American Dream

washingtonpost.com
Residents Decry Plan To Replace NW Park
Site Would Get Mixed Housing

By Lori Montgomery and Lindsay Ryan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 15, 2005; B01

Quotes:

D.C. planning officials are proposing to rip up a popular park on New York Avenue NW to build 98 townhouses as part of an ambitious plan to revitalize a poor neighborhood a few blocks south, around the long-troubled Sursum Corda housing cooperative.

Although the proposal is in preliminary stages, it is drawing fire from residents in the fast-gentrifying area around the park, known as the New York Avenue Playground. Many homeowners are furious about the prospect of seeing the tree-lined space replaced by densely packed housing.

In the District, where skyrocketing real estate prices often are blamed for driving longtime residents out of their neighborhoods and the city, the dispute over the park highlights an instance in which the government is trying to retain territory for poor residents.

Planning officials argue that the park, which occupies much of a city block at New York Avenue and First Street NW, is one of few vacant parcels available for the first phase of the Sursum Corda redevelopment project. That plan, part of Mayor Anthony A. Williams's New Communities initiative, calls for razing several low-income apartment buildings teetering on the brink of financial insolvency and replacing them with a
denser mix of new homes for people at all income levels.

In the Sursum Corda neighborhood, Williams (D) hopes to save the homes of 520 poor families who otherwise might be overrun by rising rents and high-end development. Many have lived in the area for more than 30 years. To make sure they don't have to leave during construction, the city wants to use the park as a site for townhouses, about 30 of which would permanently house the very poor.

The development plan grew out of four days of meetings in July with residents of Sursum Corda and of the surrounding neighborhood. City officials have yet to develop a financing package for the redevelopment, and planning officials said that construction is at least 18 months away.

"The irony is, if you go there in the day or the evenings, there are lots of problems with vagrants in the park, anyway," said Michael Downie, who is overseeing the New Communities initiative for the D.C. Office of Planning. "Our perception is the only people using the park are people who walk their dogs and vagrants. There's some use of the courts and fields by Little League teams, but it's not a very programmed, active space."

Nearby homeowners beg to differ. They say the park is filled each evening with people walking their dogs or out for a stroll. On weekends, they say, the baseball field and basketball courts are in constant use. On Saturday, for instance, the park's two basketball courts hosted a day-long tournament. Terrance Judge, founder and president of the Metropolitan Basketball League, said teams play there every summer Saturday. He said it helps relieve tension among groups of kids.

But longtime residents feel connected to the existing park: A few years ago, many of them helped to renovate the space they
call a rare oasis of green.

Mike Thiem, 30, a spokesman for a Defense Department agency, moved to the neighborhood from Arlington six months ago.

Thiem said he and others are "paying a half-million dollars for these houses. The last thing I want on my doorstep is displaced residents from one of the most violent housing projects in the city. . . . I didn't spend this kind of money to have drug dealers out on my step."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[See also City Officials to Rethink Plan for NW Park, published on Tuesday, August 16, 2005.]