Posts about Tenley Library PPP

Want to know more about what the city is doing, or could do, to use public lands for more affordable housing? How might a library be a good candidate to become mixed-use and mixed income? Join us on Wednesday evening, June 6 for a conversation with the leading thinkers and decision-makers on what gets built on city-owned land, including Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Victor Hoskins and DC Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper.

DC's history of affordable housing

Throughout the 2000s, DC has provided thousands of housing units, including a large share of affordable and deeply affordable units, by aggressively managing its surplus lands. 9 parcels on 13 acres of land in Columbia Heights produced nearly 600 new affordable housing units, or 35% of all new units.

The City Vista project at 5th and K NW generated a robust mix of 685 units of housing and retail. 138 units, or 20% of the total, were made available at moderate to deeply affordable levels, including some for those earning no more than 30% of the area median income (AMI).

During earlier decades of disinvestment and population decline, the District acquired substantial amounts of vacant and underutilized land. Many of these properties are now valuable assets that have been or can be redeveloped for housing, commercial uses, or new public facilities. The District also owns large parcels of former federal property as well as scores of aging schools, libraries, and other public facilities with the potential to meet a range of community needs.

Since 2000, starting with Mayor Anthony Williams' administration, the District government has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments putting surplus lands back into productive use through public-private partnership deals. Affordable housing has been a priority for these redevelopment projects, with DC seeking to designate 20-30 percent of the overall units as affordable.

Going beyond some affordable housing deals, DC sought to create a mix of housing opportunities at very low income levels. It's most difficult to pay for deeply affordable housing, but there is the greatest need for this housing because it's expensive to build and most low-wage jobs don't pay enough to cover even that cost.

A promising success story: The Hine school

The Hine School project stands out as an example of how a project on public land can balance affordable housing and other public benefits with market-rate development. Located between the Eastern Market Metro station and the historic market house, the Hine School project has an extra challenge of rebuilding in an historic district.

Residents and prominent local community groups engaged early in the decision-making process to express their vision for the site and influenced the selection of the developer, design, and uses. The project will include 46 low-income housing units, with 5 units at 30% area median income (AMI), 29 at 60% AMI, and 12 at 80% AMI.

In addition, the project would rebuild C Street SE as a curbless street and plaza and provide room for weekend vendor tents that can accommodate much (but not all) of the flea market currently using the existing school parking lot. Unlike many public land deals, the developer is also adding office space, which can diversify the activity in the area throughout the day and generate revenues that contribute to what the city collects as both taxes and rent.

In all, the Hine project adds up to a winner of a public land deal. Its design fits the historic context of the neighborhood while offering a mix of affordable and market-rate housing, along with office, retail, and public space in a highly desirable neighborhood and adjacent to a Metro station.

A missed opportunity: The Tenley Library and Janney School

One of the big ones that got away was a mixed-use proposal for the Tenley Library and Janney School. Few chances exist to provide affordable housing in the affluent upper Northwest neighborhood of Tenleytown. This project would have provided 53 units (30% of the total) at 30% AMI, offering low-income residents the chance to live in the community, rather than only commute to it.

The deal would also have accelerated needed upgrades to the popular Janney Elementary School at the same time, using up-front payments from the private developer, and it would brought $5 million in cost savings to the library.

The plan followed a lengthy and tortured path until 2009, when leaders decided to defer the project's housing elements with a promise to allow for putting it partly on top of the library in the future. However, it's hard to see how that would be feasible, let alone affordable.

Instead of using money from the project to fund Janney, the city reallocated money to pay for the school, exacerbating an already inequitable tilt in capital school expenditures towards Ward 3. The result was no affordable housing, no added resources leveraged by private investment, and a more inequitable distribution of school modernization dollars.

Community supporters for the mixed-use plan were disappointed. "The [school and library] agencies had no interest in combining land and resources, said Allison Barnard Feeney, a Janney School parent and advocate for the mixed use proposal. "By the time the mayor got behind it, this idea had quite a lot of entrenched opposition."

What's next?

Public land deals have delivered a lot of affordable housing in the District through the 2000s. But the future direction for public land redevelopment is unclear. The recent request for proposals for the site near the Shaw Metro station (Parcel 42) has not specified specific amounts of affordable housing, which is a change from practices in the past decade.

The administration of Mayor Vincent Gray has not established its policy for future public land dispositions but has continued to execute deals with substantial amounts of affordable housing.

As for future deals, according to Deputy Mayor Victor Hoskins, the city may no longer insist that projects on public land require a specific amount of affordable housing or target income levels as they did under the Williams and Fenty administrations. Instead, the administration may ask developers to maximize affordable units below 80% AMI in their proposals, as with the Parcel 42 request. Under such an approach, achieving affordability reaching all the way down to 30% AMI is less likely. Deputy Mayor Hoskins has suggested that the Mayor's Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force, convened in February 2012, will help provide broader guidance on this question.

High costs of construction, a tighter District budget, and a shrinking federal role make the path to more affordable housing uncertain. While the District has completed many successful projects, many more opportunities remain to realize public benefits from public land.

Some of their concerns for any given project can seem legitimate when viewed without context, ignoring of the multiple benefits of well-designed areas with mixed uses. But Tenleytown's zoning only allows for densities along a very narrow band on Wisconsin Avenue, closer in form to a suburban arterial than an interconnected city neighborhood. Many other lots, just a block or two from the Metro have no opportunities for development at any scale, because they are zoned as low-density in spite of their location at a major node in the city's infrastructure network.

Because there are so few available parcels, city officials and residents on both sides end up debating the few opportunities for development even more hotly. The Tenley-Friendship Library, for example, represented an appealing opportunity to add housing to an existing project on publicly-owned land. But that small site posed other challenges, like fitting in a reasonable building without disrupting the adjacent Janney School. That proved too difficult, and city officials ultimately abandoned that effort.

Last week, the Economic Development office announced that the new library would have stronger columns in the rear third of the building, to support future construction above and behind the current building.

A small addition, mostly on top rather than beside the library, might be possible, but there's very little room to maneuver. And realistically, any building other than a modest standalone structure would seem out of place amid the other uses on that block. Eliminating one of Janney's fields is too steep a price to pay for the benefits. However, nobody would be suggesting such an expensive, controversial project if the neighborhood had zoning that was more reasonable for such a central location and neighbors that greeted development with constructive dialogue.

The local ANC issued a list of potential development sites in response to the Library fiasco, however, the sites they selected are not enough. Metro and the commercial potential along Wisconsin are both amazing resources that a neighborhood cannot squander while also looking to become sustainable and rational.

Cross-posted at цarьchitect.

The prelude

It all started when DC Public Library (DCPL) closed the Tenley-Friendship library in 2005. Facilities moved to an interim library a few blocks south. This created immediate pressure to build a new library as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the Janney school was getting overcrowded and needed more modern facilities. The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (ODMPED) began exploring the possibility of a win-win solution: build a public-private partnership (PPP) on the library site, raise money to accelerate Janney's modernization, and better utilize the corner. Many members of the community supported the idea, while others did not. Some Janney parents liked the plan, while others did not.

Community members identified several key objectives for any successful PPP. Chief among them was "no net loss of green space" for Janney. The school must not lose usable playing field land, and if they do lose some, replace it with other land reclaimed from surface parking. Other principles included affordable housing and LEED certification, no undue delay to the library, and of course moving Janney up in the modernization queue.

The RFP

In October 2007, ODMPED released an RFP for the project. Three teams submitted bids: LCOR, Roadside Development, and the See Forever Foundation. According to some residents, the Roadside team did the best job listening to community input and tailoring their plan. However, in July, ODMPED selected LCOR, to the surprise of many project supporters. Some say this decision doomed the PPP.

Or, perhaps ODMPED's indecision on the project parameters doomed it. In February 2008, after bidders had submitted their original proposals, ODMED changed the parameters to require the library and apartment building to occupy separate sites. This would enable DCPL to start work on the library right away. However, it would also inhibit putting housing atop the library. Any building that earned enough money to pay for Janney parking and modernization would have to take away even more space from Janney. Such a solution would satisfy one constraint while smashing headlong into another. Ultimately, they acceped an LCOR bid which did indeed use the space above the library, perhaps because no team could make anything else work.

Things fall apart

Early on, supporters had built a fragile coalition in favor of this project. Unfortunately, they say, a lack of communication from ODMPED made that difficult to sustain. Plans posted online for the project contained few details. Staff for Councilmember Mary Cheh, who represents the area, told me that even they could not get answers to questions about plans or status.

In October, Cheh and Councilmember Kwame Brown wrote a letter withdrawing their support for the PPP. They argued that the PPP was "fatally flawed". Instead, they asked DCPL to proceed with a standalone library, but to incorporate structural supports necessary to allow more floors on top at some point in the future.

In response, ODMPED replied in January that they still believed in the PPP and were moving ahead. Cheh scheduled a roundtable for today. On Friday, her office announced that ODMPED and LCOR principals would not be attending, and therefore canceled the roundtable. Cheh reiterated her position from last fall urging DCPL to move forward with a library including structural supports. Today, we learned why LCOR and ODMPED weren't going to appear at the roundtable: the Mayor has decided to take Cheh's recommendation and shelve, at least for now, the PPP.

The neighborhood war

During these years, few neighborhoods have seen the degree of public fighting as Tenleytown. Much of the traffic on that neighborhood's email list over the last year concerned the PPP, often taking a nasty tone on both sides. Lead opponent Sue Hemberger, in particular, wrote hundreds if not thousands of emails to the Tenleytown email list, rebutting any arguments in favor of the PPP.

Hemberger and others contend that DC Public Schools, ODMPED, and/or Mary Cheh conspired to manipulate the modernization queue to help the PPP. Essentially, they allege that Janney had already gotten bumped up to 2010 or 2011 after DC closed many public schools last year (further crowding Janney). They say that Janney was deliberately moved to the end of the queue so that this PPP could accelerate it.

Ad evidence, they cite documents which they received from a FOIA request. They asked for all documents pertaining to the PPP. However, some project supporters argue that Hemberger and her "special committee" investigating the matter selectively quoted from documents to support their anti-PPP point of view. And ANC Commissioner Jonathan Bender wrote that since the "special committee" destroyed all documents except those they published, there's no way to know the broader context.

What went wrong

It's a tough project. This wasn't an easy site. Janney parents naturally worried about taking land away from a crowded school. A PUD containing a library is complex. The site is small and constrained. Multiple governmental agencies had to coordinate. By any measure, this was not an easy spot to orchestrate such a project.

The library was closed too early. Why did DCPL close the libraries back in 2005? It would have been much better to leave the old one open until designs were finalized for the replacements, and funds allocated. The community's understandable eagerness for a real library on their regular library site squeezed the PPP.

Silence wasn't golden. Opponents made frequent arguments that the new location of the soccer field wouldn't work, that the process would take too long, and more. Perhaps these arguements were correct. Perhaps not. If ODMPED believed otherwise, supporters could better rebut them in the public discourse armed with some useful information. Without real facts, the tide turned against the project. The debate moved from the merits of the project to the conduct of individual participants, such as the allegations about manipulating the queue and destroying evidence. That's not productive for anyone.

If DCPL hadn't jumped the gun, we might have had a great mixed-use project already planned for this site. If neighborhood opponents weren't so tenacious, or ODMPED more open and communicative, or the site more conducive to a project, we might have it. Maybe one day we still can.