Used to be I had three ways out of Swann, my little one-lane, one-way street north of Logan Circle. One could continue straight to 14th, or take an alley to S Street, or another alley to T. No more. There’s a huge condominium rising on the corner of 14th and Swann. First they closed off my exit to 14th Street. Now they are blocking the alley to S Street, behind the new building. When the auto mechanics are working on a car in the alley to T Street, we’re kind of trapped.
I fear a blaze when fire trucks need to hit Swann.
It seems every vacant lot on 14th Street from Massachusetts Avenue north past W Street is sprouting a condominium or apartment building. But my small corner of the capital city is hardly the only neighborhood alive with concrete and steel. This spring the construction crane is the city’s mascot, as it was in the boom times of the 1980s and a decade ago. I can think of no other time in recent history when there was more development activity, from downtown to the neighborhoods.
“The District is seeing an unprecedented revitalization of its urban core,” says Ernie Jarvis, president of the D.C. Building Industry Association and senior vice president of First Potomac Realty Trust.
That’s developer-speak for “happy days are here again!”
As a journalist who chronicled the madcap redevelopment of downtown D.C. in the mid-1980s — when money poured in from Europe to Saudi Arabia to Japan and turned K Street into a Monopoly board game for Dutch retirement funds — I detect a huge difference. Global investors still see D.C. as one of the best and safest places to stash cash — competing with London and New York. But in this boom, downtown is relatively calm; development is pushing into the neighborhoods.
Take the Shops at Dakota Crossing, hard by the city’s eastern border with Prince George’s County, near Route 50. What began as an ambitious project called Fort Lincoln Town Center by legendary developer Ted Hagens has been stalled for decades. His daughter, Michele, has been pushing it ever since. Jump-started by Victor Hoskins, D.C.’s new economic development director, the project is racing to completion and will house the city’s first Costco by Thanksgiving.
There’s a gigantic hole that will soon be the Shops at O Street at 7th Street NW. The project will restore a historic market, add retail and residential. Developers are now rebuilding the Southeast and Southwest waterfronts. The city is looking for builders to redevelop 67 acres of Walter Reed Medical Center along Georgia Avenue. Back downtown, there are seven cranes over CityCenterDC, across from the convention center.
In addition to projects I just listed that involve the city, private developers are throwing up buildings all over town. So no matter how depressing, stale and corrupt the state of District politics might be, the private sector is humming along — which will bring tax revenue and jobs — because global investors don’t much care about the mayor and city council.
“Marion Barry’s dissing of Asians doesn’t appear on their radar,” one developer tells me.
That’s a good thing.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
