D.C. to stabilize privately owned row house
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
June 24, 2009
The D.C. government has agreed to pay to stabilize a historic, million-dollar Dupont Circle row house that the private owners let deteriorate until it partially collapsed a year ago.
The process
» A contractor will dismantle two brick towers first, then stabilize the home.
» DCRA says the owner “does intend to renovate the property and get it back into productive use.”
The Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs will spend $225,000 to ensure the house at 1841 16th St. NW doesn’t fall to the ground, agency Director Linda Argo said Tuesday. The five- to six-week project, the result of negotiations with the property owner, is expected to begin immediately. The contractor was not immediately known.
George Washington University professor Amy Mazur and neurologist Dr. Joseph Liberman, the owners, must reimburse taxpayers for the stabilization work or hire their own contractor to take over the job, DCRA officials said. The agency will place a lien on the home, assessed by the city at $1 million, for the cost plus interest if the couple do not pay.
“DCRA is commencing work immediately to stabilize the building,” Argo said. “We fully understand the importance of the building to the community and the history of the District. However, our first priority was always to ensure the safety of the neighbors and the public.”
The owners, whose lawyer did not return calls for comment, also must pay to temporarily relocate the home’s neighbors.
Mazur and Liberman, residents of a $2.4 million Cleveland Park home, wanted to raze the 10-bedroom Dupont property after its partial collapse last June. Preservationists and neighborhood leaders protested last week when they learned DCRA was leaning in favor of a demolition permit — essentially rewarding what the objectors considered “demolition by neglect.”
The home, at the corner of 16th and T streets, is one in a series of six row houses built in 1890 and is a key element in the Sixteenth Street Historic District.
Former tenants say the home was in terrible disrepair and suffered obvious defects such as cracking walls. In June 2008, six renters were forced out when a portion of the second-floor interior brick wall fell in on itself and the third floor started to topple.
