The District has spent millions to lease a property in Southeast that was to house critical police functions until the Fenty administration nixed the plan a year ago, leaving the city with an empty, costly shell.
The 20-year, $546,000 per month lease for the former Washington Star printing plant at 225 Virginia Ave. SE was signed in the waning days of former Mayor Anthony Williams’ final term.
The plan: Move the Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters, 1st District, evidence storage, and violent crimes, narcotics, special investigations and special operations units into the building.
But Lars Etzkorn, former director of the Office of Property Management, reversed course last August, citing the $100 million price tag to modernize the 421,000-square-foot facility. Mayor Adrian Fenty was at first noncommittal, but later pulled the plug on the move.
The city, meanwhile, has paid more than $6.5 million to rent the space since last June with nothing to show for it.
“The bottom line is the city is wasting money,” said D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson, chairman of the public safety committee. “A lot of money.”
The new strategy for Virginia Avenue, Fenty said last November, was to transfer the city’s lease to a developer. A news release announced that D.C. was in “negotiations with several interested parties,” but no progress has been announced since then.
Sean Madigan, spokesman for the deputy mayor for planning and economic development, said the city plans to seek developers’ interests in the property “by the end of this week.” Transferring the lease, Madigan said, will save D.C. more than $100 million over the next two decades.
The Fenty administration “inherited the lease,” he said, “which is a bad deal for the District and opposed by the neighborhood.”
“It was just an idea, and the idea was they would get someone to come in and take over the property for them,” Mendelson said. “We’re talking about millions of dollars, and one should not make a decision involving millions of dollars on an idea.”
The MPD’s 1st District station, located at 415 Fourth St. SW, must depart to make room for the District’s Consolidated Forensics Laboratory. Its new home will be Bowen Elementary School at 101 M St. SW, which the city has proposed to renovate at a cost of $11.5 million. But Mendelson and Council Chairman Vincent Gray are holding up the Bowen construction contract over questions about the funding.
