On Saturday, members of Occupy DC—sort of, given that the action wasn't approved in a General Assembly—snuck into the vacant Franklin School at 13th and K Street NW, protesting the fact that it had been unused since the city closed a homeless shelter there in 2008. Before they were hauled out, one told me that [...]
At 2:00 p.m. this afternoon, an indeterminate number of people entered the historic Franklin School at 13th and K Street NW to protest the 2008 closure of a homeless shelter in the building. As of this posting, police are still trying to figure out how to oust them. Watch a livestream here.
The building has been [...]
It might have been doomed from the start: The D.C. Court of Appeals today issued a final denial to the homeless men who charged that the closure of the shelter at the Franklin School in 2008 was illegal and unconstitutional.
In their case, homeless advocates argued that the shelter's inhabitants had been denied their due process [...]
2010 was a big year for development in the District.
Capital markets unfroze, allowing a slew of stalled projects to break ground. Large empty spaces in the architecturally uninspired NoMa and Capitol Riverfront business improvement districts finally started to fill out. A Web-savvy smart growth constituency became a force in planning and politics, and car-centric suburbs [...]
If you've noticed more men sleeping on the streets lately in Columbia Heights–despite the bitter cold–it's probably because the place they'd have stayed for the last couple of decades, La Casa shelter on Irving Street, has been closed for over two months now. With the help of public interest lawyer Jane Zara, a few of [...]
At this point, after having received one viable bid in response to its RFP for redeveloping the landmarked Franklin School at 13th and K Street NW as a luxury hotel, the City Council could still vote to get it off the books. But it would be difficult to claim any degree of community support for [...]
To a large extent, it seems like we've gotten to the point in Still Mayor Adrian Fenty's first and last term at which no more development decisions can be made, given that Almost Mayor Vince Gray might decide something completely different. Such is the case with the Stevens School, which was recently yanked from multi-family [...]
If the Fenty Administration doesn't make a decision on who'll get to develop the Franklin School on 13th and K Streets NW soon, it may be up to a Vince Gray administration. If so, we know what the chairman would prefer: At a meet-and-greet in Cleveland Park on Tuesday, he said that the University of [...]
It's been almost two years since the city shut down a homeless men's shelter at the Franklin School on 13th and K Streets NW. Advocates sued, and the case has since wound its way through the D.C. Superior Court–a request for an injunction to re-open the shelter was denied–as well as the D.C. Court of [...]
The redevelopment of the Franklin School downtown is starting to feel like a turf war. Every faction has a fair argument to make about why the place should fit their vision:
First, there are the homeless advocates crying "Reopen Franklin Shelter Now." (That is, in fact, the name of their campaign.) And since the Franklin School was [...]
