By BRITTANY AUBIN
Observer contributor
April 23, 2008

Four years ago, groundbreaking began at Mount Vernon Triangle, a once-abandoned corner in downtown Washington, D.C. When completed, the 15-block district formed by Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York avenues will include up to 4,000 new condos and apartments, a 50,000-square-foot Safeway grocery store and a million square feet of office space.

Courtesy of Google Maps

While the city’s Community Improvement District denies gentrification, others are much more pessimistic about the coming changes.

Kristine Thompson, executive director of Calvary Women’s Services, one of the only homeless service providers operating within the bounds of the Triangle said that they will likely have to leave the neighborhood.

The shelter leases its building and although the spot is secure through this year, the board and management are already seeking new locations.

“Hopefully we will be in this building for a few more years,” Thompson said. “After that, we will definitely have to be gone because no one will want us to be here.”

The shelter on Fifth Street, N.W., houses about 25 homeless D.C. residents. Up the shelter’s rickety stairs, Calvary shares its building with an Alcoholics Anonymous group. Outside, men bundled in ski coats wait, smoking. One man lurches down the sidewalk, rattling a Coke can; just across two deserted lanes of Fifth Street is Louis’ Rogue topless bar and Subway Liquor.

But right near it is also a glass-walled condominium and, all around the shelter, buildings in various stages of construction are popping up, surrounded by chain-link fences, dirt piles and orange construction machinery.

At Calvary’s second building, a transitional home located down the road at Fourth and H streets, residents pass the adjacent site of Dumont Condos as they leave at a chilly 8 a.m.

“Starting from the upper 200’s to over a million,” boasts the larger-than-life blue sign, a picture of the future building surrounded by sun-lit trees and wide sidewalks drawn enthusiastically below it. Welcome to the image of the new Mount Vernon Triangle.

Calvary’s situation highlights a larger district trend. As new developments come in, low-income residents and service providers are pushed out, victims of higher rents and rising costs of neighborhood living.

Former Mayor Anthony Williams’ plan to increase the city’s population by 100,000 residents in the next decade will necessitate new housing construction, but with about 56,000 current district residents already on the waiting list for affordable housing with the D.C. Housing Authority, the move to higher-priced condos and apartments could hurt the lower-income population.

According to a report by the Fannie Mae Foundation, Washington lost 592 rental units to condo expansion between 2004 and 2005, with the median condo price rising by almost 15 percent after inflation.

Still, the executive director of the Mount Vernon Triangle Community Improvement District insists that the project will not lead to gentrification.

“People think that when a neighborhood gets better that means it’s gentrifying. Gentrification means displacement,” said Bill McLeod, the newest head of the Community Improvement District. The current projects are being built on parking lots, said McLeod, so the units already in the area were not affected.

Incoming tenants have a different view.

“It’s good for us,” said Ilenia Gonzales, who lives in one of the first buildings to go up in the area. “And not so good for the other people.”

Gonzales praised the neighborhood, especially its location in the city’s downtown.

A lot of the residents who have lived in the improvement district for years are afraid, McLeod said.

“I’m not really sure what they are afraid of,” he said. “The low-income buildings are still going to be low-income buildings, they are just going to have new neighbors.”

But the new neighbors have a much greater level of disposable income. According to the 2000 Census data for Track 47, a small one-mile-wide grouping that fully contains the Triangle, 37 percent of the track’s 4,000 residents lived below the poverty line. Homeownership rates were 7 percent. Of the renters, 13.7 percent spent over half of their household income on rent.

The average family income for the track in 1999 was around $26,000, according to NeighborhoodInfo DC, a community organization.

Although the developers of Mount Vernon Triangle have promised to reserve some of the new units for low-income use, overall, the additional housing will not be available to the neighborhood’s current demographic, McLeod said.

Within Washington, D.C., new development can often lead to a greater loss of affordable housing as landlords see the potential to raise rents, said Dena Michaelson, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Housing Authority.

“Once you lose low-income housing, it’s hard to replace it,” she said.

Three properties in the Triangle – Museum Square One at 401 K Street, Carmel Plaza North at 200 K Street and Golden Rule Plaza at 1050 New Jersey Avenue – offer low-income Section 8 housing units, providing about 526 units combined, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Multifamily Assistance and Section 8 database The Golden Rule apartments are owned by the local Bible Way Church, which has a representative serving on the Community Improvement District’s board of directors.

The Carmel Plaza and Museum Square apartments are owned by Bush Construction, one of about a dozen major developers working in the area. Mount Carmel’s contract for low-income units will not expire until 2017. Museum Square recently renewed their contract until October of 2008.

Vera Watson, a resident of Museum Square for 25 years, said this is the biggest change she has ever seen in the neighborhood.

“I sure hope that it doesn’t affect our building,” she said from under a Redskins cap. “We’ve got to have a place to live too.”

A few yards from Watson on the corner of Fifth and K, construction crews are busy on the CityVista building, a $200 million mixed-use venture. The project was a partnership between the city government and developers, featuring a Safeway, condos and rental units. A special emphasis was placed on neighborhood-serving retail, said Sean Madigan, a spokesman for the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. In addition to the Safeway, the project will feature a hardware store and a gym.

“I honestly believe that everyone deserves good retail, whether you’re rich or you’re poor – shopping is free,” said McLeod. “Buying things is not free. But you know, everybody wants to go to Safeway.” The store has made a commitment to hiring from the community and already started job training for its opening in the spring, he said.

The city also required that affordable housing be an aspect of the proposals, as development in the area has created a lot of housing pressure, said Madigan.

The CityVista’s two condos and one apartment building will keep 20 percent of their units affordable to people earning less than 80 percent of the area median income, said Lisa Wiersma, assistant vice president of development at Lowe Enterprises, one of the developers working on the project.

The condos were allotted through a lottery, Wiersma said. Lowe Enterprises received 1,900 applications for 900 units, though all of the applicants might not meet the income level or qualify for the necessary loan, she said. Under the contract with the city government, the condos can return to fair market rate after 30 years.

Mixed-use housing, like in CityVista, is the preferred model of the D.C. government as it alleviates some of the problems associated with the concentration of poverty, creates a diverse community and brings new retail and services to neighborhoods, said D.C. Housing Authority’s Michaelson.

While a favorable land deal with the city enabled developers on CityVista to create a mixed-use structure and take a loss with affordable units, a soft housing market now makes getting developers to turn 10 or 20 percent of their buildings over to low-income rental or condo difficult, McLeod said.

“Every developer is different. Some really have a heart and some are really corporate,” he said, although having developers on the Community Improvement District’s board of directors keeps them informed of problems facing the area’s residents.

But now that the housing market is suffering, many developers are hesitant to put their newly erected buildings onto the market. Many condos that have yet to be built are switching to rental units. Some residential buildings are trying to shift to office space, McLeod said.

But the changes have also created opportunity for some in the Triangle, as the burgeoning construction has led to rising incomes and business growth.

Ielly Joya has co-owned the G & J Deli on the corner of K and Fourth streets for three years, serving a blend of Mexican, Salvadoran and American food. At a quarter to noon, the little store bustled with construction crews from the neighboring projects, chatting over pupusas and sodas at the deli’s green vinyl-covered tables.

“The business we get is from construction,” said Joya. “The first year, it was very slow.”

Joya does not feel threatened by the coming Safeway. Looking around, she noted that her customers prefer to sit and enjoy their meal, an atmosphere Safeway does not offer, she said. But, Joya leases her building and probably will not renew. Already their main business comes from construction, with lunch hours being the deli’s only busy time of the day. When the building is done, the store may lose their strongest source of revenue.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll close.”

Other, newer businesses are banking that the new residents of the neighborhood will bring new jobs and fresh dollars to the area. Already, recent upstarts like Tunnel Fine Wines and Spirits on H Street are awaiting the influx of wealthy patrons.

The dark-wood paneling and cobbled floors of the liquor store distinguish it from others in the area. In the back of the store, a wine cooler holds bottles of white from around the world and a small, decorated room stands ready for a community wine-tasting later in the evening.

Owner Feleke Girma, a 23-year resident of the D.C. area, started the business two months ago. Despite already having survived a robbery, he trusts that the new demographic of the neighborhood will appreciate his openness.

“I used to have to work behind bullet-proof glass,” he said, describing his experience at his former convenience store on Georgia Avenue, which was not part of the Triangle improvement district. Thinking back to the Triangle’s neighborhood 15 and 20 years ago, Girma acknowledged the whole demographic has changed. Before, many of the buildings were boarded up, he said.

“These changes were necessary,” he said. “It has been neglected for a long time.”

Like Girma, the Community Improvement District hopes to one day soon start catering to a new demographic, anticipating the challenges of streetscaping and hiring hospitality teams to provide directions and escort late-night office workers to their cars, McLeod said.

For now the Triangle’s mission of clean, safe marketing and economic development is focused on two street cleaners who pick up the trash that lines the streets. Two men from the nearby Gospel Rescue Ministries transitional shelter work the roads in distinctive blue jumpsuits and their progress is charted on a chart, beginning two years ago. Trash is down to about 500 bags per month in October, from over 2,000 in November 2005.

Besides fewer bags of trash, William Coleman, a Clean Team member for three months, has seen the neighborhood improve, gaining a much needed face-lift and increased safety. While he would love to stay, the people moving in all have “real substantial incomes,” Coleman says. But, the former hotel worker said there are still gains to be had from the changes and fresh influx of money.

He chews a cigarette as he looks down the road. Like parking lots for McLeod, the remaining bits of debris represent an opportunity for something new.

“I thank God for this job,” he said.