Posts by John Muller

To most, the bellwether of neighborhood change in the city is and always will be, rightfully or wrongfully, ethnicity. Through my eyes, however, it's graffiti. I read the winds of demographic change by literally reading the writing on the walls that align the Metro's Red Line, or lack thereof.

Earlier this year, the long-standing "BORF" tag was buffed from the Takoma Metro station by the proprietor of Visions Lighting, Inc. Little as ten years ago graffiti dominated downtown buildings. No longer.

Reached by email, Roger Gastman, a former frequent of the Rhode Island Avenue warehouse rooftops and author of Free Agents: A History of Washington, DC Graffiti, wrote, "I don't really have much to say—it's just part of what happens to all graffiti spots!"

With the mixed-use development of adjacent Rhode Island Row a new day is dawning for the neighborhood. For many decade-long riders of the Red Line adjusting to the new sights will take some getting used to.

And that's a good thing no matter how you look at it.

"People cherish their recent memories of this building as a nightclub, but this was one of the first progressive community banks in Washington," said John DeFerrari of Streets of Washington, who attended the Preservation League fundraiser.

According to DeFerrari, the Equitable Co-Operative Building was built in 1912, and was the headquarters for the Equitable Co-Operative Building Association. Equitable was a pioneering thrift institution co-founded by John Joy Edson, a leading financier and philanthropist who believed that facilitating home ownership would provide stability to the city by improving its housing stock.

In 1985, Equitable moved out of the city. A nightclub called The Bank moved into the space and proceeded to remove the mahogany teller counters to make space for a dance floor. Within a couple years, the Fifth Column, another dance club, moved in and featured avant garde artwork juxtaposed against the restrained elegance of the building's original architecture. In 1995, Fifth Column closed. Before the end of the decade, Platinum nightclub debuted, but by 2008 it, too, closed.

Despite the changes in the building over the years, the architectural value of the building and its interiors remain intact.

"You're never going to see this type of craftsmanship," said John D. Bellingham of Monarc Construction and President of DCPL's Board of Trustees, remarking on the dentil molding, cornices, and frieze architecture.

"It's proven that a city that retains its historic character attracts more tourists," Bellingham said while lamenting "slap-happy" renovations that can do more to distort historic preservation than support it.

"Walking into this place is like walking into the National Portrait Gallery," said Douglas Jemal, president of Douglas Development Corporation, as his eyes scanned the interior. "Look at the grandeur. This is a special place and deserves a special tenant. None of that strip mall [expletive]."

Noting clothier Ralph Lauren as a possible tenant, Jemal said there is a growing interest among European and American fashion retailers to establish a presence in Washington. Forever 21, H&M, and Zara have stores nearby.

Whether the Equitable Building becomes part of an reemerging downtown fashion district or an upscale restaurant, preservationists agree the development of the Equitable Building will retain the neighborhood's historic character.

"Like so much of the city, I'd love to see another old ghost of a building get a second chance at a new life," said another preservationist. "Saving buildings like this one preserves the soul of our city and keeps us connected."

According to diligent researcher and mapmaker Brian Kraft, the five houses in the above photo were built in 1885 by Henry A. Griswold, a prominent developer and President of the Anacostia & Potomac Railroad Company.

This small, one-way street, despite being in the heart of Historic Anacostia, retains its bucolic charm. And just as they have for the last half-century, the resilient residents of Valley Place patiently wait for the neighborhood's renaissance to arrive.

This issue is not confined to DC or to urban areas. There's a growing consensus that college freshmen from all walks or life and backgrounds spend the year in remedial courses learning what they should have been taught in high school.

But from my experiences, that psychological gulf is deeper and wider for city kids. In conversations with current college students and neighborhood elders, I keep hearing the same thing: folks are going off to college and they're coming right back to the city within a year or so with few credits, mounting debt, and a lack of opportunity.

Our schools perennially dumb down their curricula, continually lower expectations, de-emphasize classroom management, promote students regardless how ready they are. Many rush to label students "special needs" in order to receive more dollars per pupil, while "mainstreaming" students of all levels into one class. They baby students rather than pushing them.

Same soup, just reheated

The problems that Darryl Robinson raised are not new to the pages of the city's paper of record. While he was a student of mine, the Post ran a similar story about the post-graduation struggles of the 2005 class of Cardozo Senior High School in Northwest Washington.

The story opens,

Danielle Chappell had no reason to doubt she was a solid student. She earned decent grades, even scoring some A's in English and math, while balancing schoolwork with basketball, track and a spot on the dance team.

Then she graduated from Cardozo High School and arrived at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, where she bombed the placement tests so badly that she had to take remedial English and math. She failed the makeup math course twice before passing it. Low grades overall put her on academic probation. Finally, mid-sophomore year, she was forced to withdraw.

Chappell sometimes thinks back to the Cardozo math teacher who, instead of assigning algebra homework, would have students clip photos of motorcycles from magazines and do other projects unrelated to math. "I thought it was strange and weird," Chappell said, but she did not complain because the class was "an easy A."

She wishes now that she had demanded more from Cardozo, and that Cardozo had demanded more from her.

Beneath the surface of the District's ongoing demographic, cultural, social, and economic shifts is a public school system struggling to succeed. If DC's leaders fail to recognize and tackle these challenges, the District and its students are at grave risk.

Why and how does this occur? Although it's been nearly 5 years since I was last in the classroom, there are many factors I saw as a teacher and continue to hear about today.

Mainstreaming & modification

Back in the 90's when I was a public elementary school student, there was a "Gifted and Talented" program that placed students in classes with similar peers. In this environment students are taught not just comprehension but critical thinking skills through interaction, conversation, and debate.

That's not what happens in most city schools. According to some education theories, gifted and talented programs are biased and detrimental because they discriminate against certain groups of students in favor of others. So what you get (or what I got) was a 9th grade English class that included both a 17-year-old barely reading at a 3rd grade level and a 13-year-old reading at a 12th grade level.

This is a challenge for even seasoned teachers. Teaching to the middle ground of these two students causes both students to tune out: the 17-year-old is lost, and the 13-year-old knows it all already.

The theory that on-grade level and below-grade level students benefit from having above-grade level students in their class is flawed. Teaching to the middle is not the middle; it's accommodating the lowest level student and hurting everyone else.

For example, when deciding on the year's first book, my 9th Grade English Department peers advocated Tears of Tiger, a junior high school book that many students had previously read. The argument against reading Why We Can't Wait, Fire Next Time, or Manchild in the Promised Land was that it would go over the heads of many of the middle to lower level students, instead of pushing those students. We eventually choose one of Walter Dean Myers' books, Monster, that was a success.

In this case we avoided the temptation to select a rudimentary book. But selecting the rudimentary book over the more challenging one is a practice that dominates the majority of the District's schools, according to teachers and students I know.

To solve students' unpreparedness to enter college, some of DC's elected officials have recently advocated legislation that would mandate that students take a college entrance exam as a prerequisite to graduate. But rather than solving the problem, this requirement would merely "mainstream" all students into the same intellectual exercise.

This would do nothing to better prepare students to pursue a trade or enter college. And it would do nothing to help students develop the intellectual curiosity and critical thinking skills that Darryl lacked upon arriving at Georgetown University.

In coming posts I'll share some of my other experiences and opinions on why and how the city's school system and politicians continue to perpetuate failure.

In the Barry Farm community there are two historic homes on the 2700 block of Wade Road, SE that are not included in the city's thus-far unrealized redevelopment plans. Dews' home at 2717 Wade Road, built in the early 1920s, is one of the two.

"When they do that redevelopment, it doesn't matter to me. I plan on having my senior citizen's apartment," said Dews. "See, this is not part of the dwellings," he says, referring to the neighboring public housing project of Barry Farm Dwellings.

Yet, Dews has noticed recent changes that have affected his family's two-story home, one of the last remaining houses in the neighborhood with a basement. In recent years, a sidewalk was installed out front of the house. During his childhood and adolescence, Dews said it was a dirt road.

"I've watched them change the houses down there twice since I was coming up," he remembers, citing an influx of refugees from the urban renewal efforts in Southwest Washington. "At first it wasn't those big houses. It was little what we called shotgun houses. Open the front door and see through the back door. Back in the 40s & 50s."

Born in 1949, Dews says, "Most of the neighbors I know died."

Even with turnover in the area's housing, there was always a tight community. "It really didn't change the neighborhood that bad. See Barry Farm was always like a tribe," he said. Then, referring to the nearby Garfield Heights neighborhood, he added "they had the Garfields on the other side of the bridge. They didn't come over here and we didn't go over there. It was no guns, it was sticks and baseball bats back then, and fists."

During our conversation, along with local filmmaker and artist Tendani Mpulubusi, Dews shared some insights into his background. "I'm one of the original Teenorama dancers," Dews says reticently of the popular local teenage dance show of the 1960s. "I got on the cameras a couple times."

Dews and his extended family are well-known in southeast Washington. They were members of the Seafayers Yacht Club, founded in 1945 as the nation's oldest black yacht club. At one time, Dews owned a 55 foot boat.

He credits his life's success to his father. "My father had a third grade education. I thought he was the dumbest mother-(expletive) in the world, back then. But after I grew up I realized he was the smartest man in the world with a third grade education," Dews recalls fondly. "He always lectured us and whooped our ass."

Saint Teresa of Avilla Avila, at the northwest corner of 13th and V streets SE, is the oldest Roman Catholic Church in DC east of the Anacostia River. It was originally part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, because the Vatican did not make the City of Washington a separate archdiocese until 1939. St. Teresa, in fact, is older than the Archdiocese of Washington by more than a half century.

The new church was greeted with great enthusiasm even before it was finished being built. An April 1879 Washington Post article describing the laying of its cornerstone also reports of a celebratory parade, saying:

The route was determined on as follows: from City hall, down Four-and-a-half street to Pennsylvania avenue, thence to St. Peter's church, where the visiting clergy and others will join the procession, thence across the navy yard bridge to Uniontown. With regard to the formation of the line, it is thought that it will be the same on St. Patrick's day, except that there will be five divisions instead of four, the colored societies making the fifth.

When Saint Teresa opened its doors in the fall of 1879 Uniontown had a hotel, post office, police substation with mounted patrols while Henry A. Griswold's single-horse streetcar ran every 20 minutes. Frederick Douglass, the United States Marshal for the city lived just down the street.

According to The Anacostia Story. by the turn of the 20th century black parishioners were dissatisfied with the limited role they were permitted; African Americans were relegated to celebrate Mass in the church basement.

In response a group under the name "Mission of St. Teresa" organized to establish a separate church and parish for African American Catholics. Others changed their affiliation and went crosstown to Saint Augustine, the city's mother church for black Catholics since 1858, four years before the city's emancipation.

By 1920 ground was dug, dirt was moved, cement was turned and cornerstone laid for Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church on Morris Road SE, on the grounds of Fort Stanton.

According to Cultural Tourism DC, this was the second formal division of St. Teresa's. The first occurred when white parishioners left to establish Assumption Catholic Church in what had been the village hall for Congress Heights at 611 Alabama Avenue SE on April 2, 1916.

As the neighborhood's demographics began to change in the 1960s and the neighborhood became increasingly African American, the congregation of Saint Teresa changed as well. In 1976 Saint Teresa received its first African-American pastor. On a recent visit, with the exception of some college students, the overwhelming majority of worshipers are African American.

Today, Saint Teresa is one of more than a dozen historic churches in greater Anacostia still going strong, an important and familiar neighbor for parts of three centuries.

Excerpts from this post originally appeared in a 2010 article for East of the River.

This photo by Theodor Horydczak (1890-1971), one of more than 14,000 photos of his available through the Library of Congress's American Memory series, captures Anacostia's iconic neon signage in January 1947.

Commercial neon lighting signage first appeared at a Paris barbershop a couple of years before the outbreak of World War I. The new signs, sometimes referred to as "liquid fire," arrived in the United States in 1923. From conversations with Anacostia residents and initial research, Anacostia's sign appears to date back to the early 1940s.

Within minutes a friend and I were on the roof of this Colonial Revival-style apartment building on the 2600 block of 13th Street NW. We looked over a neighborhood that, in less than 10 years, has been transformed from one of the deepest gang and crew-affiliated areas of the nation's capital to a landing pad for DC's newest arrivals.

Formerly known as the Alden, Babcock, and Calvert Apartments, completed in the 1920s, the Warner Apartments at 2618-2622 13th Street NW were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

In late 1987, the Warner was the first of a dozen renovated apartment buildings to be completed as part of the city's "$15 million plan to reclaim vacant, privately owned, disintegrating apartment buildings and turn them into housing for low-income District residents," according to the Washington Post in November of that year. "By the time the last group of tenants left four years ago, a succession of landlords, tenants and city authorities had managed to reduce the once-graceful red-brick structure in Columbia Heights to an uninhabitable mess," said the article.

In February 1987 developer Joseph G. Kisha, in partnership with the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), acquired a "Rental Rehabilitation Loan Program Leasehold Deed of Trust, wherein the parties acknowledged" Kisha's "indebtedness to the District of Columbia government for a $220,000 interest free loan to finance the purchase and rehabilitation of the housing accommodation as rental units for low to moderate income," according to records of the Office of the Tenant Advocate.

On October 28, 1987, Kisha closed on the property for $413,872. Of that total, $176,220 came from the Rental Rehabilitation Loan Program, $159,000 from the Land Acquisition for Development Opportunities Program, and a guarantee of a forthcoming $78,652 from DHCD.

Wasting no time, the next day Kisha filed a Claim of Exemption Form with the Rental Accommodation and Conversion Division within the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, asserting that the apartments were "exempt from the rent control provision of the Rental Housing Act because the rental units were owned or subsidized by the District government."

Along with the city subsidized mortgage, Kisha argued that the property was additionally exempt from rent control because in 1984, when his company first expressed interest in its purchase, it was vacant and had been vacant up until the time he requested the exemption from rent control. The city agreed and approved his exemption. All 44 of the Warner's renovated units would go to low-income residents receiving federal rental assistance.

According to the November 1987 Post article, Kisha had concerns that "not enough attention ha[d] been directed at the time when the initial rent subsidies expire." He told the Post he and his business partner planned to own the Warner for fifteen years, but when the rent subsidies ran out, he was quoted as saying, "I don't know what happens then."

Fast forward to August 2006, less than twenty years after the Warner Apartments reopened, Kisha and his 2620 Limited Partnership was petitioned by the 2620 13th Street NW Tenants Association, who alleged that the Rental Housing Act of 1985 had been violated. Rents increased even though the units did not comply with housing regulations, tenants received "substantially" reduced services, and, the association argued, the property was not registered with the Rental Accommodation and Conversion Division.

Kisha sought to have the case dismissed with prejudice on the grounds that the Association's complaints were based on the rent stabilization provision of the Rental Housing Act, from which the Warner was exempted.

In late July 2009 Wanda R. Tucker, an Administrative Law Judge, issued a Final Order in the nearly three year old dispute. The Tenant Association's petition was "dismissed with prejudice," meaning the Tenant Association would be barred from bringing a future action on the same claim.

By December 2010 only four units remained occupied. Following the protocol of the 1980 Rental Housing Conversion and Sale Act, the remaining tenants were given the opportunity to purchase all three buildings. The asking price was $5,050,000. The tenants were prohibited from waiving their right to receive the Offer of Sale while their failure to purchase the buildings ensured their eventual eviction.

Last December the 2620 Limited Partnership sold the three buildings and got their money. New York-based Aria Partners, LLC, purchased the property for $5,018,000, a price representing more than $114,000 per unit. In press releases Aria pledged to "substantially renovate the building[s] to [their] historic standard while preserving 20% of the units as affordable."

Inside building "A"

Upon entering building "A," (2618 13th Street NW) a friend and I were greeted by two fire extinguishers coated in a thick layer of dust. Some loose construction materials lay in the corner of the vestibule. I step up the stairs into the hallway, a door to units on my right and left.

I shout out, "Uptown reporter in here!" The sound ricochets through the stairwell, down to the basement and up to the fourth floor.

I don't hear anything or anyone, neither does my friend. A solitary light bulb, in a no frills hallway chandelier overhead, gleams through the desolate dwelling.

The door on the left is unlocked, opening into a unit with three windows that overlook 13th Street NW. To the right is the intersection with Euclid Street NW. "There goes MPD," says my friend, "Rickey," as the police cruise south on 13th Street NW.

"Rickey," in his early 50's, grew up on nearby Sherman Avenue NW. He has fond neighborhood memories of "just trying to stay alive despite my best efforts not to." Although he now lives "on that southside" his "heart is always with the uptown."

He says, "I might be too street to tweet but I'm up on the only news that really matters; that corner news of what's happening now."

Rickey claims "everyone knows you've always been able to get high here whether it's vacant or when they got people. This place has never really been run right; it's always been a problem."

As we walk through the hallways and creep into deserted units, we're careful to watch our steps on the wood floors going to pieces. The non-bearing walls have all been knocked down, and drywall accumulates in piles in many of the units.

With scant evidence of squatters on the first and second floor, we discover verification on a third floor unit overlooking 13th Street that someone has been here within the past week. "Yep. If I was still getting high this is right where I'd do it. That's what they were doing," says Rickey.

There are a couple different newspapers scattered about from the same day last week, some cigar guts, and discarded wrappers for Black & Milds and cigarillos, used to roll up weed.

"To a lot of folks this place is too hot," Rickey says as we look down to the street below. "All these new people walking around, acting like ain't nothing wrong in the world. You better watch your back if you dip in here, these people will call the police on you quick, fast, and in a hurry."

Rickey pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and laments, "You know when I was coming up, yeah, there was a lot of guns and knives, and all those drugs around but it was different. The way it feels now, it doesn't feel real anymore."

A metal grate blocks the stairwell to the roof, but it's not locked. We pass boxes full of binders chronicling years' worth of work orders as we walk up the staircase.

We're now on the roof. I snap a quick picture. We head back downstairs but not before Rickey, with a fresh cigarette dangling from his mouth, says, "I know some folks in the market for an abandominium, I'll make sure to spread the word if they don't know already."

"This is one of the best abandominiums around," Alston-El said, peering through an opening into one of the building's basements, spotting scattered drug paraphernalia. "This is where they come to shoot the dope at. They jump in and jump out."

Walking the streets of Anacostia, at the turn of every corner, Alston-El is greeted with shout-outs and recognition. Speaking authoritatively about his community and its problems, Alston-El says, "When people talk about the good things happening in Anacostia, I wonder who they are talking about. They're not talking for me or people I know."

The people he speaks for are those who occupy Anacostia's vacant homes and apartment buildings and convert them to their own safe houses.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, Anacostia's abandominiums are a 2," says Bill Jackson, the last occupant of 2228 Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE. "But the reason folks run up in abandominiums is because they get tired of the shelters with their rules and regulations. If you find an abandominium uptown people notice, but in Anacostia nobody seems to notice or care."

Sadly, "they're safer than shelters," Alston-El says. "You don't have to worry about fighting with somebody. You don't have to worry about rats, because there's no food."

The misfortune is not in the people who squat in abandominiums, but those who own them and let them scar the neighborhood, say Alston-El.

1401 Bangor Street SE

Behind the three vacant High Street properties, across the alley, is another vacant building on Bangor Street SE.

While looking in the open rear basement door a neighbor calls out at me, "Hey, what are you doing? I'm calling the police! Get on!" I quickly identify and introduce myself.

The neighbor, speaking on the condition of anonymity, opens up about the ongoing problems with the property, a nearly 4500 square foot red brick building built in 1945.

"This building used to be for seniors, but they moved everybody out and tried to flip it," the neighbor said. "But that didn't work and it's been vacant since."

According to tax records the multi-family property was sold in November 2002 for $75,000 and was last sold in April 2005 for $288,000. The building and the 1/8 acre lot it sits on are assessed at $385,700 according to city records.

"It's a problem with the drug boys, the homeless, the prostitutes, you name it," said the neighbor. "I called DCRA after calls to 311 went nowhere. They did come out and board up all the openings. But you can see that didn't last long."

In the small room leading from the open door beer cans are strewn on the floor alongside cigarette butts and empty packages of Backwoods cigars, used for rolling up weed. A hot water heater remains intact adjacent to the door.

Back outside on Bangor Street, two neighborhood men pass by. I ask them about the building and its impact on the community.

"If you're living in the streets, a vacant house is a roof over your head," said Jerry. His friend Maurice added, "Gray and all them, they could fix these places up. But see the thing of it is, is that you got money they sending across the water instead of taking care of your folks at home."

Walking past the Bangor Street building on a recent evening, I notice a light on on the second floor. On its east side three separate power lines run into the domicile. With a second floor rear window open, a bucket propped upside down on the ground below providing a step to ease entry to and fro, this abandominium is apparently occupied.

"When you find one with power and water you stay put," Alston-El says, "because you're living like a king. You turn that place into the 'hood version of a five star hotel. The only thing missing is room service."

1700 - 1720 W Street SE

While taking pictures of a boarded-up apartment complex on the 1700 block of W Street SE, two blocks from the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, someone calls out, "You guys finally going to get started?"

After explaining ourselves, Kirk Clark, a contractor who lives across the street, shared his memories of the collection of derelict three story buildings. Ivy is slowly encroaching on the banner pledging "Spacious 2BR/2 Bath Homes Coming Soon" at the Buxton Condos.

"When I got locked up in '87 it was open," says Clark. "I came home in '91 and it was closed. It's been closed ever since." The only other activity he's seen in and around the property, other than neighborhood children, has been the coming and going of Anacostia's displaced souls.

"They got a lot of homeless people out here who don't have nowhere to go. And when you leave a lot of abandoned buildings around that's where people are going to go so they can go sleep," Clark said.

Walking around to the back of the property, Alston-El and I ascend the stairs to the second level of one of the units and enter a former one bedroom apartment, stepping over a door that's been kicked in. A few wayward t-shirts and Gatorade bottles show someone has recently been here.

"Look," Alston-El says reaching up, "you can see they've cut all the copper out. I know how it's done because I used to do the same thing."

The properties, owned by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, have an assessed value at just over $2.2 million.

"The most important matter," says Alston-El, "is that these places don't do anyone or the city any good. They don't generate any taxes and they don't generate any jobs."

"We got all these people, working people who need some place to live and can't find anything, yet this stuff is allowed by the city. They want to build something new, why not fix what's been here?"

All the while, across the river, a new tower crane pops up every few weeks. Is it any surprise some people in Anacostia feel resentment?

The consolidated Planned Unit Development (PUD) map amendment that the developers are seeking would make some major changes to Sheridan Station. Originally, 53% of the 344 total units were to be renter occupied. Now the developers want to increase rentals to 75% of the total, while reducing the number of dwellings to 327.

Members of the community and ANC 8A commissioners, whose position is given "great weight" when the modification comes before the Zoning Commission, were outspoken in their opposition to these changes at last week's meeting.

"We can do that land bank strategy," said Matt Engle of William C. Smith. Although, this waiting game strategy could allow time for the market to come back around, there's a major caveat. If the $4 million does go back to the Treasury, the redevelopment's completion could be compromised.

"The housing authority struggled with this change," said Asmara Habte of the DC Housing Authority. "We did our own market research and we saw there just isn't a market to develop any more home ownership units."

Units priced at $328,000 and above are being appraised at just over $300,000. Complicating matters, said William C. Smith representatives, are the problems in nearby Henson Ridge, a HOPE VI project located on Alabama Avenue SE. Bank lenders have pointed to a recent short sale in Henson Ridge for $240,000 as a comparative sale that should guide Sheridan's price points.

"The banks are schizophrenic," Engle said.

As funding dries up nationwide for affordable housing programs and more than 40,000 people sit on the city's waiting lists for housing assistance, the demand for help greatly overwhelms the supply.

However, residents believe the dense concentration of public housing in Ward 8 is handcuffing economic development, by suppressing property values.

"We always accept, 'Well, we got to have a place to house people. We got to make the rents suitable for people,'" said Gregg Justice of ANC8A. "What about the people that are coming in the future?"

William C. Smith has been widely lauded by city officials as a responsible corporate citizen in Ward 8 for, among other projects, their development of THEARC on Mississippi Avenue. But some lifelong Anacostians said their initial skepticism is being confirmed.

Pointing to Sheridan Station's misleading website that heralds, "Steps away from Metro and trolley," Rev. Oliver Johnson, a former board member of the Anacostia Economic Development Corporation and Union Temple Community Development Corporation, says, "This dream has turned into a scheme that has turned into a nightmare."

The problems at Sheridan Station, within an area the city's branding as "CHASE" (Congress Heights, Anacostia, Saint Elizabeths), directly east of Sheridan Road, bound by Howard Road, Sayles Place, Bowen Place Road, Stanton Road, and Pomeroy Road will without a doubt have a reverberating impact on the nearby commercial corridor that has seen the recent closure of two eateries.

Last summer Carol Chatham, Vice President of Communications for William C. Smith, said, "Many eyes are watching the Sheridan project. Success at Sheridan will encourage further development along the MLK corridor."

What the potential failure of Sheridan Station means for the surrounding neighborhoods and greater Ward 8 is analogous to a modernized version of Charles Dickens' epoch "Tale of Two Cities."

The risk is that the city's population continues to swell, while Ward 8 shrinks. New restaurants, businesses, and opportunities for leisure enliven communities elsewhere in the city, but Anacostia and Ward 8 remain a commercial dead zone.

Unless something starts to change, East of the River, foreclosures and short sales will continue to be ubiquitous. And deserted 19th century homes will continue to decay as the elements slowly turn history to dust.

There is no new Ward 8. It's just more of the same old song; concentrated poverty, failing schools, and broken promises.