By Jeffrey Anderson | Photo: J. Meek
A weathered D.C. flag droops from its pole above the brick plaza out front of the Franklin D. Reeves Municipal Center at 14th and U Street in a late August swelter. A woman with bugged out eyes and missing teeth does pirouettes, laughs, and sings to herself as she heads toward her companions across the plaza, where upended newspaper boxes serve as furniture under umbrellas and a small sidewalk tree. Popeye’s and go-cups await.
Above the plaza, MPD surveillance cameras mounted on a street lamp pole stand sentry, while below, city workers, bus riders and people in their Athleisure wear glide across the plaza, past this cohort and others seated nearby along the side of the building in camp chairs and on overturned buckets–or the pavement.
Kitty-corner, also looking down from above, a 70-foot-tall mural has homegrown jazz legend and letter carrier Buck Hill in his U.S. Postal Service uniform, blowing tenor sax, his towering image a testament to a bygone era of Black musical greatness.
Though it might be hard to imagine today, this is ground zero for perhaps the most catastrophic event in D.C. history: The riots that erupted on this corner in April 1968, up, down and across 14th and U, up and down 7th Street NW, and along H Street NE–corridors where Black business ownership, and achievements in literature, arts, music, science and medicine, once defined D.C.
The Reeves Center, named for attorney and educator Frank Reeves, a key player in the NAACP’s landmark school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education is central to D.C. history in another way as well: Completed in 1986, it is central to former mayor and D.C. councilman Marion Barry’s vision for reviving a post-riot neighborhood beset with drugs, prostitution, crime and blight, by building a complex for government services that would result in jobs, foot traffic and commerce.
Washingtonians of a certain age still associate it with their first job working for the city–or with going for a trade show, permit or license–or going to Happy Hours at a long ago club featuring Go-Go music and free food.
As much of a catalyst as the Reeves Center was–and there is an argument that the nearby Green Line Metro Station, completed in 1991, was the real impetus for revitalization–the hulking behemoth that could pass for a hospital if not for a glass enclosed atrium over the entrance, or a prison with actual windows, has outlasted its usefulness and is being outpaced by gentrification in Shaw and nearby neighborhoods.
A more inclusive brand of regeneration could be on the horizon, however, when Mayor Muriel Bowser, the first consecutive three-term mayor in D.C. history, selects one of two proposals to redevelop the site into a mixed-use project to bookend the majestic Howard Theater seven blocks to the east at the other end of what came to be known in the jazz era as “Black Broadway.”
It’s only so often a city mayor has the opportunity, privilege and responsibility to make a singular decision that will redefine the epicenter of a multi-era historical and cultural legacy dating back to the 19th century–one with a sacred place in the heart of Black D.C.
But that is exactly what Bowser is empowered to do, under D.C. Code 10-803, which gives her unilateral authority to make decisions about the disposition of public land owned by the city–subject to final approval by the D.C. Council.
Though the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development issues requests for competing proposals from developers that are analyzed and scored by city officials, there also are subjective factors for the Mayor to consider when making such decisions. The status of the economy, the real estate market, and the business and political climate of the city are intangibles that can help determine which developers come out on top.
By the time new development awards are ready for Council approval, deliberations may have dragged on for years.
For some, there is hope that the redevelopment of the Reeves Center occurs with enough historical and cultural sensitivity to result in a gathering place that honors Black D.C.’s legacy with true affordability and accessibility to all Washingtonians, not just transients, tourists and the privileged class that is driving the latest iteration of gentrification.
That requires politicians to listen to urban planning experts, examine competing bids on merit, and commit to an equitable, exciting final product.
Or, to simply listen to their own constituents and their neighborhood representatives: Another feature of local planning stipulates that the mayor shall give “great weight” to the preferences of Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners who represent micro-districts within each ward. In fact, ANCs in Ward 1 where the Reeves Center is located have already voted in favor of one of the existing proposals, by an 8-2 vote.
Fortunately for Bowser she only has one other alternative to consider. And though just two teams have bid on the project–both proposing many of the same features one would expect from an important mixed-use project built on public land–the bids offer a clear contrast in terms of vision and purpose.
The burning question then is, what is Muriel Bowser’s sense of vision and purpose for the epicenter of Black D.C.?
***
About 10 years ago, an exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery of Art titled “Pump Me Up: D.C. Subculture of the 1980s,” lent purposeful focus to underground D.C. culture and its “raucous energy of graffiti, Go-Go music, and a world-renowned punk and hardcore scene” of that era.
Parallel histories were celebrated as the “other D.C.,” animated by graphic art, archival photographs, electrifying Globe concert posters and ephemera that told “a local history from a local point of view…while providing a framework for the contemporary surge of interest in street art and underground graphics.”
Mainstream D.C. has embraced these traditions. Anyone who lived here during the Reagan-Bush years recalls a city beset by poverty, crime and drugs amid the ruins of the ‘68 riots, a civic struggle that lasted decades. (An older generation traces the arc of D.C.’s history back even further, to the end of the Civil War.)
So intertwined are the riots and D.C.’s decades-long recovery, that the exhibit began with an entire section on the furious and destructive uprising just weeks after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.–an explosion of self-destruction at the hands of a Black citizenry overtaken by grievance, grief, and civic, social and economic rage; what Dr. King had warned was being driven by the lack of “ghetto hope.”
Historical accounts say that at the time King was murdered, activist and writer Stokely Carmichael was involved in protests and a student occupation of academic buildings at Howard University, when he led a group of young Black men up and down U Street and into businesses, demanding they close out of respect for the fallen civil rights leader.
Later, Carmichael was in the middle of a large crowd gathered at the corner of 14th and U when someone threw a brick through the plate glass window of Peoples Drug Store, above which were the offices for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
The ensuing violence spread up to Columbia Heights, along U Street through Shaw, up 7th Street, down into parts of downtown, and across what was known as the Atlas District, which ran down H Street N.E., from behind Union Station.
President Lyndon Johnson called in The National Guard and imposed curfews, but that was not enough to prevent multiple deaths, thousands of arrests for looting, thousands of fires and millions of dollars in damage to homes and commercial buildings.
D.C. in the 1970s, 1980s and much of the 1990s bore these scars at great cost. Jobs were lost, the city economy collapsed, property values plummeted, and Whites fled the city, as did investors and developers.
Marion Barry sensed the need to plant a seed of revitalization; in 1986 he cut the ribbon on the Reeves Center, a tall, boxy, clay-colored monstrosity built from pre-cast stone in a post-Brutalist style; it would house government services and offices that would bring thousands of public employees and patrons to the neighborhood each day, lure small businesses and eventually the U Street Metro Station on the fledgling Green Line, and prompt an increase in local commerce and a return of the Black working and middle classes to the heart of the city.
Julius Hobson Jr., a native Washingtonian, former Congressional and Senate staff director, senior policy adviser, former elected member of the D.C. Board of Education and a former lobbyist with extensive experience dealing with the federal government, credits Barry for taking the initiative to move the city forward and out of the rubble.
“Marion figured out how to anchor something at 14th and U, and he saw development as a way to create jobs,” says Hobson Jr., in a telephone call this summer. “Reeves Center was ugly to some, but it was the beginning of D.C.’s comeback. People had a sense that the government didn’t work for them anymore. But it was a cleansing…it’s what brought U Street back, economically–though not to what it was.”
The Reeves Center is crucial to D.C. Go-Go history as well, according to Experience Unlimited frontman and bassist Gregory Elliot, aka “Sugar Bear,” who was playing a Christmas party show at Republic Gardens down the block in the early 1990s when he was asked to play Happy Hour at a club that had opened inside the center.
“It was a nice atmosphere, people would come after work, and could be home by 10,” says Sugar Bear. “I was glad to be a part of that, and grateful for that culture to be recognized. U Street would be buzzing just like clubs in Georgetown.
“It was definitely part of Go-Go history, because it helped us gravitate to people who wanted to come out, not just young people but people from 25 to 70 years old. It started with a small crowd and went to being sold out and they couldn’t let anyone else in.”
***
“Come into my office,” says Dr. Bernard Demczuk, a local authority on the legacy of U Street. Seated along the wall in the rear of the main dining area of Ben’s Chili Bowl, beneath a wall full of photographs of luminaries and vintage posters, he gestures for me to take a seat at the table where he has his laptop open. “Barack sits here, Jesse sits there, Donnie (Simpson) sits over here,” he says, pointing to the respective places at the table for VIPs who stop by.
If there’s a Mayor of Ben’s Chili Bowl, it’s Bernie Demczuk: As servers and cooks make their way around the place, he greets them by their first names, blowing the occasional air kiss to a waitress or regular patron he recognizes.
Demczuk can hold court with the best of them. In fact, he does so every Saturday at Ben’s, for those who want to edify themselves with knowledge and an understanding of Black D.C. history and culture. “Ask a historian a question, and they start by going back 300 years,” he chuckles, launching into a dissertation of the history of U Street. “This stretch goes all the way back to the Civil War, came up through Reconstruction, the early jazz era, the Depression, a second jazz era, the blight of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, then up to the ‘80s when Marion built the Reeves Center.”
Cutting to the chase, the Shaw resident, Assistant V.P. for D.C. government relations at George Washington University and its chief government liaison to the city zeroes in on the grand era in which D.C. was the premier destination for Black culture, noting that the Howard Theater, the anchor of Black Broadway, pre-dates New York’s Apollo Theater by nine years.
Beginning near the end of the 19th century, and well into the 20th century, U Street turned segregation on its head by becoming an economic, social, cultural and civic bastion of self-reliance, Demczuk says. Black pioneers of civil rights, academia, business, literature, performing arts and architecture populated the birthplace of a Black renaissance, even as America was plagued by racial and political tensions.
The list of luminaries is long: Dr. Charles Drew, founder of America’s first large-scale blood bank; Mary Church Terrell, one of the first Black women to earn a college degree; Carter G. Woodson, the progenitor of Black History; Mary McLeod Bethune, the “First Lady of Civil Rights Struggle”; and musical performers who lived in the neighborhood and ruled the scene at Black-owned theaters and clubs, such as Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Pearl Bailey, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday.
That legacy includes the Jungle Inn in the ‘20s and ‘30s, and the Casbah in the ‘40s and ‘50s, says Demczuk, places that attracted members of the Harlem Renaissance and the African Beat music scene to D.C. “The Casbah was Pearl Bailey’s watering hole,” he says, then quotes her in response to an interviewer’s question about how the neighborhood became so packed with blues clubs, jazz joints, theaters, salons and barber shops: “Honey, they won’t let us play on their Broadway so we created our own.”
But if there’s a local legend that best represents Black Broadway, Demczuk says, it’s Buck Hill. Hill was a postman whose rise to fame started right here in Chocolate City before it was even called Chocolate City, he explains, noting that the contemporary of Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis could have gravitated to New York City and traveled the world, but instead stayed close to his hometown and his family. “Buck stayed home,” Demczuk says, “and played in clubs like the Pig’s Foot, and One Step Down, D.C. haunts that defined an era.”
Just as Buck Hill symbolizes the halcyon days of Black Broadway, the Reeves Center embodies D.C.’s long and arduous comeback from the verge of bankruptcy, the Federal Control Board and an era of drugs and violence whose remnants are still lurking in its midst, says Demczuk.
The decision by Marion Barry when he was Mayor made perfect sense, he says: Build a large civic structure on public land, locate a variety of government agencies and social services, and use it as a job center to promote growth of retail and amenities in the neighborhood.
Special offices for the Department of Transportation, the D.C. Lottery, and agencies with generic names such as the Emergency Management Administration, the Management and Employee Services Administration, Customer Service and Records Management, Recruiting and Personnel Actions, and the Office of Special Review would serve as the work space for more than 1,000 employees–most of whom would go looking for lunch options, cigarettes or a snack before or after work and throughout the day. That would drive crime out, and invite commerce back in, Demczuk says.
“When Marion sticks the Reeves Center there he is saying, ‘Dammit, we need to bring back the community to where it needs to be. We need to get rid of the drugs and crime and trash. Something will happen if we can put people in jobs here.’ It’s important to remember that Marion had a vision for U Street.”
To re-imagine the corner of 14th and U Street yet again, Demczuk points to what seems to be an intuitive goal: In the spirit of the Reeves Center, he would like to see affordable housing for teachers, police and fire men and women. “We need to keep them living here,” he says of the dwindling number of city employees that still live in D.C. “What a jewel it would be if they could be plopped down right here on Black Broadway.”
Demczuk also endorses a cultural education component, something accessible and inviting to the public that speaks to the distinct eras of D.C. history. “I’d like whatever they build to provide a panorama of a timeline of the history of U Street,” he says.
Visitors, tourists, newer residents and younger Washingtonians need to understand what Demczuk describes as the “Black genius” and the “Black excellence” that thrived for almost a century prior to the ‘68 riots, if they are to understand what was lost with the outflow of the Black business class, and what this moment in time portends for D.C.’s future, he says.
“What a gift to young people to be able to see, feel and learn that history, starting at the very corner where it all started, and all the way down to the Howard Theater,” he says. “Hello! It is ground zero for American Progress, Black progress! Why wouldn’t you want to jumpstart that? I mean, it’s a big deal. We need to defend, protect, advance and celebrate this history. We need to do this as a result of gentrification and its effects on Black culture.”
***
Michael Marshall was leaning against a handrail in front of the Reeves Center when I arrived to meet him one day late last spring. He was wearing a blue-hooded sweatshirt that did not give away his stature as the award-winning architect who designed the Chuck Brown Memorial and the renovation at the Howard Theater.
The first thing I realized was that in talking to Marshall about the Reeves Center, and the possibilities for this site, I was talking to a native Washingtonian with a passion and appreciation for history, which he sees as “a tool for what we do as architects.” His deep knowledge of D.C.’s past is that of a man who can trace some of his earliest boyhood impressions to the days following the ‘68 riots.
A century earlier, nearby Florida Avenue served as the northern border of the original city designed by Pierre L’Enfant, and was known as North Boundary Street, which turned into U Street to the east, Marshall informs me. Three blocks to the west, on the northwest corner of U Street and 17th Street, three row houses once owned by Frederick Douglass still stand–two of which the former slave, abolitionist, statesman and pioneering Black real estate investor built.
Marshall traces Black Broadway’s roots to the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, when Black people settled into the area and formed churches and small businesses, and to the foundation of Howard University, in 1867. “Blacks came to Howard to become doctors, writers and artists, and they were determined not to return to the South,” Marshall says, noting that at one time there were 200 Black businesses along this stretch. “That’s what started the African American ecosystem of D.C.”
Like others interviewed for this story, he cites Marion Barry’s vision for a post-riot renaissance, and credits it as an inspiration to do something original and groundbreaking on this corner. “We have to lead with that vision,” he says, “and we have to focus on bringing the arts back to U Street. Like any city process, there is space for innovation.”
Marshall’s passion for what is possible at this iconic corner is rooted in his own life experience. He’s a thoughtful man who tells his personal story with a pleasant smile and a touch of nerdy enthusiasm. The grandson of sharecroppers whose mother and father moved to the Langdon neighborhood in northeast D.C. in 1957 during the Great Migration and found work as a housekeeper and a D.C. Public Schools bus driver respectively, he recalls riding with a friend in his friend’s mother’s car along with his mother, brother and two sisters through the ruins of the riots, marveling at the destruction. An indelible image, he says, likening it to a scene from a war movie, is that of U.S. soldiers and military vehicles posted on street corners in the riot zones.
A second childhood memory says Marshall, now aged 65, was of a friend showing him his father’s carpenter’s blueprints, telling him that it was architects who drafted them. As an 11-year-old boy who already had a facility for drawing, he decided on the spot that he would become an architect someday.
He and his siblings had a supportive family environment and hardworking parents, he says. Casting about for a post-high school path, he recalls finding his way into a two-year technical college then known as the Washington Technical Institute, which had courses in architectural engineering technology, a comprehensive pursuit that focuses on a building’s design of mechanical, lighting/electrical, and structural systems, in addition to the planning aspects of the construction process.
That college became the University of the District of Columbia, where Marshall studied at the feet of both White and Black professors who also practiced as licensed architects and engineers. Two years later he got accepted to Catholic University’s School of Architecture, where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree, then earned a Master of Science degree at the Yale University School of Architecture.
As he has said in past interviews, his formative memories and his advanced education as an architect coalesced into the foundation of his pursuit in life, to come back to D.C. and use his skills and abilities to be a part of the city’s recovery.
Marshall founded his own firm in 1989, and, in addition to the Chuck Brown Memorial and Howard Theater, counts the design of the Student Center at UDC among his signature projects. Today, his body of award-winning work has been accepted into the architectural archives of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
When he first learned that the city put out a request for proposals to do a project at the Reeves Center, he was surprised to learn that just one firm was in the running. So he went to a colleague, Sean Pichon of PGN Architects, and together they flipped the script on how competitive bids are developed by working up a proposal based on their own designs and vision for 14th and U.
Marshall says he knew from the outset that he would need to find a developer who could appreciate the cultural and historical significance of the site–preferably someone with their own means of private financing–and who would respect the site’s storied past in spite of its faded current condition. He wanted a developer who also could embrace the promise of the site’s future, and who shared his passion for something “holistic.”
“We knew we’d be working for the developer, but the true client is the neighborhood,” he says. “It has to be truly collaborative with neighborhood groups and historical societies; we wanted to try and get the project to resonate with people so they could embrace it with a sense of ownership and pride. We wanted to do what is in the best service to the city. You want a project that is loved.”
The search led Marshall and Pichon to Chicago-based mega-developer Quintin Primo III, Chairman and CEO of Capri Investment Group, which Primo founded in 1992. Among other things–such as losing a fortune and then winning it back–Primo has distinguished himself by challenging the industry mindset to develop new markets for investment.
A Harvard Business School graduate, Primo has taken on risk as an early investor in underserved urban property markets with a passion for the arts and a focus on women and children in need and the struggle to end homelessness.
“Sean [Pichon] and I essentially reverse engineered the relationship with the developer, meaning we put together our own proposal and then sought a development team to realize our vision,” says Marshall. (In conjunction with the Mayor’s Equity Initiative, they later added local firms CSG Urban Partners and MRP Realty to form CMC Ventures.)
“We wanted to do a project themed on Black Broadway, and we started bringing in various institutes that we felt fit in well with that vision. Quintin’s firm has a touch for projects that serve the African American community such as one in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. We didn’t have to hard-sell him on it,” says Marshall, who gave Primo a week to decide if he was in or out.
The group proposed a building that Marshall says will have “civic presence, stature and cohesion.” They emphasized the legacy of Frederick Douglass, and Marion Barry, and attracted the NAACP to locate its offices in the finished product. They secured a commitment by the Alvin Ailey Dance Company to open a dance studio on the property as well–the first foray outside New York City for the vaunted Black dance institute. And they proposed sound engineering throughout the complex to accommodate theatrical performances, dance performances by CityDance, and concerts sponsored by the Washington Jazz Arts Institute.
“Everyone on our team has bought into this appreciation and support for culture and the arts. We found the right developer, and we want to take that energy from the street and bring it into a big open space when you enter the re-imaged project. A lost generation has left, we need to bring them back. We need Black professional women, and ex-offenders who are coming home, to realize that, just like with sharecropping, there is an opportunity, and its momentum will be aided by technology. We think that this project could do more for equity, and for a just society.”
The Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners, whose approval is supposed to carry “great weight” in the Mayor’s deliberations, were impressed. In 2021, they voted 8-2 to approve the CMC Ventures proposal. No one who spoke with District Dig, including Marshall, has heard a word from the Mayor’s office since.
***
So what was the city looking for in a proposal to redevelop the Reeves Center and how do the two competing proposals stack up against one another?
The RFP states, in part: “The U Street Corridor neighborhood has been a longstanding and historic hub of cultural, educational and commercial life for African Americans in D.C….As a direct result of Mayor Barry’s vision and action, the area continues to be one of the District’s most flourishing destinations.”
Because of the historical significance surrounding Black Broadway and the Civil Rights Movement, the RFP also declared: “The Development Parcel is, therefore, culturally significant to the local history of Washington D.C., the NAACP, and to the broader history of the nation, and any redevelopment should incorporate publicly accessible amenities that integrate and commemorate such significance.
“Additionally, redevelopment should include the concept of honoring Marion Barry Jr.’s legacy and providing for daytime pedestrian activation and retail patronization of the surrounding neighborhood.”
The opportunity to redevelop this iconic corner did not attract a lot of attention, sources who have followed the project closely say. There was little to no buzz. The first and only other development team to respond to the RFP was a politically connected group called Legacy Community Partners, led by two developers who have fared well during Muriel Bower’s first two terms in office: Buwa Binitie, of Dantes Partners, and Bo Menkiti, of The Menkiti Group. (The team also includes Bowser insiders Joshua Lopez, of Lopez and Associates, and Omar Karim, of Banneker Communities.)
According to documents on file with the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, the Legacy partners touted their concept as an “Approach to Placemaking” inspired by “A Charge to Return the Neighborhood to the Economic Viability & Cultural Vibrance that Marked its Past.”
That would include 250 multi-family residential units, 46 condo units, 100,000 square feet of office space, a hotel with 150 rooms, and retail tenants such as D.C. Central Kitchen, The Collective Food Hall and Songbyrd Music House. (Graduates of D.C. Central Kitchen’s apprenticeship program would have opportunities at the proposed hotel and the 18,000 square-foot food hall.)
Community partners would include The MusicianShip, and St. Augustine’s Catholic Church.
Touting its community benefits plan, Legacy proposed to hire hyper-local development and subcontracting teams, provide unspecified number of affordable housing units at 30%, 50% and 80% AMI, create 4,000 new jobs, and increase foot traffic by 976 people per day, resulting in more retail sales for the local economy and an increase in tax savings, both off- and on- site.
CMC Ventures countered with a proposal that came with an interesting feature: A stunning two-minute video presentation. The camera homes in from the street onto a 24,000-square foot public plaza and performance venue–proposed as the Frederick Douglass Plaza and Marion Barry Jr. Amphitheatre–that will include outdoor cafes, cultural and arts programming, “and other creative elements” accessible to “people of all cultures and economic means.”
Then, as it approaches a massive banner with an iconic image of Douglass, the camera rises, falls and circles the proposed development as if you are taking a helicopter ride (or a Star Wars journey) through the angular, glass-enclosed complex full of open spaces and adorned with signs for what will be the new home office of the NAACP–an equity owner–Alvin Ailey Dance Company, CityDance and the Washington Jazz Arts Institute.
It’s a study of air and light, a 633,000 square-foot re-imagination of what Barry was going for with the Reeves Center, featuring more than 110,000 square feet of office space; 20,000 square feet of street-level retail with below-market space set aside for local businesses and community nonprofits; 628 units of mixed-income multifamily housing, with at least 30% of its units reserved for low-income residents earning 50% or less of AMI; 24,000 square feet of arts-related programing, including a 10,000 square foot studio for Alvin Ailey (visible from the street); and for-sale townhomes offering homeownership opportunities for low-income residents earning 50% or less of AMI–all developed in partnership with Habitat for Humanity and the Douglass Community Land Trust.
Swinging for the fences, Marshall and his partners aspire to a “living legacy” respectful of the community’s history and significance to Black identity, culture, and enterprise; a “welcoming public plaza” that honors the District’s civic activism and struggle for Home Rule; and a significant bump in construction and permanent jobs for District residents.
“We feel strongly that we have a more organic plan, with an arts overlay, and cultural sensitivity to the history and legacy of this iconic corner,” Marshall says, with reserved pride.
***
A number of sources The Dig interviewed for this story expressed some bewilderment and anxiousness about how long the Reeves Center project has been in limbo. Several D.C. agencies, including the Department of General Services, are relocating their offices, and a target date of summer 2022 for an award has expired. What’s more, the ANC’s 8-2 vote in favor of CMC Ventures took place more than a year ago.
Neither the Mayor’s office nor the Legacy partners responded to requests for comment.
Bernie Demczuk sees a host of factors that may complicate Bowser’s decision.
“We’ve been through a lot the last couple of years, a pandemic, some economic hurdles, the Don’t Mute D.C. movement, Black Lives Matter Plaza. Feelings in the African American community are more acute. People are more eager for change, and angry for having been left out of the change that there has been. Their community has not been included in gentrification.”
To Demczuk, a redeveloped site featuring a hotel and a food hall could only lead to more of the same–at the expense of local popups, restaurants and cafes that have endured for years. “The question is, is the Reeves Center going to honor the legacy of the Chocolate City, or does it melt away and become the Caramel City, or the Mocha Melt?
“I just think it’s important that the social, political, and visual representation of these eras are reflected in the vision of the builders who will be redeveloping the Reeves Center.”
Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau does not disagree, though her voice lacks the same conviction. “There’s always been a desire for culture and music to demonstrate the history of performers and various ongoing artists,” she says, in a phone conversation last spring. “So that’s one of the discussions that have floated to the surface.
“And obviously, 14th and U is the epicenter of the riots, so we need to make sure we are honoring that with whatever we put there on what is public land.”
Checking the usual boxes, Nadeau (like most urbanists in D.C.) points to the need for density near transit-hubs, which means, hopefully, more “affordable housing.”
But then she tips her hand: “The other piece is a hotel, and we’ve been talking about that for decades. Actually, it has been on my mind for years. That would bring foot traffic and night time attractions that help bring customers to the commercial corridor.
“In fact, we probably could support two–one at 9th and Florida to bookend 14th & U.”
By contrast, Max Ewart, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in the area that encompasses the Reeves Center offers a more passionate perspective. Ewart, who grew up just east of Capitol Hill, in the neighborhood known as Hill East, was speaking on his own behalf as a native Washingtonian:
“It’s a massive opportunity on a huge chunk of public land that you don’t get to see developed that often. It’s an opportunity to achieve things as a city, a sense of place for people who grew up here who are feeling like the changes haven’t been for them.”
Locals have come to feel as though D.C. development is for people who didn’t grow up here, Ewart says. “It’s not a local resident’s voice that is being heard. This could be economic development for the city but also for people who grew up in D.C. to create a space that is D.C., for D.C.”
It’s not just about affordable housing, either, says Ewart. “We like knowing the history. We want to preserve the voices of those who made that history. At the same time, we want to ensure that pop-up vendors who have been there for decades can have a permanent space to make a living in the heart of the city as well.”
Julius Hobson Jr. takes an even more expansive view of the opportunity to redevelop this historic corner. Echoing the legacy of his father, Julius Hobson Sr., an irascible activist, politician and pillar of the movement for racial equality, Hobson Jr. says the redevelopment of the Reeves Center is a matter of social and racial justice–evocative of its namesake, Frank Reeves, and his role in the arc of civil rights history.
Associating redevelopment with displacement, Hobson Jr.’s viewpoint is rooted in the history of school desegregation and Brown v. Board of Education, when Whites fled for the suburbs in the 1950s and Black communities saw divestment in public services and devaluation of their property.
That “wholesale displacement” of Blacks to the east of the Anacostia River and the I-295 freeway stands in contrast to the modern-day displacement due to gentrification on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis, he says. “It’s developers who are shaping the city now, both physically and culturally. You have to make a deliberate decision to build in cultural elements and symbols to get people to gravitate to it, and to get a sense of what Marion went through to get the Reeves Center there in the first place.”
To Hobson Jr. (and other Washingtonians of his vintage), D.C.’s transformation in recent years is marred by “a lack of caring, local input, and cultural and demographic sensitivity.” The Reeves Center is an opportunity to change that narrative, he says.
“You can’t just have ribbon cuttings to make people happy. You have to listen to have a sense of community, and to know what people in the community want; not just have discussions with developers walking in the door with plans saying, ‘This is what we want to do.’ Otherwise you’re gonna build things that don’t resonate with people in terms of what a place once was, or what it could be.”
