DC’s housing agency wants to develop a long-vacant site in Anacostia with affordable housing and retail, but residents and the city’s preservation officials say it is incompatible with the neighborhood. The choice between the two hangs on one last appeal.

Photo by Old Anacostia on Flickr.

The city’s Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) has owned the “Big K” site on the 2200 block of Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue since 2010. It includes the abandoned former “Big K” liquor store and two historic, yet blighted, houses next door.

DHCD has been working with the Chapman Development company to plan an affordable apartment building on the land. Chapman wants to demolish the liquor store, built in 1906 but just outside the Anacostia Historic District, and move the two houses to a nearby city lot where the former Unity Healthcare Clinic has sat vacant for nearly two years. Chapman would pay for the relocation, while DHCD would renovate the homes with a fund of $750,000.

Chapman also plans to acquire the adjacent Astro Motors to assemble the entire Big K site and build a building of 114 apartments over a retail ground floor. The apartments would be affordable housing for people making 60% of Area Median Income, or about $58,000 for a family of 3. The original proposal was 6 stories and 141 units, but Chapman shrank the project in response to community pushback.

Rendering of the original, larger proposal.

The revised version maxes out at 5 stories, but each of the upper two stories would be set back so they do not occupy the whole footprint of the parcel, forming an “E-shaped building” as seen from Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. DHCD would transfer its ownership of the Big K lot to Chapman for $1, while low-income tax credits and government transfer rent payments would help finance the building.

Top: Elevation of the original proposal. Bottom: The new proposal. Renderings from a community presentation by the development team.

However, at community meetings about the project, residents have opposed the plan. They do not want to see so much new affordable housing, saying that Anacostia already has more than its fair share. Others said that the building’s scale is incompatible with the historic district, which mostly comprises lower and smaller buildings. Residents also opposed the name Cedar Hill Flats. Cedar Hill is the name for the home of legendary civil rights activist Frederick Douglass, and community members wanted to keep that name linked solely with Douglass. Chapman has agreed not to use the name. The Historic Preservation Review Board “denied the concept for new construction as incompatible with the character of the historic district because it is too large in height and extent relative to the historic buildings in the commercial corridor and out of scale with the historic district” in October. Then, at the end of February, Chapman brought its revised, shorter version to HPRB, which again denied the application:
It is too tall relative to the district’s historic buildings and too extensive, to occupy half the square and crowd the narrow sidewalk. It would also destroy the unusual topography of the site. … The Board recommended that a permit not be issued to move 2234 and 2252 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue because the move would diminish the buildings’ integrity and harm the character of this corner of the historic district, and because the houses could be rehabilitated and reused in place.
The preservation staff and board were also skeptical that the $750,000 earmark would be enough to properly relocate the homes without damaging them. Project goes to the Mayor’s Agent HPRB’s charge is only to look at the historic preservation issues in an application. But when a property owner believes the “special merit” or public interest value of a project should outweigh historic concerns (or if there is a financial hardship involved), there is an appeals process to an officer known as the Mayor’s Agent. Currently, that agent is J. Peter Byrne, a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Chapman has appealed to the Mayor’s Agent. At a hearing yet to be scheduled, Byrne will review the application to move and rehabilitate the two houses and, will consider the purposes and benefits of the entire Big K project. DHCD and Chapman Development will likely argue the “special merit” of different components of the project, its amenities, and talk about how they help achieve objectives in DC’s Comprehensive Plan. At February’s HPRB hearing, staff from DHCD, including Director Michael Kelly, Chapman Development and a consultant from Streetsense, argued that economic development was a key component of the project. Although members of HPRB contended that economic development was not under their purview, it is possible that argument will meet the special merit standard for the Mayor’s Agent to rule in favor of the project. After four long years of debate, the long path for Anacostia’s most infamous vacant property may finally be coming to an end — or if this proposal fails, could continue for years more to come.