With obvious distaste, Scott Pomeroy recalls some of the development proposals that could have wiped out his quiet neighborhood just north of the now-bustling U Street corridor.
For decades, the former Children’s Hospital at 13th and V streets NW was a blight on the neighborhood, drawing more interest from homeless squatters than from developers. But as Metro’s Green line was extended to the neighborhood, real estate investors with big ideas soon followed.
There was the planned nine-story $200 million Samuel Jackson Plaza mixed-use project that was scrapped when its developer went bankrupt in the mid-1980s. Then city officials wanted to build a huge garage. Later, Whole Foods and Super Fresh vied to open a grocery store at the site.
“That was the largest meeting the Cardozo-Shaw Neighborhood Association ever had when people came out to hear about Super Fresh,” said Pomeroy, who has lived for 20 years in a Victorian row house across the street.
Neighborhood vigilance against overdevelopment paid off in 1998, when the old hospital was torn down and ground was broken on a block of townhouses in keeping with the vintage architecture of surrounding streets. It’s been seven years since the opening of the 98-unit Harrison Square, which set the pace for a wave of large-scale luxury residential development in the U Street corridor. But the immediate neighborhood remains intact, providing a serene respite for residents who now have access to all the retail, dining and club attractions that have sprung up within walking distance.
That was the plan of developers Donatelli & Klein Development and EYA, which have each made a specialty out of building urban communities. They were so successful that it’s easy to miss Harrison Square, with its multicolor rows of three-story mock Victorians that sit opposite the rear of the historic Lincoln Theatre.
“One of the things that drew us was the look and feel of the house, and it does blend into the neighborhood,” said Bryan Martin Firvida, president of the Harrison Square Homeowner’s Association. “We look outside our windows and see houses just like ours that are 80 years older.”
Like any other community, Harrison Square has residents who just want to pull into their rear-loading garages and others who are eager to meet their neighbors. There are plenty of opportunities for residents of the complex to become involved with the surrounding community.
“It’s like a miniature neighborhood within the neighborhood,” said Martin Firvida, who is also the newly elected president of the Cardozo-Shaw association.
Harrison Square residents have organized block sales, coordinated efforts to install solar energy panels in the community and held a Halloween parade last year.
“There’s a lot more families on the block and a lot of children dressed up to go trick-or-treating,” Martin Firvida said. “Even some of the dogs on the block were dressed up in costumes.”
And, just like Pomeroy, Harrison Square residents have become vigilant about protecting their quiet community. That includes the city’s plan to develop a surface parking lot behind the Lincoln Theatre, where planners envision a mixed-use project filling up 90,000 square feet — a complex almost as big as the old Children’s Hospital.
Harrison Square provided an anchor to the community at a time when it could have disappeared as a residential neighborhood, according to Pomeroy.
“There was nothing going on in that part of U Street,” he said. “It started a real sense of community.”
