Metro’s board of directors agreed Thursday to pay $6.45 million for 16 acres of District land to build a new bus garage, the latest step in a years-long real estate deal.
The property, a former homeless shelter known as D.C. Village in the southernmost tip of the city, was valued at $8.05 million. But the District agreed to drop the price by $1.6 million as credit for months of failing to pay the transit agency as promised under an earlier agreement.
“It’s a good deal all around,” said D.C. Councilman Jim Graham, who also serves as Metro chairman. “For decades, we had talked about replacing the garage.”
But the deal prompted scorn from two key Metro representatives from Virginia and Maryland who said they weren’t given enough information about the multimillion-dollar deal.
“I do object that it is being brought to us in this manner,” Arlington County representative Christopher Zimmerman told fellow Metro board members Thursday. “No one except the District had access to it before last night.”
In 2007, Metro agreed to sell its former Southeastern Bus Garage and a nearby parking lot to private developers for $69.25 million, as part of the redevelopment of the area around Nationals Park.
The District said it would sell the transit agency the D.C. Village land. In the meantime, the city agreed to pay Metro $400,000 each month to relocate the buses that had been stationed there to other garages across the area.
However, the District stopped paying the transit agency in February.
Metro and District officials had been negotiating until Wednesday on the deal, Metro spokeswoman Candace Smith said. Under the agreement, Metro officials said, the transit agency would release the District from its monthly obligation of $400,000. Instead Metro would pay for the additional operating costs for the buses using part of the proceeds from the original sale.
Board member Peter Benjamin, who represents Maryland, voted against the plan, and Zimmerman, who represents Arlington, abstained.
Both said the deal looked fair, but neither had a chance to go over the numbers with their staff.
Graham said the push came because the District planned to have a hearing Friday about the issue, then put it before the D.C. Council on Tuesday.
