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Here's an interesting, long WaPo article about the 2nd use of eminent domain by the DC city government for commercial use since the Supreme Court's ruling that expanded the acceptable commercial uses of land acquired through eminent domain. Interesting also to see the ebb and flow of city neighborhoods.
As I've said before, eminent domain is mainly a country-city political issue. Democrats are strong in cities, where gov't officials like to have the tool of eminent domain to stamp out blight. Republicans are strong in the suburbs, exurbs and the countryside, where eminent domain seems like heavy-handed government.
I'm of two minds about the ruling. Now that I live in the city, I am much more sympathetic to the Supreme Court ruling, however. A large portion of DC is blight, especially in the Southeast quadrant. I would like to see places like Skyland get moved out.
As I've said before, eminent domain is mainly a country-city political issue. Democrats are strong in cities, where gov't officials like to have the tool of eminent domain to stamp out blight. Republicans are strong in the suburbs, exurbs and the countryside, where eminent domain seems like heavy-handed government.
I'm of two minds about the ruling. Now that I live in the city, I am much more sympathetic to the Supreme Court ruling, however. A large portion of DC is blight, especially in the Southeast quadrant. I would like to see places like Skyland get moved out.
A Tough Sell
SE's Shabby Skyland Shopping Center Faces An Upscale Battle Against Development
By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2006; D01
The customer is cursing. It's getting ugly. Back near the Discount Mart cash register (located far from the door, to discourage robbers), the customer is hollering something awful.
"Call the [expletive] police! Send my [expletive] to jail! [Expletive] retarded!"
She's mad, all right, thinks she's been shortchanged. And now she's heading for the door, leaving a trail of invective in this emporium stacked high with bed linens, shoes, clothing, kitchen gadgets, hair supplies, toys, electronics and more at the controversial Skyland Shopping Center in Southeast Washington.
Sam Franco rushes over. He's the owner, been here for 30 years.
"What can I do for you?" he asks the woman. He leans in, his hand on her shoulder, showing he's there for her, cares for her, though she's still sputtering mad.
David Lewis is shopping for backpacks for homeless schoolchildren. He's a loyal Discount Mart customer, comes here several times a year to shop for charitable causes. A resident of nearby Hillcrest, he doesn't want Discount Mart to close, doesn't want to see Skyland demolished, as the city plans. But while he watches the angry woman and Franco's effort to calm her, Lewis nods in their direction and says quietly, "That's the other side of the coin."
He means the other side of the debate about class and Skyland -- about the quest for a gentrified shopping experience in a previously lowbrow place.
A powerful group of affluent Hillcrest residents has succeeded in getting the city to declare eminent domain at Skyland-- a controversial move seen in no other commercial land deal in the District except the new baseball stadium. Skyland will be demolished, under the plan, and a higher-quality shopping center built in its place. Target may be its anchor. There could even be a white-tablecloth restaurant.
The Hillcrest activists say they are sick and tired of Skyland's downtrodden look, its lack of what they call quality products, its old discount stores and liquor stores and sidewalk vendors and assorted illegal or undesirable activity. The folks of Hillcrest say both they and the broader community, prosperous and poor alike, deserve far better.
But this 18.5-acre site with its hodgepodge of haphazardly arrayed shops has become the OK Corral of the District property rights battle, for Franco and his fellow merchants and property owners aren't going down without a fight. They have filed several court cases to keep their Skyland shops open, though some also are looking for new locations around the city and suburbs in case they lose the fight.
Until then, business goes on at Discount Mart. There is merchandise to move (late summer saw mountains of school uniforms). There are staff issues to manage and customer problems to troubleshoot.
As he walks his angry customer to the door, Franco talks to her gently, makes it all right, convinces her she has not been shortchanged. He's been doing this for years, trying to keep his customers happy. He's got his arm around the woman's shoulder, cooing reassuringly, "It's all good."
But for Skyland, it really isn't.
Business Plan
Skyland, at Alabama Avenue and Naylor Road SE, is the story of a city faced with battles over property rights, differing visions of commerce, and class tensions -- with Franco and dozens of other Skyland merchants caught in the headlights of change. The players in this fight -- including a multiethnic bloc of merchants and an affluent African American community -- defy the white-black script of many other gentrification battles around the city.
Franco and other Skyland merchants and landowners say they are operating viable businesses that have a large and loyal customer base. Sure, Skyland could use a renovation, they say, but that doesn't mean existing businesses should be forced out.
So they are battling the D.C. Council and the quasi-independent National Capital Revitalization Corp. (NCRC). In the D.C. Court of Appeals, they are arguing that the D.C. Council's declaration of eminent domain violated their property rights in favor of private political and financial interests -- not for the public good, as the U.S. Supreme Court says must be the basis for eminent domain. Other aspects of the land seizure are being contested in U.S. District Court and D.C. Superior Court.
Skyland: The name sounds so retro, as if a bowling alley should be there or a drive-in theater. Instead, it is a commercial potpourri, with beauty salons, a "gentleman's" club, record store, a couple of shoe stores, an auto parts store, a discount supermarket, a couple of liquor stores and a few fast-food joints.
There is nothing aesthetic about Skyland, no overarching architectural design. Even its matching awnings along one strip of shops don't add coherence to the place. Compared with the Safeway-anchored Good Hope Marketplace strip mall across the street, with its renovated suburban-country design and landscaping, Skyland's aesthetic shortcomings are all the more glaring. The shopping center looks old and poorly maintained. People loiter in front of its liquor stores or drink in its large parking lot, which also is a dumping ground for broken-down cars or cars for sale, says 6th District Metropolitan Police Commander Robin Hoey. And illegally dumped trash piles up in a wooded lot behind the shops, area residents say.
But Skyland has been fully occupied for years. There have been no boarded-up shops. Business has been brisk.
Nonetheless, the D.C. legislation that empowered the NCRC to exercise eminent domain says that Skyland is blighted. A redeveloped center, it says, "will create hundreds of new jobs, attract businesses that are desired by the community and stimulate economic activity east of the Anacostia River."
It says that Skyland's "fragmented and absentee ownership" made problems of crime, trash and other "blighting factors" only worse because of the difficulty of coordinating a diverse roster of 16 property owners and 27 businesses. And it called Skyland "an impediment to the economic revitalization of this area of the District."
Francoadmits that the shopping center needs an upgrade, though he stands on Alabama Avenue one day and points at the strip of bustling shops and declares defensively: "You can't consider this blight. This isn't blight."
NCRC officials say that eminent domain was the only way for their development plans at Skyland to go forward. Otherwise, they say, it would have been virtually impossible to get so many property owners and businesses on the same page.
Some Skyland owners say that isn't true. And they proved themselves united when they unanimously backed a plan for a privately financed development last year. They tried to get the NCRC to support the plan devised by First FSK Ltd., the largest landowner at Skyland. First FSK argued that the private development would not cost the city money.
The NCRC gave First FSK 21 days to provide several types of information, including letters of interest from lenders and investors as well as a vision of its alternative development program. But First FSK already had given several alternative site plans to the NCRC. And considering the notoriety of the Skyland development conflict, potential lenders would want to know the NCRC's position before throwing any weight behind First FSK, the latter company argued.
David Burka, the manager of the First FSK properties at Skyland, suggested in a letter to the NCRC that its demand for information and its deadline were "unreasonable" and would "set up" the owners' proposal to fail.
The NCRC stood firm, though, and rejected the First FSK proposal.
"First FSK did come to us with a proposal for a mixed-use development," Ted Risher, the NCRC project manager for Skyland, said in a recent interview. "We gave it due consideration and we actually formulated a business plan. However, in the time we gave First FSK to produce some nominal information on their idea of the project, they were unable to come up with that information."
And so the publicly financed NCRC project goes on, with a price tag so far of $130 million.
The bottom line, for Franco, is simple.
"They don't want us here."
The Retail Mix
As an Orthodox Jew, Franco, 53, of Kemp Mill in Montgomery County, says he believes "whatever is going to happen is going to happen." He's seen his share of events over which he had little control.
In the discount trade since he dropped out of the University of Maryland to help his dad, he's in his second displacement battle.
"I don't know if I'm cursed or what," Franco says good-naturedly.
Just a few years before his dad's discount store, known as J.D.'s, was displaced in the early 1980s from a spot at 12th and G downtown to make room for Hecht's, Franco's first Discount Mart, located at Seventh and E downtown, was forced out by construction for the Metro in 1976. He reopened in one Skyland storefront that same year, then moved two doors down in 1978, taking over the huge old Naylor Theater building that anchored the original shopping strip.
Built in 1945 and expanded over the years, Skyland sits at a crossroads of several neighborhoods: the leafy streets of Hillcrest with its manicured lawns and well-kept Colonials and Tudors; the large new town homes and apartments along Good Hope Road, some still under construction; the garden apartments of Naylor Road; and several low-income apartment complexes that dot the area. From white-collar professionals to young mothers on public assistance, Skyland's environs run the socioeconomic gamut.
You can find this diverse range of people in places like Skyland Liquors, where Rose and Joseph Calvin Rumber's store has become a community gathering spot.
African American Anacostia natives and lifelong sweethearts, the Rumbers worked dutifully for years at Skyland Liquors and thought their boss, Paul Cooper, was just joshing when he said he might make them owners one day.
He would say, " 'One day, Rosie, I'm going to leave the business to you,' and I just smiled and laughed and said, 'Okay, Mr. Cooper,' " she recalls sweetly, sadly.
And they were awestruck when he actually did it, made provision for them in his will upon his death in 2000. The Rumbers had to put their home up as collateral to buy the place in 2003, but they did it gladly to become business owners -- and now they could face financial ruin if they are unable to find a new location for the business.
Lawrence Ray, a nearby resident, is a regular at Skyland Liquors, where he plays keno and otherwise socializes around a high wooden table set up for lottery customers.
"That's a joke," he says of the white-tablecloth restaurant that folks from Hillcrest would like to see at Skyland. "What are they talking about, tablecloths? Who's that for?"
Sure, beautify the place, says Ray, a retired public school security officer. But he takes exception to the notion that his area is something in need of revitalization.
"I hate that word 'revitalize.' Revitalizing what? Whose idea? That wasn't our idea. . . . What about the people that's in the community who may not even afford to be here once it's revitalized?"
It is, to his mind, part of a grand scheme to push the poor out, "because eventually that's what's going to happen."
On the cash register a faded sticker says "eminent domain" with a red line through it. But the Rumbers sense the writing on the wall. They've been looking for a new location.
"It's over," Rose Rumber says. "We've been fighting for three years."
Should the court challenge fail and the Skyland businesses move, NCRC will pay merchants up to $20,000 each to relocate. As for the property owners, six sold to the NCRC before eminent domain was declared. Franco was offered $350,000 for the 2,000 square feet he owns in his 17,000-square-foot store, most of which is leased. But he refused to sell. He'd rather fight. Now, if forced to leave, he would be eligible only for a lesser amount of "just compensation," though the definition of terms is in dispute in the courts.
Franco, whose store grosses about $4 million a year, is not so much worried for himself or his two sons who work with him. Four of his five brothers are also in discount retail in the area. He could merge with one of them.
"But what would I do with all the employees?" Franco employs up to 40 people, among them Sallie Shields, who has been with Discount Mart for 12 years.
It can be a rough place to work sometimes. It's not frequent, but just in case trouble does break out with a suspected shoplifter, she carries a box cutter in her pocket and keeps a length of metal bed frame under her counter.
Despite the uncertainty, Shields isn't looking for a new job just yet. She calls Skyland "raggedy" and "run-down." But Franco's been a good boss, she says. Employees get a 20 percent discount. She'll wait it out with him, wait to see whether and how Skyland changes.
Attention, Shoppers
Once upon a time, the old Naylor Theater played first-run movies. Southeast was a largely white postwar bedroom community back then, in the 1940s and '50s. Fred S. Kogod built the theater with Max Burka, his brother-in-law. They are the K and B of KB Cinemas, the old Washington area theater chain that went out of business in the 1990s as multiplexes took over.
The steady shift of Southeast from white to black was boosted in the 1950s and 1960s with the influx of people pushed out of Southwest during urban renewal. Many of them had relocated from Georgetown two decades earlier.
The District, in large measure, has become a very different city since those days -- and that's precisely the beef of Hillcrest residents.
They have watched rebirth in downtown, on U Street, in the H Street corridor and Columbia Heights -- and still, their community has remained relatively static. And now, with a mayor and city council on their side, and eminent domain providing the muscle, Skyland's detractors are virtually salivating at the prospect of its demise.
"Can't come soon enough," Paul Savage said as he settled into a folding chair in the East Washington Heights Baptist Church basement one Saturday morning last month.
He was there, with about 80 other area residents, to see the design ideas the NCRC is considering for the new Skyland -- or whatever it will be called.
Savage, for one, doesn't even want the Skyland name to remain. Too many bad memories. He doesn't call the area Southeast, either; too many negative connotations. He prefers to call it East Washington.
He's a Hillcrest man, a prime mover behind Mayor Anthony Williams's first run for office, and a founder 15 years ago of the Skyland Revitalization Task Force. The task force represents the aspirations of the affluent African Americans, with a few whites sprinkled in, of Hillcrest and other nearby communities.
Ask Savage, a former D.C. official, which of Skyland's shops he'd like to see return to a redeveloped shopping center there and he says flat out: "I can't think of one." Well, maybe the CVS, he adds.
"I haven't shopped there in 15 years," he says of Skyland. "It's not good enough for me."
And that really is the story: Folks in Hillcrest, Penn Branch and other neighboring communities view Skyland as a demeaning presence, what Savage calls the "classic ghetto type of offering."
Savage and others among the Hillcrest activists say the merchants and owners of the Skyland property have ignored repeated calls over the years for the shopping center to be improved and cleaned up.
Speaking of the Skyland landlords, Vincent Spaulding, president of the Hillcrest Community Civic Association, says, "They weren't adversely affected by the blight and the unsafe conditions and the eyesore that this place created. . . . They thought we were powerless to do anything."
Those owners have since learned otherwise.
"The only way we can improve it is to get these people out of our face and out of our neighborhood," Savage said in an interview at the Saturday meeting, referring to both owners and merchants at Skyland.
The plans show a new center that won't be your typical strip mall or big-box center. Rather, it would be a "town center" shopping complex with retail on the ground floor and residential on a second level, with an architectural feature such as a clock tower as the focal point. (The First FSK proposal called for this mix of retail and residential, too.)
At the meeting, Target, the purported anchor store, was mentioned only hypothetically. It has not committed to the site, though its officials had conducted several site visits, Gary D. Rappaport, president of the Rappaport Cos., the lead partner in the NCRC development team, said later in an interview. (Target officials did not return telephone calls seeking comment.)
"I think Target is going to be the anchor tenant of Skyland, whatever the design turns out to be," Rappaport said. "Now that the plan is to have a higher, denser plan in a town center setting, Target will soon be part of the process of reviewing such plans and the expectation is that we will design the town center with a plan that is also acceptable for a Target store."
Savage said Target is a good choice because it can serve all income levels.
"People work very hard to earn their dollars," he says. "And if you are on a fixed income, there's absolutely no reason why when you go to shop you should not go to an environment that is safe and inviting. There's no reason for your dollars to be treated in a second-class manner."
Risher announced at the meeting that groundbreaking will be next summer. He did not mention the ongoing court battles.
Burka, the grandson of Max Burka, remains bitter. Economically speaking, he thinks the new center will fail, that the broader community cannot support it.
"This whole thing makes me sick," he says. "They're going to replace an existing, viable shopping center, spend $130 million and have something that doesn't work."
But the NCRC and the Hillcrest crowd say the new Skyland -- or whatever it will be called -- promises to be a roaring success.
Closeout
"There are so many ways to make this block beautiful," Franco says, sitting on a bench outside his store, showing off the recent green paint job on his facade.
He's pensive, a bit melancholy. He's looking down the busy sidewalk. "The guys hanging on the corner drinking beer are completely innocuous," he says. "But it doesn't look good."
There's something wistful about him, like when he says, "The very day we opened, it was awesome. It was awesome!" He's talking about 1976, talking about his love for the discount trade, a trade for which "you don't have to be a rocket scientist."
He shakes hands with some local guys, guys he's known since they were small. He's been on this block for 30 years, seen customers have kids and seen those kids grow up.
Skyland has been like a second home. Soon it may be a thing of the past.
SE's Shabby Skyland Shopping Center Faces An Upscale Battle Against Development
By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2006; D01
The customer is cursing. It's getting ugly. Back near the Discount Mart cash register (located far from the door, to discourage robbers), the customer is hollering something awful.
"Call the [expletive] police! Send my [expletive] to jail! [Expletive] retarded!"
She's mad, all right, thinks she's been shortchanged. And now she's heading for the door, leaving a trail of invective in this emporium stacked high with bed linens, shoes, clothing, kitchen gadgets, hair supplies, toys, electronics and more at the controversial Skyland Shopping Center in Southeast Washington.
Sam Franco rushes over. He's the owner, been here for 30 years.
"What can I do for you?" he asks the woman. He leans in, his hand on her shoulder, showing he's there for her, cares for her, though she's still sputtering mad.
David Lewis is shopping for backpacks for homeless schoolchildren. He's a loyal Discount Mart customer, comes here several times a year to shop for charitable causes. A resident of nearby Hillcrest, he doesn't want Discount Mart to close, doesn't want to see Skyland demolished, as the city plans. But while he watches the angry woman and Franco's effort to calm her, Lewis nods in their direction and says quietly, "That's the other side of the coin."
He means the other side of the debate about class and Skyland -- about the quest for a gentrified shopping experience in a previously lowbrow place.
A powerful group of affluent Hillcrest residents has succeeded in getting the city to declare eminent domain at Skyland-- a controversial move seen in no other commercial land deal in the District except the new baseball stadium. Skyland will be demolished, under the plan, and a higher-quality shopping center built in its place. Target may be its anchor. There could even be a white-tablecloth restaurant.
The Hillcrest activists say they are sick and tired of Skyland's downtrodden look, its lack of what they call quality products, its old discount stores and liquor stores and sidewalk vendors and assorted illegal or undesirable activity. The folks of Hillcrest say both they and the broader community, prosperous and poor alike, deserve far better.
But this 18.5-acre site with its hodgepodge of haphazardly arrayed shops has become the OK Corral of the District property rights battle, for Franco and his fellow merchants and property owners aren't going down without a fight. They have filed several court cases to keep their Skyland shops open, though some also are looking for new locations around the city and suburbs in case they lose the fight.
Until then, business goes on at Discount Mart. There is merchandise to move (late summer saw mountains of school uniforms). There are staff issues to manage and customer problems to troubleshoot.
As he walks his angry customer to the door, Franco talks to her gently, makes it all right, convinces her she has not been shortchanged. He's been doing this for years, trying to keep his customers happy. He's got his arm around the woman's shoulder, cooing reassuringly, "It's all good."
But for Skyland, it really isn't.
Business Plan
Skyland, at Alabama Avenue and Naylor Road SE, is the story of a city faced with battles over property rights, differing visions of commerce, and class tensions -- with Franco and dozens of other Skyland merchants caught in the headlights of change. The players in this fight -- including a multiethnic bloc of merchants and an affluent African American community -- defy the white-black script of many other gentrification battles around the city.
Franco and other Skyland merchants and landowners say they are operating viable businesses that have a large and loyal customer base. Sure, Skyland could use a renovation, they say, but that doesn't mean existing businesses should be forced out.
So they are battling the D.C. Council and the quasi-independent National Capital Revitalization Corp. (NCRC). In the D.C. Court of Appeals, they are arguing that the D.C. Council's declaration of eminent domain violated their property rights in favor of private political and financial interests -- not for the public good, as the U.S. Supreme Court says must be the basis for eminent domain. Other aspects of the land seizure are being contested in U.S. District Court and D.C. Superior Court.
Skyland: The name sounds so retro, as if a bowling alley should be there or a drive-in theater. Instead, it is a commercial potpourri, with beauty salons, a "gentleman's" club, record store, a couple of shoe stores, an auto parts store, a discount supermarket, a couple of liquor stores and a few fast-food joints.
There is nothing aesthetic about Skyland, no overarching architectural design. Even its matching awnings along one strip of shops don't add coherence to the place. Compared with the Safeway-anchored Good Hope Marketplace strip mall across the street, with its renovated suburban-country design and landscaping, Skyland's aesthetic shortcomings are all the more glaring. The shopping center looks old and poorly maintained. People loiter in front of its liquor stores or drink in its large parking lot, which also is a dumping ground for broken-down cars or cars for sale, says 6th District Metropolitan Police Commander Robin Hoey. And illegally dumped trash piles up in a wooded lot behind the shops, area residents say.
But Skyland has been fully occupied for years. There have been no boarded-up shops. Business has been brisk.
Nonetheless, the D.C. legislation that empowered the NCRC to exercise eminent domain says that Skyland is blighted. A redeveloped center, it says, "will create hundreds of new jobs, attract businesses that are desired by the community and stimulate economic activity east of the Anacostia River."
It says that Skyland's "fragmented and absentee ownership" made problems of crime, trash and other "blighting factors" only worse because of the difficulty of coordinating a diverse roster of 16 property owners and 27 businesses. And it called Skyland "an impediment to the economic revitalization of this area of the District."
Francoadmits that the shopping center needs an upgrade, though he stands on Alabama Avenue one day and points at the strip of bustling shops and declares defensively: "You can't consider this blight. This isn't blight."
NCRC officials say that eminent domain was the only way for their development plans at Skyland to go forward. Otherwise, they say, it would have been virtually impossible to get so many property owners and businesses on the same page.
Some Skyland owners say that isn't true. And they proved themselves united when they unanimously backed a plan for a privately financed development last year. They tried to get the NCRC to support the plan devised by First FSK Ltd., the largest landowner at Skyland. First FSK argued that the private development would not cost the city money.
The NCRC gave First FSK 21 days to provide several types of information, including letters of interest from lenders and investors as well as a vision of its alternative development program. But First FSK already had given several alternative site plans to the NCRC. And considering the notoriety of the Skyland development conflict, potential lenders would want to know the NCRC's position before throwing any weight behind First FSK, the latter company argued.
David Burka, the manager of the First FSK properties at Skyland, suggested in a letter to the NCRC that its demand for information and its deadline were "unreasonable" and would "set up" the owners' proposal to fail.
The NCRC stood firm, though, and rejected the First FSK proposal.
"First FSK did come to us with a proposal for a mixed-use development," Ted Risher, the NCRC project manager for Skyland, said in a recent interview. "We gave it due consideration and we actually formulated a business plan. However, in the time we gave First FSK to produce some nominal information on their idea of the project, they were unable to come up with that information."
And so the publicly financed NCRC project goes on, with a price tag so far of $130 million.
The bottom line, for Franco, is simple.
"They don't want us here."
The Retail Mix
As an Orthodox Jew, Franco, 53, of Kemp Mill in Montgomery County, says he believes "whatever is going to happen is going to happen." He's seen his share of events over which he had little control.
In the discount trade since he dropped out of the University of Maryland to help his dad, he's in his second displacement battle.
"I don't know if I'm cursed or what," Franco says good-naturedly.
Just a few years before his dad's discount store, known as J.D.'s, was displaced in the early 1980s from a spot at 12th and G downtown to make room for Hecht's, Franco's first Discount Mart, located at Seventh and E downtown, was forced out by construction for the Metro in 1976. He reopened in one Skyland storefront that same year, then moved two doors down in 1978, taking over the huge old Naylor Theater building that anchored the original shopping strip.
Built in 1945 and expanded over the years, Skyland sits at a crossroads of several neighborhoods: the leafy streets of Hillcrest with its manicured lawns and well-kept Colonials and Tudors; the large new town homes and apartments along Good Hope Road, some still under construction; the garden apartments of Naylor Road; and several low-income apartment complexes that dot the area. From white-collar professionals to young mothers on public assistance, Skyland's environs run the socioeconomic gamut.
You can find this diverse range of people in places like Skyland Liquors, where Rose and Joseph Calvin Rumber's store has become a community gathering spot.
African American Anacostia natives and lifelong sweethearts, the Rumbers worked dutifully for years at Skyland Liquors and thought their boss, Paul Cooper, was just joshing when he said he might make them owners one day.
He would say, " 'One day, Rosie, I'm going to leave the business to you,' and I just smiled and laughed and said, 'Okay, Mr. Cooper,' " she recalls sweetly, sadly.
And they were awestruck when he actually did it, made provision for them in his will upon his death in 2000. The Rumbers had to put their home up as collateral to buy the place in 2003, but they did it gladly to become business owners -- and now they could face financial ruin if they are unable to find a new location for the business.
Lawrence Ray, a nearby resident, is a regular at Skyland Liquors, where he plays keno and otherwise socializes around a high wooden table set up for lottery customers.
"That's a joke," he says of the white-tablecloth restaurant that folks from Hillcrest would like to see at Skyland. "What are they talking about, tablecloths? Who's that for?"
Sure, beautify the place, says Ray, a retired public school security officer. But he takes exception to the notion that his area is something in need of revitalization.
"I hate that word 'revitalize.' Revitalizing what? Whose idea? That wasn't our idea. . . . What about the people that's in the community who may not even afford to be here once it's revitalized?"
It is, to his mind, part of a grand scheme to push the poor out, "because eventually that's what's going to happen."
On the cash register a faded sticker says "eminent domain" with a red line through it. But the Rumbers sense the writing on the wall. They've been looking for a new location.
"It's over," Rose Rumber says. "We've been fighting for three years."
Should the court challenge fail and the Skyland businesses move, NCRC will pay merchants up to $20,000 each to relocate. As for the property owners, six sold to the NCRC before eminent domain was declared. Franco was offered $350,000 for the 2,000 square feet he owns in his 17,000-square-foot store, most of which is leased. But he refused to sell. He'd rather fight. Now, if forced to leave, he would be eligible only for a lesser amount of "just compensation," though the definition of terms is in dispute in the courts.
Franco, whose store grosses about $4 million a year, is not so much worried for himself or his two sons who work with him. Four of his five brothers are also in discount retail in the area. He could merge with one of them.
"But what would I do with all the employees?" Franco employs up to 40 people, among them Sallie Shields, who has been with Discount Mart for 12 years.
It can be a rough place to work sometimes. It's not frequent, but just in case trouble does break out with a suspected shoplifter, she carries a box cutter in her pocket and keeps a length of metal bed frame under her counter.
Despite the uncertainty, Shields isn't looking for a new job just yet. She calls Skyland "raggedy" and "run-down." But Franco's been a good boss, she says. Employees get a 20 percent discount. She'll wait it out with him, wait to see whether and how Skyland changes.
Attention, Shoppers
Once upon a time, the old Naylor Theater played first-run movies. Southeast was a largely white postwar bedroom community back then, in the 1940s and '50s. Fred S. Kogod built the theater with Max Burka, his brother-in-law. They are the K and B of KB Cinemas, the old Washington area theater chain that went out of business in the 1990s as multiplexes took over.
The steady shift of Southeast from white to black was boosted in the 1950s and 1960s with the influx of people pushed out of Southwest during urban renewal. Many of them had relocated from Georgetown two decades earlier.
The District, in large measure, has become a very different city since those days -- and that's precisely the beef of Hillcrest residents.
They have watched rebirth in downtown, on U Street, in the H Street corridor and Columbia Heights -- and still, their community has remained relatively static. And now, with a mayor and city council on their side, and eminent domain providing the muscle, Skyland's detractors are virtually salivating at the prospect of its demise.
"Can't come soon enough," Paul Savage said as he settled into a folding chair in the East Washington Heights Baptist Church basement one Saturday morning last month.
He was there, with about 80 other area residents, to see the design ideas the NCRC is considering for the new Skyland -- or whatever it will be called.
Savage, for one, doesn't even want the Skyland name to remain. Too many bad memories. He doesn't call the area Southeast, either; too many negative connotations. He prefers to call it East Washington.
He's a Hillcrest man, a prime mover behind Mayor Anthony Williams's first run for office, and a founder 15 years ago of the Skyland Revitalization Task Force. The task force represents the aspirations of the affluent African Americans, with a few whites sprinkled in, of Hillcrest and other nearby communities.
Ask Savage, a former D.C. official, which of Skyland's shops he'd like to see return to a redeveloped shopping center there and he says flat out: "I can't think of one." Well, maybe the CVS, he adds.
"I haven't shopped there in 15 years," he says of Skyland. "It's not good enough for me."
And that really is the story: Folks in Hillcrest, Penn Branch and other neighboring communities view Skyland as a demeaning presence, what Savage calls the "classic ghetto type of offering."
Savage and others among the Hillcrest activists say the merchants and owners of the Skyland property have ignored repeated calls over the years for the shopping center to be improved and cleaned up.
Speaking of the Skyland landlords, Vincent Spaulding, president of the Hillcrest Community Civic Association, says, "They weren't adversely affected by the blight and the unsafe conditions and the eyesore that this place created. . . . They thought we were powerless to do anything."
Those owners have since learned otherwise.
"The only way we can improve it is to get these people out of our face and out of our neighborhood," Savage said in an interview at the Saturday meeting, referring to both owners and merchants at Skyland.
The plans show a new center that won't be your typical strip mall or big-box center. Rather, it would be a "town center" shopping complex with retail on the ground floor and residential on a second level, with an architectural feature such as a clock tower as the focal point. (The First FSK proposal called for this mix of retail and residential, too.)
At the meeting, Target, the purported anchor store, was mentioned only hypothetically. It has not committed to the site, though its officials had conducted several site visits, Gary D. Rappaport, president of the Rappaport Cos., the lead partner in the NCRC development team, said later in an interview. (Target officials did not return telephone calls seeking comment.)
"I think Target is going to be the anchor tenant of Skyland, whatever the design turns out to be," Rappaport said. "Now that the plan is to have a higher, denser plan in a town center setting, Target will soon be part of the process of reviewing such plans and the expectation is that we will design the town center with a plan that is also acceptable for a Target store."
Savage said Target is a good choice because it can serve all income levels.
"People work very hard to earn their dollars," he says. "And if you are on a fixed income, there's absolutely no reason why when you go to shop you should not go to an environment that is safe and inviting. There's no reason for your dollars to be treated in a second-class manner."
Risher announced at the meeting that groundbreaking will be next summer. He did not mention the ongoing court battles.
Burka, the grandson of Max Burka, remains bitter. Economically speaking, he thinks the new center will fail, that the broader community cannot support it.
"This whole thing makes me sick," he says. "They're going to replace an existing, viable shopping center, spend $130 million and have something that doesn't work."
But the NCRC and the Hillcrest crowd say the new Skyland -- or whatever it will be called -- promises to be a roaring success.
Closeout
"There are so many ways to make this block beautiful," Franco says, sitting on a bench outside his store, showing off the recent green paint job on his facade.
He's pensive, a bit melancholy. He's looking down the busy sidewalk. "The guys hanging on the corner drinking beer are completely innocuous," he says. "But it doesn't look good."
There's something wistful about him, like when he says, "The very day we opened, it was awesome. It was awesome!" He's talking about 1976, talking about his love for the discount trade, a trade for which "you don't have to be a rocket scientist."
He shakes hands with some local guys, guys he's known since they were small. He's been on this block for 30 years, seen customers have kids and seen those kids grow up.
Skyland has been like a second home. Soon it may be a thing of the past.
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