CHIME IN PUHLEZ!
Redesign Dupont Circle?
Logan Circle Parking
Extend the Yellow Line?
Stadium's Cost

MOST EMAILED POSTS
Fair Trade Retailer
Georgetown Waterfront Park




------------

































NEWS TIP? SPOT AN ERROR?
dcbubble@gmail.com


-------------------------

DC CONDO DIRECTORY
Updated: Jan. 23, 2006

ADAMS MORGAN
Delancy Lofts
1701 Kalorama Rd NW

Il Palazzo
1601 Fuller St NW

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS
Kenyon Square
14th & Irving NW

Spring Road Flats
1437 Spring Rd NW

CAPITOL HILL/H Street
Senate Square
2nd & H Sts. NE

Butterfield House
1020 Penn. Ave. SE

DOWNTOWN/NOMA
Five Fifty Five on Mass.
555 Mass. Ave. NW

1010 Mass. Ave NW
1010 Mass

Yale Steam Laundry
4th & NY Ave NW

Dumont Condo
425 Massachusetts Ave. NW

City Vista
5th & K St NW

GEORGETOWN/WEST END
22 West
1177 22nd St. NW

LOGAN/U STREET
The Beauregard
2100 11th St, NW

UPPER NW
Vaughan Place
Wisc. Ave. & Porter St. NW

REAL ESTATE NEWS
Bubble Meter
Bankrate.com
Co-Star
Washington Business Journal

WASHINGTON NEWS
DC Examiner
Washington Post
Washington Times
City Paper
WTOP
NBC4
ABC 7
HillRag et al.
The Intowner
Voice of The Hill
Northwest Current

REAL ESTATE RESOURCES
DC Property Sales Database
DC Tax Assessment Database
DC Zoning Commission Orders
Real Estate Calculators

BLOGS/COLUMNISTS
Clubwhirled
DCist
bubblemeter
dc blogs
metblogs
DC Watch
Metrocurian
DC Education Blog
Marc Fisher
Harry Jaffe


NEIGHBORHOOD BLOGS Near Southeast Development Logan Circle News
In Shaw
Cleveland Park
Near SW DC Revitalization

FIND RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY LISTINGS Craigslist Property For Sale
HomeDataBase
Zip Realty
ForSaleByOwner.com


FIND RENTAL PROPERTY Craigsline Rental Listing


MARKET RISK ANALYSIS
FROM MORTGAGE INSURERS
Fall 2005
Summer 2005
Spring 2005
Winter 2005

DC REALTORS MARKET ANALYSIS
Oct 2005
Sept 2005
Aug 2005
July 2005
June 2005

DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT REPORT
3Q 2005
2Q 2005
1Q 2005
4Q 2004
3Q 2004
ANCs

/

Powered by Blogger

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Last Slum Standing: Brightwood Residents Get
“Desperate” Over Blighted Building


If television’s “Desperate Housewives” is any example, every neighborhood has its dirty little secret, its Addams Family-looking building that stands apart from all the others, dark and ghoulish, dilapidated and scary. Behold then the Wuthering Heights of Brightwood: 6425–14th Street (Square 2786, Lot 0184). A once-magnificent and ultramodern four-story apartment building of taupe-colored brick and glass at the corner of 14th Street and Tewkesbury Place, NW, “6425” stands today as the most glaring example of housing blight in Brightwood—a boarded-up, spray paint-maligned magnet for all manner of unsavory elements from litterers to loiterers, rodents to wild animals. And this conspicuously out-of-place remnant of the District’s dubious housing history sits smack-dab in the middle of one of DC’s most stable, up-and-coming, middle-class neighborhoods, located near Walter Reed Hospital and Rock Creek Park. It’s also on the corner of the block where I live.

The sheer size and longevity of the deterioration manifested by this property formerly home to dozens of Brightwood residents, is what makes it such an insult to residents of this primarily single-family-home neighborhood. Decades ago, this moldering, abandoned structure was a sought-after address in a pristine, tree-lined, and desirable—albeit segregated—community. Formerly the “Winchester-Tewksbury Apartments,” the building, built in the 1950’s, was designed by nationally renowned architect Joseph Henry Abel. According to Cultural Tourism DC’s Brendan Meyer, Abel’s firm, Berla & Abel, “can make a pretty solid claim to be the most prominent modern architects in DC in the 40s.” Abel also designed the Shoreham Washington on Connecticut Avenue and 16th Street’s Crestwood apartment building, and he wrote a critically acclaimed 1947 book on apartment building design.

So how did the Winchester-Tewkesbury devolve from grandeur to the graffiti-ridden, boarded-up wreck it is today? That’s a long story, but suffice it to say the building has been in its current state of decay for nearly two decades. It has sat dormant even during the recent boom years of real-estate development and housing restoration experienced by the rest of the District. But year after year, Brightwood residents have heard only excuses, half-truths, and what can only be called outright lies from the owner and from DC government officials about the status of this building and plans to renovate it.

The following is the best patchwork of facts and half-facts I can piece together on this history. The building has been vacant since the 1980s after a botched attempt by the Barry administration government to wrest it from its tax-defaulting owners by claiming eminent domain. By then, the property was already in decay and troubled with numerous housing violations and reports of drug-dealing and other illicit activity by residents. The owners later filed a lawsuit against the District, and that suit has been wending its way slowly through the courts for decades. Come the 21st century and the building was purchased by Vincent Abell (no relation to the architect), who alternately identified himself as the co-owner of Modern Management, Inc., a real estate firm located in Takoma-DC, and as Managing General Partner of a suspiciously named group claiming title to the building called ETDH (for “Every Tom, Dick, and Harry”) Associates.

In 2004, a sign was posted in front of the building, identifying a local bank as the source of construction funding. The neighbors on Tewkesbury Place and throughout Brightwood sighed a collective sigh of relief—progress was being made on a longstanding eyesore, they mistakenly believed. And they waited anxiously for the boards to come off and construction to begin.

Laborers began reporting to the building, and soon two large dumpsters were filled with debris and trash from 6425’s rotted insides. Brightwood economic development and housing activists learned that Abell, who claimed to have been “buying and renovating houses for 20 years or more,” had applied for and stood to receive a development loan of nearly a million dollars from the District to renovate the building into condominium units. At their request, Abell appeared before a Brightwood Community Association (BCA) meeting in 2004, bringing with him architectural blueprints to describe his renovation plans to the public. It was a clumsy, open-ended presentation, but many believed the end of 6425’s decline was near. We also thought the District had done its homework and was doing its job to help.

Little more happened after that. The workers stopped coming to the building, and fresh boards were nailed to its windows and doors, boards that would later be “tagged” with graffiti and turn gray with wear.

Then, on Christmas Day 2004, the Washington Post, in a front-page article, revealed that Vincent Abell had a history of shady real estate dealings and a criminal record for his 1990’s involvement in what the Post called “the largest real estate fraud of its kind in Washington's history.” Abell, the Post claimed, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison, with all but six months suspended, and two years’ probation for “making a false statement and ‘causing an act to be done’ following a criminal investigation.” He was ordered to pay $20,000 in restitution and fined $5,000.

Adding insult to injury, Brightwood residents next found out that after Abell’s purchase, 6425 had been designated a Class 1, or occupied-residential, property, which meant that it would be not only an eyesore but also an affordable eyesore for its new owner. Abell had filed for exemption from the higher Class 3 (vacant-unoccupied) tax rate because the title to the property was the subject of on-going litigation. As a result, Abell would only have to pay $2,849.37 in real property taxes annually for his boarded-up investment rather than the $14,840.50 he would have owed if 6425 had been properly classified.

Brightwood residents were doubly incensed! How was it that Abell, with his criminal record and suspected involvement (the Post article further explained) in other fraudulent real estate practices, could get any money from the city, much less over $900,000? And how was it that he was getting a tax break that made it more profitable for him to let 6425 rot into dust than fix it up? Wasn’t the District once again making it cheaper for an absentee owner to keep a property in a state of ugliness and disrepair than bring it up to code? And wasn’t Abell guilty of taking advantage of that system, and thereby taking advantage of us, as neighbors who had to look at the building’s decayed façade every day?

We then started asking a much larger question: Is Vincent Abell the kind of businessperson and developer we even want in our neighborhood?

Subsequent to the Christmas Day 2004 article, I contacted the Post to ask if they would do a follow-up on Abell’s real estate dealings and on 6425 specifically, but to no avail. In 2005, Ward 4 Councilman Adrian Fenty arranged several meetings in his office between Abell, BCA officers, and concerned residents, but little became of those meetings as Abell demonstrated a remarkable talent for “working” the delays built into the city’s zoning and approval/review processes. Fenty was also instrumental in getting the property’s tax status changed back to the higher rate in the interim, and in getting DCRA (the District’s regulatory agency) to assess more expensive fines for the owner’s failure to keep the building and its grounds clean—all in an effort to provide Abell with more fiscal motivation to restore the property rather than ignore it.

In September 2005, I became president of the BCA. The Association’s November 2005 meeting featured a panel on issues of blight and redevelopment in Brightwood, and I made sure that 6425 was a key topic. Councilman Jim Graham, chair of the Council’s Committee on Regulatory Affairs, was on that panel, and he made an impassioned stump speech about the need to crack down on absentee landlords who allow their District properties to languish despite residents’ complaints. He also criticized the District for its past negligence on this issue, and promised residents that change was coming. A Post reporter was in attendance at that meeting, and he promised to write a story on 6425. A month passed, no story. Abell stopped returning the BCA’s, and apparently the Post’s, phone calls about the property.

Last December, I testified in support of an amendment that would possibly allow the District’s Home Again Initiative to intercede in efforts to bring 6425 back on-line. That amendment, which was recently approved, sought to expand Home Again’s authority to acquire larger multi-unit residences in neighborhoods, such as Brightwood, that are otherwise healthy but for a few scattered vacant and deteriorated properties. As a result of my appearance, NewsChannel 8 did a segment focusing briefly on 6425 and my comments about it. Then The Northwest Current later did an article on the property, highlighting Councilman Fenty’s and the BCA’s efforts to curtail Vincent Abell’s free ride at District expense. The Post’s long-overdue article on the building, its owner, and its impact on its community was finally scheduled to appear in the “District Extra” newspaper on January 26, 2006.

What we in Brightwood are hoping is that continued investigation and scrutiny of this property’s history and that of its owner will bring the matter of 6425–14th Street to the only kind of closure we deem acceptable: the restoration of a multi-unit housing property that is owned and renovated by a responsible—and community-responsive—developer. And if that developer is not the current owner, fine with us. Just SOMEBODY fix up this building—please!!

To this day, 6425 sits vacant and boarded. No new Brightwood residents call it home. No new taxpayers support the community’s or the District’s revitalization. It’s still the same eyesore it’s been since most of us can remember, and the worst-looking property of its size and type for miles around. And that’s why I believe DC government should exercise whatever authority it has—be it the power to regulate, fine, condemn, repossess, rezone, finance, rehabilitate, or destroy—to ensure that 6425 is made habitable again. We Brightwooders are not as “desperate” as the fictive residents of Wisteria Lane, but we’re getting pretty sick and tired of the real-life drama involved in getting this dysfunctional building back into shape!

D. Kamili Anderson
President, Brightwood Community Association 2005-2006





View My Stats



Blogarama - The Blogs Directory