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 sight: Dozens of District school buildings have been decommissioned over the years as the city’s population of young people has shrank. Those buildings have found new life as condos, nonprofit offices, or homeless shelters.

The Buchanan School, though, is neither abandoned nor finding new life.

For the last 13 years, the property has been the domain of Walter Boek, an elderly ex-professor with the best intentions. The interior is brilliantly clean and well-maintained, but also oddly antique; chandeliers hang from the ceilings on the first floor and faded paintings grace the hallways. Boek’s organization is called the International Graduate University, and indeed, there are the trappings of an academic institution: A bulletin board with reminders of tuition and theses due, an admissions office where students are processed.

It’s not by any means, however, a normal university. A few classes take place there in the evenings, making use of one or two rooms at any given time. Boek has failed several times to attain an educational license from the District, and now the city is suing to recover nearly $400,000 in property taxes, saying an unlicensed school shouldn’t be considered a nonprofit entitled to an exemption.

Boek, an anachronistic presence hobbling around the property pulling weeds in a full suit, is pretty sure it’s all just a vendetta waged by people who covet his land, which is now assessed at $10.7 million—nearly seven times what he bought it for in 1998—and right next to a Safeway. (That seemed to be news to the usual development suspects, several of whom say they aren’t angling for the property.) The neighborhood is almost wholly set against him, and Boek—who declines to give his age, but was old enough to get a masters degree in 1948—is stuck in a defensive crouch.

“There are people who wanted to have this property, tear down the buildings, and put up houses,” he says. “We aren’t interested in selling, but there have been people who would like to have it.”

* * *

The way Boek tells it, the National Graduate University—it became the “International Graduate University” in 2009—started out in 1967 with some high ideals. Founded by a former deputy of President Harry Truman, it ran programs in management and human service while based in Arlington. Boek’s two books, published in the early 1990s by the university’s College of Democracy, are basic primers on the democratic system. He says stacks of them have been sent to Zambia recently to help set up a government there (though finding independent confirmation of this and some of Boek’s other claims isn’t easy).

When the Control Board made the city sell off dozens of school properties in the late ’90s, Boek came in as the highest bidder for the Buchanan School site, and put millions into new roofs, windows, and heating systems. How does he pay for it all? Boek has a deep-pocketed board—an executive vice president of the mining firm Alcoa Inc., for example—and the organization has built up a small nest egg. The school’s most recent tax filings claim very little in the way of donations or tuition revenue, but report a few hundred thousand dollars a year in investment income on several million dollars’ worth of stocks.

As a remnant of its roots in political science, IGU used to teach liberal arts classes, and in 2006 was certified to issue masters degrees. But the District revoked the provisional license a year later, saying Boek had failed to report on the school’s activities. Since then, the campus has hosted a hodgepodge of vocational programs, like a course in construction, and another for substance abuse counselors. Mayor Vince Gray’s administration took an interest in a janitorial program for homeless veterans (though Office of Veterans Affairs director Matt Cary says that so far only two out of the 13 people to be awarded certificates have found jobs). Three years ago, Boek invited the unfunded, all-volunteer H.O.P.E. Project, an information technology training program, to use classrooms at the school when a student got robbed while walking to its first location in Anacostia.

“We call it home,” says H.O.P.E. Project founder Ray Bell, who teaches young adults how to work computer help desks. “It’s definitely more than space, it’s a home away from home.”

The campus’ vast, empty buildings could be home to a lot more programs like Bell’s. The problem is, Boek is very selective about who he allows to use them. He won’t let groups rent space, which he fears might undermine his nonprofit status, and only allows a few veterans-oriented groups to host functions there for free. Boek requires programs to become part of the university, funneling all of their money through the school’s treasurer.

“Most of them have their egos involved, and they can’t come here unless they become a university program,” Boek says, showing me a thick folder of rejected letters and emails from local schools, churches, and nonprofits that wanted to use his buildings. “We aren’t renting space, and we are not allowing people to do things here that are not ours. Except the Chinese,” he notes, describing a group of officials who come once in a while to learn about the American system of government. (The Dalai Lama has visited as well.) Boek claims there’s a police office in the building, but both the Metropolitan Police Department and Capitol Police deny having one there.

Sometimes Boek isn’t entirely in control of what happens on his grounds. The American Legion, for example, waltzed in to set up a post without his permission; they say someone connected with the University told them it would be OK. “That’s a fluke,” Boek says. “On Tuesday I came up, for some reason, and saw all this furniture. They came in at night, and they were told they could.” So they stayed.

Despite the very small number of people who actually use his buildings, Boek derives tremendous satisfaction from those who do. On an evening when a H.O.P.E. Project class was in session, Boek tells me for the third time about a graduate who had recently landed a $46,000 job.

“Some of them are on welfare. But they won’t be, when they’re through,” he says, smiling in wonder at their progress. “My goodness, many of these people are deprived individuals, they are maladjusted to society, you know? And look at what happened to them! It’s so nice. It makes me just happy. I wish we could run more than one of those courses, but we have to have very qualified people to do it.”

* * *

Boek, whose massive office is lined with snapshots of himself and assorted notables, might be good at making friends in high places (or at least creating the appearance of a connection). But he started making enemies of nearby residents from the get-go.

“I knew from the minute I met Dr. Boek that he was a bad neighbor,” says WTOP reporter Mark Segraves, who used to live down the street. Another neighbor, Peter Theil, remembers Boek asking residents what they’d like to see happen at the school when he bought the building—and then ignoring what they suggested.

“He and his wife took a picture of our group, and put it up on the wall,” Theil says. “We never heard back from him on any of that stuff. Nobody heard back, as far as I know.”

A string of offenses followed. Boek declined a neighborhood request to turn on his outdoor lights at night in the still-dodgy neighborhood. According to Segraves, he tried to get John “Peterbug” Matthews, a beloved neighborhood fixture who runs a shoe repair academy, evicted by getting then-Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) to send a letter asking the Department of the Interior to take back a piece of land on the university’s block that the District controls and has leased to Matthews. When Boek proposed a charter school for at-risk youth, the neighborhood went to war—mistrusting the operator Boek brought in to run it—and the application was denied.

Boek also antagonized the local political establishment. When D.C. Councilmember Tommy Wells was on the school board, Boek accused him of trying to exact a bribe in exchange for smoothing the way for the university’s license application. Wells says he was simply trying to convince Boek to host a charter school that had lost its building for one year, and reacts with unusual ire when Boek’s name comes up.

“He does nothing for the community,” Wells snaps. “He’s sitting on that building. The bushes are overgrown, the area’s dangerous. He’s a hostile occupier. He does not help with the families and the kids. He is not available, and that building is hardly used at all…the guy creeps me out.”

As of late, the neighbors have started playing hardball. Segraves, Theil, and a few others put together the documentation to call into question the university’s nonprofit status, and the Office of the Attorney General initiated legal proceedings for back taxes on the property in 2010—along with taxes on Boek’s house in Palisades, which the university has owned since 1972. The university calls the decision arbitrary and capricious, and the case is in mediation.

Through all of it, Boek’s high-powered board has been pretty hands-off. The chairman for the last two years, longtime District lawyer Clinton Chapman, says he first became aware of the university when Boek posthumously inducted Chapman’s wife into the Democracy Hall of Fame. Mostly, though, he lets Boek run the school’s affairs—including fundraising—even though there isn’t the money to pay Boek a salary. (The most recent tax filing lists $48,000 worth of compensation and benefits, but doesn’t say who’s paid what.) If the District wins its suit, someone will have to bail the school out.

“We’ll just have to pay it,” Chapman says. “Somebody will have to pay it, or lose it.”

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

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

Specialty as it stands.

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 as offices for hospital staff and the landlord.

That piece will be a lot more intensively used, if a plan by IBG Partners works out. The developer has secured a 75-year lease on the southern chunk, and plans to convert it into as many as 140 apartments, while the hospital part of the building goes about its business as before.

Their first step is historic preservation review, since a piece of the original 1928 building is a contributing part of the Capitol Hill historic district. According to IBG's Scott Fuller, the old part will be restored to its original condition, with all the ugly 1970s wrapping torn down. A 1950s addition will get bay windows going up three stories. The whole project is contained within the footprint of the existing building, with the exception of a small addition that won't be visible from the street and won't add overall square footage. Finally, they'll be adding parking underneath the building, with the number of spaces depending on the number of apartments they're able to fit inside (the floorplans below represent the highest-density case).

There's a concept presentation for the Historic Preservation Review Board after the jump.

To the barricades! (Nick DeSantis)

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 the river and to the city as a whole.”

Faced with petition drives and squads of citizen lobbyists, councilmembers plead with residents to accept the changes, saying that political boundaries don’t have much of an impact on how most people live their lives.

“It is not the end of the world,” the D.C. Council chairman insists. “We will still have the same alliances. We will still have the same friendships… All of us need to be one D.C.”

That was 2001.

Then as now, the city was going through the Census-mandated process of redrawing its political boundaries, and Wards 7 and 8—having lost population in proportion to the rest of the city over the previous decade—needed to gain territory. Then-Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp saw the east-of-the-river pieces of Ward 6 as the most logical places to transfer, incensing residents who felt that having a ward span the Anacostia River was essential for the city’s civic life. They said the same thing ten years before that, in 1991, when then-Ward 6 Councilmember Harold Brazil raised a tidal wave of resistance to a plan that would absorb historic Anacostia into Ward 8. That time, he won.

In 2011, the most pitched battle is again on the banks of the Anacostia, with Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells seeking to protect his southern and eastern flanks from encroachment by even more shrunken Wards 7 and 8. Current and former residents of Ward 6 have responded by mobbing community meetings and rallies and deluging members of the redistricting committee with calls and emails, demanding that greater Capitol Hill be kept together.

To hear them talk, ward boundaries are ten-foot-high brick walls over which residents can’t socialize, shop, or coordinate community activities. At a town hall a couple weeks ago, a woman who had moved to eastern Capitol Hill from Kingman Park—which was redistricted into Ward 7 last time around—started tearing up as she imagined the prospect of being kicked out of Club 6 yet again. “Nobody ever came to see us. We were left alone,” she said, of her time in Ward 7. “It’s so frustrating that you want to do that to us.”

This decennial anguish, of course, belies the fact that ward boundaries don’t actually mean much, unless you’re redrawing them. Historically, they’ve dictated residential parking zones, but the council is working to change that. According to Washington D.C. Association of Realtors president Suzanne Des Marais, there’s no discernable affect on property values from being in one ward or another. And meanwhile, the borders that really do matter—historic districts, police districts, and school districts—aren’t affected one bit.

So why does anyone care what ward they’re in?

Most fundamentally, it’s about the virtues of the person who represents you. That’s what you voted for, after all—unless, of course, you’re among the 78 percent of District residents who didn’t care enough about municipal representation to turn out for last September’s primary election, a figure low enough to raise the question of whether anyone cares what ward they’re in, or knows. D.C. is a city of neighborhoods, and that’s the main geographic layer residents identify with.

Still, your ward councilmember can be the ultimate level of appeal for disputes that need resolving, roads that need fixing, and taxes that need abating—constituent service, after all, is the lifeblood of local politics. (Naturally, councilmembers became a lot less useful when earmarks were banned).

Which means many of the arguments from Ward 6 residents for staying in Tommy territory had to do with how attentive he’s been to their daily needs, and how councilmembers Marion Barry or Yvette Alexander might be less eager to oblige.

“I call up Tommy three or four times, he gets it done like that,” one man told redistricting committee member Phil Mendelson at a community meeting. “Two or three days, no problem. Sell me on the services that I’m going to get from Ward 7.”

That’s fair enough. But Wells knows that his constituents’ loyalty—or their aversion to the alternatives—wouldn’t go far with those in charge of redrawing the map. After all, the answer to the complaint, “I don’t like my councilmember,” is the same no matter what ward you’re in: Work to vote them out. So along with parking issues, he asked them to keep their dislike for Barry or Alexander out of their lobbying, and focus instead on their feeling of togetherness. “I really think it’s who you identify with,” Wells said. “You don’t identify as being a suburb of that neighborhood. You identify as being contiguous with these neighborhoods.”

But what does that mean?

You identify with the places you shop and eat. Maybe you spend lots of time on Barracks Row and H Street, and would like to have some small measure of influence over how it develops, perhaps through activity on an ANC. But say you live 10 blocks away, and all of a sudden don’t belong to Ward 6. Will you all of a sudden be completely voiceless? Hyperlocal government should consider the views of those within a reasonable radius, even if their address isn’t on the right side of the line. If government agencies don’t, business and civic associations are much more forgiving.

You identify with the school your kids go to. Wells used the popular Eastern High School and Eliot Hine Middle School as rallying points, saying that the schools in Ward 6 had developed a unique working relationship with each other that would dissolve if they got booted off his turf. But no matter how the political lines get drawn, no voter’s kids will be forced to switch schools. Can Wells possibly have that much more influence than the school chancellor’s choice of principals, or the degree of parental involvement? And besides, shouldn’t clusters of schools be working across ward boundaries, anyway?

Perhaps your concern lies with something that isn’t built yet, like the 67-acre mixed-use neighborhood that’s supposed to rise on the site of D.C. General Hospital and the buildings around it. Residents of eastern Capitol Hill have pushed for development there for years, and fear all that work will be wasted if they’re suddenly no longer in the same ward. But whether development moves forward has much more to do with the priorities of the mayor and the guy who chairs the Committee on Economic Development, and attractiveness of the site for financing and tenants, than the ward councilmember; development follows the demographics of a neighborhood, and whether the people behind it think they can make money, not the politician who represents it.

Most of all, though, you identify with the people you say “hi” to on the street, the church you attend, the parks where you picnic, the friends’ houses you visit. As much as Wells has worked to foster a sense of community, those bonds know no ward boundaries—but they do tend break down more along racial and socioeconomic lines. And a lurking presence in every redistricting discussion is the degree to which people don’t want to have anything to do with the other people over there.

That means that like many disputes in D.C., there’s a race and class element to the ward fight—even if it doesn’t fall out the way many of them do. Gladys Mack, the ANC commissioner from Rosedale who is protesting the plan to put her district in Ward 7, admits this: She’s the only black person on the commission, and says that redistricting would put her mostly black constituents into an almost entirely black ward, which does nothing for racial understanding.

“We have a mixture. It’s not all one view,” she says, of her neighborhood. “Whites don’t learn from whites, blacks don’t learn from blacks. Poor don’t learn from poor, rich don’t learn from rich.”

—

If there is any positive value to havingdiverse groups in one ward, asking people on both sides of the river to work together can’t hurt. That’s what residents of Chevy Chase found out after being redistricted against their will from posh, white Ward 3 into predominantly middle-class, African American Ward 4, which is mostly on the other side of Rock Creek Park. ANC Commissioner Gary Thompson says it’s been “refreshing” to stretch past that historically inviolate social boundary. And despite the apocalyptic rhetoric of a decade ago, the only way to know which parts of the Barnaby Woods neighborhood are in Ward 3 or in Ward 4 while wandering the area is to look at whose campaign signs are posted.

The redistricting committee tried to build some connections, by putting enough of Ward 6 into Ward 7 that whoever represents Ward 7 won’t be able to ignore the turf west of the river. That seems like a better solution than annexing pieces of Ward 5, which have even more green space and fewer bridges to cross from one side of the river to another.

Still, those about to be redistricted are dead-set against it, despite Mendelson’s protestations that they shouldn’t be. Which raises the question: Should the line-drawers care? Should simply demonstrating a desire to be in one ward or another be enough to get you there, even if it’s based on affinity for a given councilmember, instead of more nebulous arguments about neighborhood cohesiveness?

Well, yes and no. After all, during redistricting, councilmembers get to choose whom they represent. In a democracy, people are supposed to be able to choose who represents them. Obviously, the law itself is a built-in check on redistricting-as-popularity-contest. The more people who move to a given ward, the more territory that ward will have to lose next time around.

Maybe instead of balancing wards as perfectly as possible, the committee should try to move as little territory as necessary to keep wards about the same population. Why split more people up from their elected officials than required by law? Equal representation is important, of course, but only to a point: Practically speaking, having more or less of a fraction of a councilmember’s attention matters a whole lot less than being suddenly represented by someone you never voted for.

But should the groups that come out and yell loudest to stay in one ward or another be obeyed? Not if they make arguments like the ones I heard most often during meeting after meeting after meeting. It’s nice to feel like part of the club, but in this case, membership matters a lot less than it seems.

Altus declined to give more details until plans are more fully developed (if they've bought the buildings, which had been on the market for $3.7 million, the transaction hasn't shown up in city records yet). But word is that they're planning to use the ground floor of the Church building as a parking garage, so we'll see how that flies with the Historic Preservation Review Board.

Apartment complex, or prison? (Darrow Montgomery)

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 SE, south of Pennsylvania Avenue. The latest incident happened in November: A young woman was walking with her groceries from Harris Teeter when a young man punched her in the face, breaking her jaw.

During the subsequent heated community meeting, the eight-foot tall, prison-grade wrought iron fence that surrounds the complex emerged as a focus. But where Potomac Gardens residents once opposed the fence, now it’s wealthier neighbors who want it down.

“The fence creates an issue for them,” says Kirsten Oldenburg, the Advisory Neighborhood Commission representative for the area directly west of the complex. “I think it affects their property values. It makes it very obvious that they’re living across from some kind of gated community.”

Others have more philosophical concerns.

“It’s like a mental divide. It’s us versus them,” says Erik Holzherr, owner of a cocktail bar near the Potomac Avenue Metrorail station. “We’re all part of the same community, but that gate...” he trails off, with a pained expression. “It looks like a moat. It looks like a castle.”

Last week, Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells convened a meeting on the subject at Tyler Elementary School. He used to live across the street from Potomac Gardens, and remembered homeowners having much more normal interactions with residents before the city fenced the property two decades ago to help police contain a burgeoning crack epidemic.

D.C. Housing Authority Director Adrienne Todman seemed open. “It is very possible that the fence has outlived its time,” she said, as diplomatically as possible.

But when the time came for Gardens residents to speak, the group—all women, some with children in tow—turned the meeting’s premise on its head. “Basically, a lot of people want the fence to stay,” said Resident Council president Melvina Middleton. “It’s not a jail at all, it’s what keeps us safe!” said one lady, explaining how it kept kids from running into the street, while keeping troublemakers out.

Aquarius Vann-Ghasri—an imposing woman who serves on the Housing Authority’s board of commissioners—even offered a withering sociological critique of fence detractors, asking point blank: How is their fence any different from a wealthy enclave’s? “When I enter my gated community, I feel like Sheba,” she said.

Middleton is surveying residents to see what everybody thinks, not just those who make it to public forums. But unless there’s a substantial majority for removing the fence, it’s unlikely anything will happen. Most likely, the two communities will just grow further and further apart, as Capitol Hill gets richer and denser, while Potomac Gardens remains cut off from the changes going on around it.

—

Nineteen years ago, residents weren’t exactly crying out for a fence. When Sharon Pratt Kelly’s administration installed the barriers in 1991, it took 45 police officers to quell a violent negative reaction. “It’s disrespectful. We aren’t animals. We don’t need to be caged,” one resident told The Washington Post.

Security then was much more stringent. The 21 buildings were divided into four quadrants with separate entrances, all of them guarded. Lights and cameras were installed, and drug dealers were evicted from the complex. Kids started calling it “Baby Lorton,” after the Virginia prison. The resident council president favored the new security measures, but saw them as temporary, given how inconvenient they made everyday living.

As the Post tells it, Kelly was vindicated, at least in the short term: Drug arrests declined dramatically after the fence went up. But much of the drug activity just shifted to other areas, and assaults and robberies remained high—to the point in 1995 that Marion Barry’s administration hired the Nation of Islam on an emergency contract to restore order.

After that, life slid into an uneasy stasis. The compound became less of a war zone, and the Housing Authority removed some internal fences to make the place easier to manage. (Meanwhile, fences went down at other complexes where they were installed; Potomac Gardens’ barrier is now the only one of its kind in the city.) After a big drug bust last June, most deals now happen outside the fence; residents see cars with Maryland and Virginia plates pulling off the freeway, conducting their business, then peeling out again.

Police, though aware of the neighborhood divisions the fence creates, aren’t quite ready to let it go. According to Housing Authority Police Chief William Pittman, they’ve barred 450 people from Potomac Gardens, more than any other public housing complex, and the fence is critical to keeping them out. “How do we stop all these people?” he asks rhetorically. “I don’t have the answer.”

Except the fence doesn’t seem to be doing a particularly good job of keeping anyone out—gates are wide open, and the guard posts unmanned. It’s just unfriendly for anyone on the outside looking in. “A lot of people don’t want to come visit us,” says resident Melinda Wheeler, who’s lived there since 2006. “You tell your company to come, and they don’t know what side to come in on, because all they see is fence.”

For a visitor, walking around the complex is disorienting, with no continuous sightlines and barriers everywhere—but to the young people who grew up there, it’s like a big familiar playpen, and nearly all of those I spoke with expressed fear at the idea that the fences might go away. “Keep ’em up,” a 12-year-old boy responded unhesitatingly, when I asked some kids what they thought about the fence. Why? I asked. A younger girl meshes her fingers. “Altercations,” she explains. “A lot of unwanted visitors.”

—

Why have so many residents of Potomac Gardens grown to embrace the bars that surround them? A new exhibit about fences in American life at the Silver Spring Civic Building, “Between Fences,” says walling yourself off to outsiders is a veritable piece of the American Dream: “The home fence is a symbol of self-sufficiency and stability,” it notes. “The fence stands for security, order, and privacy in a country that seems to offer these things to anyone willing to work for them.”

Maybe not in public housing, though. “There are ways to design subtle devices that barricade without reflecting fear,” wrote Neal Katyal, now the U.S. solicitor general, in a 2002 Yale Law Review paper, suggesting arches or landscaping instead. “Gated communities are a byproduct of public disregard of architecture, not a sustainable solution to crime.”

Last year, students from the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate school of city and regional planning produced a report on Potomac Gardens, characterizing the gates as a serious obstacle. “This fence creates a clear line of demarcation and separation, and portrays a hostile message to both the residents and the surrounding neighbors,” the authors wrote. “These issues inhibit physical and social integration.”

But no matter how strong the academic consensus against security fences, or how much neighbors dislike having something that looks like a prison across the street, the fences aren’t coming down unless the residents demand it—and for many, it’s become a comforting barrier to the rest of the world.

Just ask Howard Campbell, 24, who estimates that he’s been living in Potomac Gardens for the last 15 years, and most days prefers not to leave the complex at all. “When I’m on the outside of the gates, I feel like I’m someplace else,” he says, his hand on one of the bars. “When I’m inside, I feel like I’m at home.”     CP

Visit the Housing Complex blog every day at washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex. Got a real-estate tip? Send suggestions to ldepillis@washingtoncitypaper.com.

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 City's 92nd Street Y–constantly buzzing with events, and a venue for high-profile speakers who'll draw a crowd (which, if you think about it, doesn't happen as often as it really could in D.C.). Ultimately, the Center will be open from 7:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m., with classrooms, rentable event space, a soundproof music practice room, a computer lab, and nonprofit offices (potential tenants are touring now). The adjacent old carriage house will also be a cafe, for which the Center needs an operator; a request for proposals is expected soon.

The $12 million project has been some eight years in the making, with funding cobbled together from a buffet of sources: $2 million from the federal government, $5.4 million from the city, $1 million in historic tax credits, $200,000 from the National Capital Bank of Washington, $250 from the Capitol Hill Community Foundation, and $970,000 so far in donations. They need $2 million more to finish–if you want to buy a chunk of fence, they'll name it after you!

A second floor room with the floor halfway finished.

A nonprofit office on the top floor–they're strngely shaped, but cozy.

A window detail–just imagine you're in an old hospital.

The basement

CityBikes is aiming to open by March 1, and seems confident that they can make the location work where others failed. "We've done the math," says Jeff, reached at the Adams Morgan location. "There's definitely room for another bike shop in Capitol Hill." I'd have to agree–Georgetown has three well-established shops within a couple blocks of each other, no reason Southeast couldn't handle a few as well.

The lease should also please Barracks Rowers dismayed at the loss of services to bars and restaurants. When you've got carbon-frame road bikes, who needs a liquor license?

Where, oh where, to put a new barracks? (U.S. Marine Corps)

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 surrounding neighborhood to put its barracks.

That's the tricky position that the Marines have found themselves in over the past several years. Their Bachelor Enlisted Quarters at 8th and I SE, a.k.a. Building 20, is now too cramped—infantrymen now need more gear, making the rooms 25 percent smaller than the military standard. And more importantly, it’s out of compliance with the post-September 11^th security regulations, which require such facilities to be separated from the street—and even any entrance to underground parking—by 82 feet.

Well, turns out it’s a little hard to find space for a 150,000-square-foot facility with a moat of land around it in quickly-developing near Southeast. Sites currently occupied by an elementary school athletic field, public housing complex, and a planned office/apartment development were proposed and quickly rejected. A proposal to locate the barracks on a community garden raised a storm of protest, with even Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton weighing in on behalf of the park.

I’m coming pretty late to this story—JDLand has been covering the Community Integrated Master Plan (CIMP) process for almost a year now—but got up to speed at a forum Tuesday night put on by the Marines to gather input for their next steps. The North Hall of Eastern Market was well-stocked with khaki, supplied with coffee and cookies, and awash in handouts, powerpoints, and display boards. The overall impression was of a Marine Corps on the defensive, attempting to reassure a nervous citizenry that they could find a place without displacing anyone, reminding them that nothing like the CIMP process had been undertaken before.

“We think we’ve been 100% honest, and we want to continue in that building of trust,” said Colonel David Spasojevich.

And just in case the community doubted the need for the relocation of the barracks, Colonel Paul Montanes shamed all skeptics by invoking the specter of terrorism. “Remember, we’re talking about peoples’ sons and daughters,” he said, in somber tones. “Young kids. But we can take care of them, and not adversely affect the community.”

To their credit, rather than simply asking the federal government to take properties through the power of eminent domain, the Marines have decided to play nice. They’ve now written off all public sites, looking instead at private parcels and land they already own. They’re also acquiescing to a demand that no land be taken off the District tax rolls; any new building would continue to be owned privately and leased back to the Marines.

And at this point, Virginia Avenue Park looks safe, since the proposal for the “Exxon site” carefully builds around it. That seems to have placated the park’s defenders, who initially thought their veggies were doomed. “What we were concerned about was that we were facing the marines,” said Sam Fromartz. “And you don’t win against the Marines.”

Barracks Row Main Street favors that site, as well as one right next door known as Square 929, believing that putting the barracks in that vicinity would be more likely to encourage the revitalization of 8^th street below the freeway. The other option is land owned by Marine Barracks Washington at 7th and L Street SE, which would require relocation of the planned Cappers Community Center, long-delayed because of financing.

After the Marines finally do settle on a site, the question becomes: What to do with the old building? Security regulations will allow the Marines to use 25 percent of the space—it’s slated for use by the Marine Institute—and they’ve decided to make the rest available for public use. Residents of 9^th street, directly abutting Building 20, say they’d strongly oppose any street-level retail or restaurant uses there (it’s noisy enough on 8^th Street!).  Some sort of childcare facility is a strong contender, in part because of the need created by 6,000 new employees at the federal Department of Transportation on M Street SE.

The timeline’s still quite leisurely, though. They’ll have to receive Congressional approval to do a public-private partnership for the land, and won’t be issuing a request for proposal for another year. In the mean time, they have the opportunity to contemplate an interesting idea: What does a modern urban barracks look like? Can you imagine a military installation next to a community garden, with street level retail all around the edges? What a step forward from the existing facility, which presents the community with just a blank brick face. That’s something even Montanes can understand.

“I don’t want to cast aspersions on the Navy Yard,” he said, “But when I walk along that brick wall of the Navy Yard, it just makes me angry.”

Concept for Square 929/930, view to the Southeast.

Concept for "Exxon" site, view to the Northwest.

No more or less in demand than usual. (Lydia DePillis)

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 2,000 Democratic staffers will be replaced by Republicans in House, Senate, and Committee offices. Counting the 28 or so retiring Representatives on top of the 63 seats that turned over, we can safely bump the number up to about 2,500. Then think of the effect on private sector jobs, with K Street hiring more Republicans to fit the balance of power in Congress.

With all that job churn, and people moving into and around the District, there must be some effect on the real estate market, right? I asked around, and the answer is: Sort of. A tiny bit. Enough for real estate agents to notice, but not enough to matter.

"You hear this all the time, and my experience is that yes there is an impact, but it's always grossly exaggerated," says realtor Eldad Moraru, who's written a book on D.C. real estate. Even in 2009, when appointees and their staffs in the executive branch turned over, Moraru says there was little effect. And usually, he says, it's impossible to separate from concurrent factors: In another big swing, back in 1994, the market was on the way up anyway.

Plus, as Hounshell Real Estate's Mark Washburn points out, most people at the staff level are probably renters anyway. So property management companies might see more turnover, but that's not something that matters quite as much to the District economy, which benefits from the sales and recordation taxes when property changes hands. Washburn, who runs dccondboutique.com, says elections haven't had more of an impact than things like the $8,000 federal homebuyer tax credit, the growth of agencies like Homeland Security, or even the expansion of a major law firm into the District.

So, there you have it. Even electoral tidal waves don't have much of an impact on the local real estate market–D.C.'s sometimes a bigger town than it seems.

Contested space.

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 blocks to get to their training facilities:

Your emphasis apparently has been on selecting a site in close proximity to the Marine Annex and Barracks Row, a convenient walk for the Marines, whose training is perhaps the most rigorous of all the armed services. Notions of convenience for your Marines should not supersede important community concerns, including consideration of the convenience for the community and the displacement of important community assets.

It's a big lift for Virginia Avenue Park boosters, who met with the Congresswoman in mid-August to make the case for keeping their little scrap of land in cultivation. But speaking of community assets: In lieu of the park, Norton seems to be offering up land long promised for the Capper Community Center. "I must know why the Marines do not propose to build on the empty lot located on 5^th Street, between K and L Streets, which abuts the parking garage next to the Marine Annex building itself," she writes.

The community center has been on hold while the District of Columbia Housing Authority and Capper/Carrollsburg developers struggle to finance the rest of the housing units and office buildings on the gigantic site, which were supposed to then fund construction of the community center. Back in July, the Zoning Commission granted a second extension on their timeline, pushing expected construction back to 2013. But considering the history of that redevelopment, you can bet there would be as many people upset by the Marines taking over that land as there are people upset about the Marines bulldozing a community park.

In a city as dense as D.C., no options are great options.