Department of Homeland Security employees who go out to lunch should pack a good pair of walking shoes when the massiveagency relocates across the Anacostia River to St. Elizabeths Hospital’s west campus. The D.C. Council on Tuesday sought to yank
a provision calling for retail and other mixed-use development on the half-mile stretch of Martin Luther King Boulevard that borders the west campus redevelopment.
That means that the options for lunch or after-hours gatherings for the roughly 14,000 relocated workers will be limited to the east campus — which begins on the other side of the boulevard — making the federal complex an island compared with the robust commercial neighborhood envisioned for the east side.
D.C. Councilman Marion Barry, who submitted the amendment nixing the retail provision from the campus’ comprehensive plan, said he never intended to encourage retail on that side of the redevelopment project.
“It was inadvertently put in to the original bill that the west-side development [on Martin Luther King Boulevard] mirror the east-side development,” said Barry, who was mayor when the city announced its desire to redevelop the land in the mid-1980s. “I’m not dumb. I know that the District doesn’t have any jurisdiction over federal land.”
The error became public when the National Capital Planning Commission pointed out this week that mixed-use development adjacent to St. Elizabeths is “contrary to the federal interest” because of the historically protected hospital wall there and any development would pose a security threat to the DHS headquarters.
D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said it had always been the intention that amenities on the west side would be limited because of space and security reasons. That also encourages workers to go off campus and spend money in the community, she said.
“What the Ward 8 residents want most is not even new housing — they want commercial,” Norton said. “That commercial lies on east campus and they would far prefer it to be on their land.”
But creating yet another federal island in what is supposed to be a major community revitalization seems counter to D.C. and Prince George’s County officials’ past criticisms of “federal developments that don’t link to the community,” said University of Baltimore economist Richard Clinch.
“The poster child of that is the Census Bureau in [Suitland] … where more or less there’s a fence separating the development from the community,” he said.
But Norton said the retail limitations are
not discouraging commercial interest, as she has been getting calls from multiple developers about the east side.
