Nearly 20 years ago, Charles Docter scrapped the commute. Tired of driving from the Maryland suburbs to his downtown law offices, he moved to the first new condominiums going up along Pennsylvania Avenue between Capitol Hill and the White House. He was a pioneer in what we now call Penn Quarter.
Has his neighborhood changed much?
He laughs.
“Changed in big, capital letters,” he says. “Back then it was a rundown area. When I moved down here in 1991, my friends in the suburbs looked at me as if I were crazy.”
No more. Penn Quarter is hot.
“It’s the center, now,” he says. “When we moved here we wouldn’t walk around at night. Now the safety’s perfect. The grandkids come down and love it. Everything’s happening around here.”
The Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District just closed out its third annual neighborhood survey. It asked people who work or live downtown their take on crime and shopping and eating, their age and income and family status. Last year’s survey gave a snapshot of a demographic that retailers crave.
“The 2008 survey found that more than half of the residents were single,” says Karen Sibert, spokeswoman for the downtown business group handling the survey. It’s a young, wealthy group: 47 percent were between the ages of 25-34. “Forty two percent made more than $150,000 a year.”
The survey shows what anyone can see by walking around downtown D.C. after dark; what were empty streets running through vacant office buildings are now bustling with people hitting clubs, eating at fine restaurants or taking in a game or a show at the Verizon Center.
The downtown transformation didn’t just happen. It took people like Terry Lynch, executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations to advocate, jostle and change the way the city was growing.
“I had been to New York and Paris and other major world class cities,” Lynch says. “What makes a great city is having people downtown.”
In 1985, from his offices in the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, Lynch started to lobby for the “living downtown.” In 1990 he argued before the D.C. Zoning Commission that the city should designate a 100-square-block area east of 15th Street NW, as a mix of office, retail, arts and housing. With the support of then zoning commission Chairman Tersh Boasberg, he changed the zoning regulations. Then Abe Pollin built his arena on Seventh Street, a block south of Chinatown. Restaurants opened. Movie theaters. Clubs. Shops. More apartments and condominiums.
“It’s booming,” Lynch says, but he’s not satisfied.
“The public services haven’t kept up with the demand,” Lynch says. “The lighting needs work. We need more litter cans. Too many empty tree boxes. Mount Vernon Square has a crime problem.”
Even Docter has to cite one downside. “We need a food store,” he says. “For some reason we can’t get one.
“Other than that,” he says, “we have all that we need.”
It’s taken only 20 years to get there.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
