Last night, as blogger and ANC Commissioner Kent Boese proposed back in April, ANC 1A voted unanimously to endorse adding "Park View" to the Georgia Avenue-Petworth metro station. In doing so, the neighborhood joins the Capitol Riverfront and NoMa in requesting that their monikers be officially recognized by the Metro map, in advance of a new station naming policy that will determine how these things are decided.

According to Boese, the ultimate name need not include all three geographic designations. There are people, for example, who'd be happy to ditch the "Georgia Avenue" part altogether, given that Georgia Avenue runs roughly half the length of the District and naming a station for it tells you not much about where that station is. The positive good of adding Park View, he says, is that while they've seen significant development north of the station—on the Petworth side, which is also Ward 4—streets to the south haven't improved as quickly, and literally putting Park View on the map might help potential retailers, developers, and restauranteurs look to that area as well.

But that makes this request different from the other proposed station name changes. NoMa and and the Capitol Riverfront have already become widely-known destinations that people need to navigate towards. That was also true of Adams Morgan, when it was added to the Woodley Park metro station. One can't say the same thing of Park View; you mainly go there if you live there. Would adding a neighborhood to a metro station attract business to that neighborhood? Maybe. But then you have to decide to use metro station names as an economic development strategy rather than a wayfinding device, and it's unclear where that path ends.

Photo from flickr user Park View DC.

Stinky no longer?

Jonathan O'Connell reports this morning that Lowe Enterprises, which brought the Sexy Safeway to Mount Vernon Square along with an almost sold-out condo and apartment complex, is hoping to do the same with the long-neglected Stinky Safeway at 3830 Georgia Avenue. If it's as well-designed as CityVista, the planned 210 housing units and new 50,000 square-foot store would be a huge boost to that stretch of Georgia Avenue, which is directly north of the Park Place development above the Georgia Avenue metro stop.

Anything could still happen to that deal. But look at the bigger picture: In a doozy of a rundown on Friday, the Washington Business Journal declared that we are entering a "new golden age for D.C. supermarkets." New Giants, Safeways, Whole Foods stores, and Harris Teeters are in place or on their way to developments across the District, from Tenleytown to the Riverfront (noticeably absent from the list are new locations in Wards 7 and 8, with the exception of the soon-to-open Yes! Organic Market at the Grays). The article doesn't mention the fate of the Secret Safeway at 1800 20th Street, which closed earlier this month, but listserv chatter indicates that the landlord is in negotiations with two up-market grocery stores to replace it (Housing Complex's multiple calls to the leasing agent have gone unreturned).

The one thing you probably won't see coming to D.C. anytime soon: That white whale of D.C. foodies, Wegmans. The Journal article reports that the gourmet grocer requires 120,000 to 140,000 square feet, or 12 to 15 acres, to display its wares. No place in D.C. has the right combination of land and wealthy clientele to make the Wegmans cut.

Webster Gardens, about to get a facelift. (Enterprise Community Partners)

Some feel-good news for Friday, hey? So, there’s a building up on Webster Street in Petworth that has been looking for money to renovate for several years now. Enterprise Community Partners, a national group that’s doing good work to preserve affordable housing east of the river, gave them a small pre-development loan a few years ago to get started, but tight credit markets made finding the rest of the money impossible.

Last October, the Obama administration announced that it would be helping out state housing finance agencies with their liquidity problems, and this January, D.C. was awarded $193 million under the program. Last month, D.C. became the first housing finance agency in the country to close a multi-deal transaction using the federal dollars, patching together $55.8 million in construction costs for three rental buildings in the district.

The 52-unit Webster Gardens, which was built in 1921 as the first garden-style apartment building in the city, will now be the first building in the city—and therefore the country!—to move forward using money that started with legislation all the way back in 2008. The project breaks ground on Monday afternoon, with some city brass and maybe Eleanor Holmes Norton. Expect warm fuzzies.

UPDATE, Saturday 7:20 a.m.: If Mayor Fenty shows up, he'll have had a groundbreaking day. On Monday morning, he's also scheduled to bust out the shovels on another affordable housing project that's gotten federal help: William C. Smith Co.'s Sheridan Terrace in Anacostia, financed through the department of Housing and Urban Development.

The transformation of the intersection of Georgia Ave. and New Hampshire Ave. is almost complete.

On the northeast corner sits the Petworth Metro Station, opened in 1999. The well-regarded Sweet Mango Cafe is directly south ("I want to bathe in this chicken" is a direct quote from Yelp.)  Directly to the west, there are the fancy Park Place apartments, which opened this Spring.

And then just below that, there is, well, a long-empty lot—apparently the former site of a gas station, which closed up in the early 1990s, according to DCmud.

A few years back, development firm Lakritz Adler—which also recently finished this boutique condo building by 12th and U Streets— acquired this "long-vacant, environmentally-contaminated" site, and was able to address the contamination and sign a lease with CVS, according to the group's website. The groundbreaking was held this morning.

According to DCmud, "Construction, not yet begun, is expected to wrap up mid-2010."

100 Bryant St. N.W. in Bloomingdale, which was bid up to
$380,000 in a January Auction.

Back in January, the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) held an auction for some 30 vacant homes and properties around D.C.

Sure, most were slummy—boarded up windows, austere yards, watermarked brick—but buyers recognized the few jewels, and in two cases threw down nearly $400,000.

In total, the properties could have generated up to $4.845 million if all the sales went through. Unfortunately, some didn't.

But today, DHCD announced that it had hired Alex Cooper Real Estate to market four remaining properties. The four properties are:

• 475 Florida Avenue NW (Listing price: $225,000; Shaw)
• 3620 Rock Creek Church Road NW (Listing price: $125,000; Columbia Heights/Petworth)
• 805 7th Street NE (Listing price: $225,000; H Street corridor)
• 627 Keefer Place NW (Listing price: $175,000; Park View)

The Florida Ave. property is not in a bad location, in my opinion. It's near the Shaw-Howard Metro Station, within walking distance from the center of the U Street corridor, and close to Bloomingdale's little charms. It is in need of "extensive rehabilitation" though, according to listing materials.

The Northeast house is also well-situated near H Street, but it's not much of  a home per se. District officials are in the process of demolishing the structure, and are really just selling the "extra deep lot" with room for a two-car garage or carriage house, according to the listing materials.

Image from the Department of Housing and Community Development

I'm trying to be fair and balanced here. I'm really, really trying.

So after weeks of posting about homeless shelter closures and Petworth and Columbia Heights residents rejecting a planned shelter in their neighborhood, I typed up a post entitled "A (Tiny) Bit of Good News for D.C.’s Homeless."

It was about roughly 15 homeless people moving into new, publicly-funded apartments this month.

It kind of felt like praising someone for showing up late—but still arriving. Or missing their deadline, but still completing the work. My co-worker chided me for providing an ounce of good publicity to the D.C. government on this issue. And I have to say—having read this recent article in the Washington Post-–last week's "(Tiny) Bit of Good News" is looking increasingly pathetic.

On Saturday, the Post reported that $11 million in local funding and $9 million in federal funding had been cut from the homeless services budget. Hundreds of homeless people could be facing eviction as a result:

A coalition of homeless service providers that receive city funding released a statement Friday saying that more than 100 families in temporary and transitional shelters run by the Community of Hope and House of Ruth are at risk of being removed if the cuts are not restored. An additional 480 women would face eviction; about half of them are housed by Catholic Charities.

Image by Daquella Manera, Flickr Creative Commons

This story will run in this week's print edition of the Washington City Paper.

Update: Central Union Mission Still Pursuing the Gales School.

In September, representatives with the Central Union Mission went before community members from Petworth and Columbia Heights to explain plans for a big project on Georgia Avenue NW. The mission wants to launch a development with office space plus 37 units of affordable housing for people making between 50 and 80 percent of the area median income.

“Affordable housing” + community groups = jitters.

A rash of questions emerged about just what Central Union Mission had in mind. “The initial concern was that it was going to be low-income housing, basically,” says Columbia Heights ANC Commissioner Lisa Kralovic about one recent meeting. And that initial concern has some roots in local history.

Three years ago, when Central Union Mission announced it wanted to move the homeless shelter it operated from its longtime location on 14th Street NW, near Logan Circle, to the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Newton Place NW, residents said they already had enough social service operations in their backyards.

During spring 2007, Cliff Valenti and five other neighborhood activists from Petworth and Columbia Heights took a little field trip to the leafy Virginia suburbs of Burke and Fairfax, with the goal of meeting with mission board members about the plan.

“For months and months, we tried to meet with their board,” says Valenti, now a local advisory neighborhood commissioner. Requests went ignored, so the group went with the doorstep approach. ”We said, ‘We need to talk to you guys’—and not one of them would talk to us,” he says.

After giving up on the dream of a 150- to 175-bed shelter on Georgia Avenue, the mission focused on the Gales School, an unoccupied city-owned building near Capitol Hill. But that plan hit some roadblocks when the local ACLU affiliate and some other groups sued saying the District was offering Central Union Mission, a religious organization, a less-than-market rate deal on the building..

“Our hope is still the Gales School,” says David Treadwell, executive director for the mission. “We’re not out to seek special favor. We’re going to do the city a big favor by running a shelter.”

Meanwhile on Georgia Avenue, locals kept up the pressure to block more homeless people, or any other group low on the economic totem pole, from coming to the neighborhood.

At some point during a recent ANC meeting, it was mentioned that a family of four with a combined income of $48,000 could move into a unit. “But did that mean that a person who makes $10,000 could move in?” people wondered, according to Kralovic.

The answer was no, and that seemed to appease the skeptics.

“Once it was much clearer what kind of incomes people were going to have, I think that it was OK,” says Kralovic. The ANC unanimously approved Central Union Mission’s latest plan.

Image by Intangible Arts, Flickr Creative Commons

I guess there aren't enough development stories to go around in this town! As I was reporting on the Central Union Mission's latest attempt to relocate its homeless shelter, DCmud was working on its own piece.

To summarize: After Petworth/Columbia Heights residents balked at a plan to open a 150-175 bed shelter in their neighborhood, the Mission re-focused its attention on moving into the vacant Gales School, located near Capitol Hill. Then came a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union–I'll let DCmud  explain:

Originally, the plan was for a land swap in which the city would gain the Georgia Avenue property and the Mission would get use of the school as a shelter. But the exchange was derailed by an America Civil Liberties Union law suit claiming an Establishment Clause violation – i.e. separation of church and state – because the property swap would result in a net gain of $12 million for the Mission, which requires homeless men to participate in religious services in return for room, board and counseling services...

Well the latest, ahem, development with the Gales School is that the Mission is still pursuing it–and negotiating a different deal with the city, according to executive director David Treadwell.

"Our hope is still the Gales School," says Treadwell. "We’re not out to seek special favor. But we’re going to do the city a big favor by running a shelter and not charging them for it."

Treadwell says his organization is willing to spend $10 million to revamp the building, which is a mere shell now being propped up with heavy beams, and covered with a temporary roof.

The Mission is anxious to start fortifying the structure, as "the boards on the windows are warping" and the roof "was not designed to last through this winter."

Treadwell says his organization would prefer owning the building outright, but "might do a long-term lease."

"Gales School is our best option because of its location. There are other places we could go. But there’s no reason to stir up another neighborhood if we don’t have to...," he adds, referring to the long drawn-out battle in Petworth.

Image by Naught Facility, Flickr Creative Commons

Lately, I've been thinking about Buyer's Market, an old feature I wrote for Washington City Paper from February 2008 into the early fall. The purpose of the feature was to identify colossal price drops for various listed homes. At first, it was easy to find examples—there were frequently price drops above 20 percent. Ridiculous expectations abounded. Denial was still alive and well.

Then, reality set in. It became increasingly difficult to locate prime examples of agents pricing their properties 100,000s ahead of the market. Plus, I got bored.

So we killed Buyer's Market. R.I.P.

But now that news of the housing market's stabilization is becoming increasingly common, I'm haunted by ole Buyer's Market.  So if this is indeed the bottom or somewhat near it, let's check in on what we've hit. And if it's not bottom in D.C., here's just another on-the-way-down progress report.

The above house is 5310 5th Street NW, which appeared in Buyer's Market on Sept. 10, 2008. At that point, we found the listing looking like this:

Original listing price: $549,000 (Sept. 14, 2006)
Current listing price: $429,000 (June 13, 2008)
Slash rate: 22 percent
Square footage: 1,524
Neighborhood: Petworth

So what happened to this tidy, renovated property? Nothing. It didn't sell, according to D.C. property records. But others nearby did. In 2009, 16 similar 3-bedroom/2-bathroom rowhouses sold in the area. Average price: 260,450—the most expensive one went for $419,000 (it sat on the market for 417 days), and the least went for 129,900 (It sat on the market for four days).

Image by Darrow Montgomery

Today was the official ribbon-cutting for The Residences at Georgia Avenue, a 72-unit affordable housing building in Petworth. It's a pretty sweet looking building for below-market-rate units. Here are some of the building's features, according to its leasing website:

• Full kitchens with Dishwasher and Maple
  cabinets
• Individually Controlled Central Heating
  and Air Conditioning
• Energy efficient windows and appliances
• Laundry Facilities on each floor;
• Community Launch with Computer and Internet Access
• On‐site Management Office;
• Green roof with rooftop gathering space;
• Secure building with key card access and
  camera monitoring;
• Full Service Grocery Store; YES! Organic
• Spanish Education Development Center ‐
  (across the Street)

Funding came together from the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) and the District Housing Finance Agency (HFA), who contributed almost $20 million. "About $6.7 million was used from the District’s from the Housing Production Trust Fund, which is administered by DHCD. The HFA secured more than $13 million in short term and long term debt financing," according to a press release from the mayor's office.