Doug Jemal threatens to shut down Check It’s “Secret Garden”
Words By Jeffrey Anderson <> Photo By Ronald Moten
There’s an African proverb that says, “When the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.”
On October 23, real estate titan Douglas Jemal, through his attorney, told Check It Enterprises that he will dismantle the outdoor space behind the for-profit venture’s headquarters on a historic stretch of storefronts in Anacostia, if it doesn’t do so first.
In D.C., there are few more uplifting stories of survival, strength and creativity than the Check It crew, LGBTQ youths who relinquished street life and pursued change through unity, creativity and self-determination.
Home base for Check It is at 1920 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, S.E., a safe space in a gentrifying commercial zone for more than 200 youths seeking opportunities to have a stake in the changing landscape.
The Ward 8 storefront houses a clothing store and a small business incubator, and is a venue for workforce development training, classes on entrepreneurship and startups.
The 3,900 square foot outdoor space behind the storefront–known as “The Secret Garden”–is central to the soul of Check It’s headquarters; it’s a place where vigils, Go-Go performances, peace rallies and fish frys bring a community together.
In 2009, a group of marginalized LGBTQ 9th graders became determined to survive bullying, violence and sex abuse. They became a family–a family of youth labeled as criminals who defended themselves with ferocity.
Burdened by rap sheets, in 2012, they turned to something more sustainable, and enduring.
A 2016 documentary produced by Dana Flor, with executive producers Steve Buscemi, Louis C.K. and Stanley Tucci, chronicled their emergence from street life.
It was a hit at the Tribeca Film Festival, among others. The Obamas have seen it, and it screened at the Kennedy Center.
The film’s success helped the group launch a retail apparel store, its own fashion brand, a clothing manufacturing company and a modeling agency.
Check It plans to open a Go-Go Museum next year, and an ice cream pop-up, on top of what before the novel coronavirus pandemic was a cultural center, music venue and meeting place for support groups such as the National Association For The Advancement Of Returning Citizens.
“It’s a vision that is bigger than what it looks like,” says co-founder and operations manager Ronald “Mo” Moten, a returned citizen, peace activist, Go-Go promoter and community leader.
“It’s a model of how to get young people to stand up and show the community that they are worth something. It’s not just getting off the street and getting jobs, it’s showing them how to gain equity as artists, fashion designers and entrepreneurs. That’s what this is all about.”
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According to D.C. land records, Jemal owns the two terraced lots that the storefronts backup to–abandoned and once-blighted outdoor spaces that Check It and its neighbors cleaned up and revived several years ago as a community garden and an event space.
But in April, the group won a $2 million grant from the city that enabled it to acquire the company that owns the storefront, and its immediate neighbors on either side.
Seizing the outdoor space behind the storefronts will require Jemal to go through Moten, an established organizer who successfully rallied a critical mass of protesters last year to beat back complaints of Go-Go music that has blared from outdoor speakers of a Shaw electronics shop for decades.
What was called the “Don’t Mute Go-Go” movement morphed into a coalition of social and cultural enterprises known as “Don’t Mute DC,” which Moten co-founded and co-chairs with Dr. Natalie Hopkinson, a public scholar and author of Go-Go Live: The Musical Life & Death of a Chocolate City.
Until COVID-19 erupted, the Don’t Mute DC Action Committee held its meetings at Check It’s headquarters.
Moten argues that taking down The Secret Garden would be like a knife in the heart of the grassroots enterprises that call Check It home.
“We moved into these buildings as renters when nobody wanted to be here in 2014,” he told District Dig on a recent Friday afternoon, as he watched Jemal’s 5 pm deadline to break down The Secret Garden draw close. “And we plan to be here and ensure that gentrification is inclusive of the Black community.”
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In 2016, when Check It became the sole renter of the storefront at 1920 MLK Ave., the group raised $70,000 to remodel the interior space and create The Secret Garden, which had laid fallow and neglected for decades.
Once the owner of the adjacent storefronts–1918-1920-1922 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue S.E. Partnership–was ready to sell the buildings, Moten and his partners saw an opportunity, and they reached out to At-Large Councilman Robert White.
“The landlord decided to sell, which would have evicted three black businesses…[so] Councilman White introduced legislation to help Check It purchase the three buildings,” Moten says.
Since then, Check It has created a plan to build a Go-Go Museum and Culinary Program at the site, which also has a live recording and performance area inside, on the rooftop and in The Secret Garden Performance Area, he says.
Kymone Freeman, a writer, producer, social justice advocate and co-founder of WE ACT RADIO–Check It’s progressive, community-radio neighbor at 1918 MLK Ave.–was the first to lay claim to the rear outdoor space, in 2010. He says it was littered with trash and hypodermic needles, and had become a haven for squatters and drug users.
“It was like that for 20 years before I even got there,” Freeman says.
Freeman says he and Check It’s other neighbor, Alexander “Bundy” Mosby, led a group of volunteers that rolled up their sleeves and cleaned out what had become a nuisance, infested with rats and vermin, so the space could be put to good use.
Mosby had owned the clothing store District Culture at 1922 MLK Ave., and was planning to open an upscale lounge there, until he was among 13 people killed over a deadly Memorial Day weekend in 2018. The Secret Garden is named in his honor.
Go-Go legend, rapper and actor Anwan “Big G” Glover is planning to rent Mosby’s old space from Check It and open his own lounge, Moten says.
Jemal owns the storefront on the other side of WE ACT RADIO, at 1916 MLK Ave., a barber shop that went out of business.
Now that Anacostia real estate is hot, he is asserting his right of ownership of the outdoor space that his neighbors rehabilitated. (Jemal did not respond to messages left with his attorney.)
The former barber shop has been problematic for Check It and WE ACT. After rehabbing the rear lots, Freeman says thieves entered the rear lots through an unsecured entrance to Jemal’s property, broke into the radio station by taking a steel door off its hinges, and stole broadcast, streaming and television equipment.
Thieves also tried–unsuccessfully–to break into Check It’s headquarters, says Moten.
“We had to secure the side entrance of the building [Jemal] owns because people accessed it to break into Kymone’s building and the barbershop before they went out of business,” he says.
“Check It was and still is in the mindset of we own [the lots] for more reasons than one.”
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D.C. property records show that Jemal has owned the rear lots since 2003 when, according to the Recorder of Deeds, Jemal’s Martin Gold Luther LLC acquired the lots for $100,000 with the help of a $65,000 mortgage from Adams National Bank.
D.C. property records show them assessed at $167,640.
About six months ago, Moten says, he got a call from Jemal’s lawyer, insisting that Check It break down the wood deck that serves as a stage, remove all furniture, lighting and equipment, and get rid of its more down-to-earth features: a vegetable garden and a beehive that yield fresh produce and honey for the community. (He says Check It’s honey was a prize winner at Taste of D.C.)
On October 23, Check It’s lawyer, Johnny Barnes, received a letter from Jemal’s lawyer, Andrew B. Schulwolf. “Despite Jemal’s Martin Gold Luther’s prior request that Check It Enterprises cease and discontinue its unauthorized use of its [premises], Check It Enterprises has failed to remove the deck and other property…”
Barnes replied two days later and asserted Check It’s claim to “adverse possession” of the lots. Under D.C. law, adverse possession allows individuals to obtain legal title to property owned by another if the occupant openly inhabits the property for 15 years.
Because Check It has acquired 1918-1920-1922 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue S.E. Partnership, and the partnership had possessed the storefronts since 1991, the group alleges that it meets the requirements of adverse possession.
“I want to caution you and your Client, as I have done before, that Check It Enterprises holds that land and all things upon it pursuant to its claim of adverse possession,” wrote Barnes.
“It would be prudent, if [Jemal] wants to avoid exposure and liability, to engage in further discussions about this matter; certainly before any action could be construed as the taking of property without cause and/or wrongful and illegal eviction, without court process.
“I should also remind you that we are in an extraordinary period in the District of Columbia, and property disputes are also governed by the Covid-19 Mayoral Orders, D.C. Council Legislation and federal laws and regulations.”
Schulwolf replied on October 28 and requested that Barnes provide him with the “factual basis upon which you contend that Check It Enterprises acquired any part of Jemal’s Martin Gold Luther premises by adverse possession.”
He also challenged the assertion that the mayor’s orders would preclude Jemal from removing Check It’s property, and set a deadline of 5 pm on October 30.
In a brief phone call earlier that day, Schulwolf would not say why, after all these years, Jemal was asserting his property rights, and he would not say what if any plans his client has for the site.
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Check It’s acquisition of the storefronts is a story of perseverance and faith. Moten and his co-founders Tayron Bennett and Erica Briscoe, who serve as officers, have worked to empower the group with property and business ownership while promoting self-determination for the other businesses it has incubated, for eight years.
In March, the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the “Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Limited Grant Making Authority for Check IT Enterprises Amendment Act of 2019.”
The act bestowed an Economic Interest Deed on Check It, in April, accompanied by a city grant of $1,999,999 that allowed the group to acquire the partnership that owned the storefronts.
It was a watershed moment for Moten, who over the course of the last 10-15 years has become one of the city’s most visible, outspoken and at times controversial peace activists.
In more recent years, the self-taught civil rights historian and author of two books has transitioned to more entrepreneurial and media-focused pursuits to empower youth. (Disclosure: I am currently working with Moten on a book project consisting of his own previously published op-eds in publications such as the Post, The Washington Times and The Washington Informer.)
Landing political and financial support from D.C.’s elected officials has validated his already-large presence as an advocate for his community–and the District.
Which makes the timing of Jemal’s ultimatum somewhat puzzling.
But then, Jemal is an outsized and controversial figure in his own right.
An inductee to The Washington Business Hall of Fame, he is known as an audacious if not a brash real estate titan who has had his own highs and lows.
A fawning profile in the Post in 2017 chronicled his bare-knuckled ascent from his hometown of Brooklyn, to co-founding the discount chain of electronics stores The Wiz–once a $1 billion a year company with 2,000 employees and stores in seven states–to co-founding Douglas Development.
The juggernaut development company has boomed, gone bust, come back from bankruptcy and expanded its reach as far as Upstate New York, where Jemal is revitalizing and reimagining downtown Buffalo.
In D.C., he has put his mark on neighborhoods such as Adams Morgan, Gallery Place, Shaw, H Street N.E., NoMa and Ivy City.
In the Post profile he likened himself and his partner Paul Millstein to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
“We’re going to die in a fury. We’re going to ride that g–d— train off a cliff. We’ll never say no, and we’re never, never, never going to stop,” Jemal said at his induction ceremony.
“I’ll be written down in every history book of Washington, D.C., forever,” he told the Post’s Jonathan O’Connell. “Fifty years from now they’ll say, ‘That’s a Douglas building, that’s a Jemal building.’ So how do you put a price on something like that?”
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Jemal and Moten have clashed before.
Besides heading off grant-based mural projects in the neighborhood that were curated by Freeman and Moten, Jemal incurred the wrath of advocates for returning citizens when he backed out of an agreement to lease an empty building he owns at 3400 New York Avenue in Northeast–a short distance from where he has renovated the art deco Hecht Company warehouse that anchors the redevelopment of Ivy City.
In 2018, Jemal signed a letter of intent to lease the building to CORE DC, a reentry services and short term family housing provider that had been awarded a federal contract and planned to operate a men’s halfway house there, near the National Arboretum, in Ward 5, to replace Hope Village, the only men’s halfway house in D.C., which has operated in Ward 8 since 1978.
After neighbors of the building sued the city alleging it would violate zoning regulations, however, Jemal walked away from the deal, according to news reports, leaving the city’s reentry services in limbo, and prompting Moten to organize a protest outside the developer’s company headquarters. (Hope Village subsequently shut down and its residents were forced to transfer to other residential facilities outside the District.)
Doug Jemal might be larger than life, but Johnny Barnes thinks it’s a bad idea to try and big-foot Check It out of The Secret Garden, especially given his client’s hard-earned climb to what is arguably the peak of his influence in fighting against the displacement of native Washingtonians and their culture.
Check It Enterprises is putting The Secret Garden to good use, Barnes says. “Doug Jemal doesn’t need to upset that. He’d get much more credit working with the situation instead of fighting it. The city oughta have him come in and resolve this quietly. Let’s see if they can work this out.
“Besides, Ron doesn’t want to have to go to war with anyone–though he does have an army behind him if he has to.
“Jemal is going against Anacostia,” Barnes adds, invoking the African elephant proverb. “And the kids are the grass.” (As this story was nearing publication, Schulwolf wrote to Barnes and reiterated the ultimatum, and said Jemal is “willing to discuss a Lease or other agreement” that would allow The Secret Garden to live on. He gave a new deadline of 5 pm, November 16.)
Barnes’s optimism is not shared by everyone. Freeman, for one, does not see Jemal backing up.
“In our community we ask ourselves, ‘Have you ever told a White person ‘no’? When you are a White person in a position of power, you are not accustomed to hearing ‘no.’ So when you hear ‘no,’ it doesn’t compute. The normal response is, ‘what do you mean’?
“When the big boys show up, you have to move. That’s how American history has been written.”
Yet, if there’s a chance there won’t be a battle royal in the coming months, in the middle of a pandemic, and an incendiary time in politics and society, then perhaps it is to be found in something Jemal’s son, Norman Jemal, said to the Post in 2017:
“To many, my dad is known as a developer that took on bold projects in areas that have gone without investment for decades, but to me, he’s my dad, my mentor and my friend. He has always preached ‘treat people well, do the right thing and good things will come.'”
Time will tell if that mantra includes dealing in good faith with a formidable local figure with large dreams for a community on the rise.
