Local
Cheh yanks support for Tenleytown project
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
October 30, 2008
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| Mayor Adrian Fenty talks to Tenleytown residents at a press conference in July about the development plans for a public library and residential tower. (Andrew Harnik/Examiner) |
Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh and at-large Councilman Kwame Brown asked Fenty on Wednesday to spike the contentious development proposal from Berwyn, Pa.-based developer LCOR. In order for the project to move forward Fenty needs the council to declare the 3.6-acre site at Wisconsin Avenue and Albemarle Street surplus so it can be turned over to LCOR.
“It’s finished,” Cheh said.
The LCOR proposal, Cheh and Brown wrote in a letter to the mayor, is “fatally flawed” and “We cannot and will not support it.” Go ahead and build the library now, they suggested, and include the structural supports it would need “To permit development on top of the library at a future date.”
The Tenleytown community has been without a public library since December 2004. The shuttered facility, across from the Tenleytown Metro Station and adjacent to Janney Elementary School, was razed last year.
LCOR won a competitive process to construct a new 20,000-square-foot library, residential building and underground parking on the parcel. But the proposal earned vitriol from the community because of its effect on the library’s timeline and Janney’s future expansion.
“It was delaying the library for two and a half years minimum and stripping the school of the facilities it needs,” said Sue Hemberger, a Friendship Heights resident. “It was just a really bad deal.”
When he unveiled the LCOR project in July before a group of hecklers, Fenty said he would “make sure it will happen as quickly as humanly possible.” But the developer’s plan failed to win over the community, Cheh said, and “There’s no point in further delaying the library because their proposal was never quite good enough.”
Tom Hier with Ward 3 Vision, a smart-growth group that supported the LCOR project, said the site is “prime for development” and it would be a “crime to let it fall by the wayside without having the opportunity to explore a public-private partnership.”
“If the concerns of the community can be met, I think absolutely it’s a project worth fighting for,” Hier said.
The Fenty administration had no comment by press time. An LCOR spokesman declined comment.
