityBikes, now located in Chevy Chase and Adams Morgan, announced in its newsletter today that it'll be taking over 709 8th Street SE, formerly the home of Capitol Hill Bicycles–they moved down the street to a smaller space–and Metropolitan Bicycles before that.
CityBikes is [...]

Marines, Contrite, Keep Trying to Fit In

It’s not a problem Thomas Jefferson could have foreseen when he identified a site on the southeastern shoreline of the new Capitol for a new military base: That the city would grow so dense, and the security risk to enlisted men so severe, that the Navy would have to find new space in the already-crowded [...]

Are Elections Good for the Real Estate Market?

Every place has its cyclical population trends: Could be the whaling season, or a perfect snow year. In D.C., the cycle is elections, with a biannual shift in who works on the Hill. Some years have a bigger swing than others, though, and this year was a doozy: The Post's Al Kamen estimated that about [...]

Eleanor Holmes: Save the Garden, But Nevermind That Community Center

Missed this one last week: D.C. Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton sent a strongly-worded letter to the Marines objecting to their tentative plans to put new barracks on land currently in use as a community garden and ten-year-old doggie daycare business. The strapping lads and ladies, she wrote, are certainly fit enough to walk a few [...]