"Everybody That Goes to Popeye's Must Be Drunk"

When the Popeye's Fried Chicken on 14th Street NW between N Street and Rhode Island Avenue closed recently, some were sad. It was inexpensive, and also had a drive-up window on the neighboring alley.

The leaders of Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church (1306 Vermont Street) were not so
sad. For decades, the back wall of the church has been victimized by drivers in the alley. Many, the church management thinks, might have been customers of Popeye's with the late-night munchies.

How it was (Google Street View)

"We always said, 'Everybody that goes to Popeye's must be drunk'," a representative of Mt. Olivet's building committee told a committee of Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 2F/Logan Circle on March 25.

Why were the church and the Community Development Committee (CDC) discussing the sobriety of the drivers emerging from a now-closed business? Because now Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church must spend $100,000 to repair and repoint the rear wall of the church.

It is using $50,000 of its own money on the job, and asking the DC Preservation League for a matching $50,000 grant. A representative of Mt. Olivet appeared before the CDC to request a letter of support.

The church yesterday

The church will be repointing and repairing the whole length of the wall, but it is not clear yet on how high the labor-intensive repairs can go -- assuming the church gets the $100,000 it wants.

"Mt. Olivet has always been a valued member of the community," said a CDC member.

The committee unanimously passed a motion to send a letter of "unqualified support of the matching grant" to the DC Preservation League. The matter will now move to the full ANC for approval, where it will probably meet with little opposition or discussion.

Once repaired, the wall may not be subject to the same level of wear-and-tear, as the proposed new mixed-use building for the location will fill in the alley, as wall as replace the two neighboring buildings. 

See the agenda of the next meeting of ANC2F here. The meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 1, at 7pm, at the Washington Plaza Hotel (10 Thomas Circle).

Popeye's will soon open a more upscale version of the franchise across 14th Street from its former location.

See a short video explaining repointing brick walls here.

"Endangered" L Street Building to Be Retained, Moved

A part of 911 L Street NW in Shaw, a historically-protected Civil War-era building that made the DC Preservation League's 2014 "Most Endangered Places" list, will saved from the wrecking ball, preserved, and moved down the block. This was announced at an October 23 public hearing of the Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB).

911-913 L Street (DC Preservation League, by permission)

The raze of the building, along with the building next door at 913 L Street, was endorsed by a committee of Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 2F/Logan Circle on September 24, and then by the full ANC on October 1, before it appeared on the "Most Endangered Places" list, published on October 8.

Steve Callcott of HPRB staff said that the "transitional Greek revival townhouse" at 911 L Street was "a rarity" and "arguably the more important of the two" buildings, owing to its age. In a deal approved by the DC Preservation League and the developers of a complex of hotels and residences slated to go on the block where the building is located, the building will be retained "to a depth of 16 feet" and moved down L Street until it is adjacent with another historically-protected building. The facades of the buildings will be preserved, and the interiors renovated.

Screenshot of planned development from HPRB video archive

The picture on the left is a the architect's photoshopped vision of what the preserved building will look like as part of the completed hotel and apartment complex. The preserved and renovated version of 911 L Street is the three-story building with the black roof in the lower center.

913 L Street is still slated for complete demolition, however. The fate of both  buildings will probably remain on the November agenda of J. Peter Byrne, the Georgetown University professor of law who is also the Mayor's Agent for historical preservation. The Mayor's Agent has to approve the demolition of any building in a designated historic district. 911 and 913 L Street are located in in the Shaw Historic District.

The demolition of these buildings is a small part of a large land-use deal which  is part of a Planned Unit Development (PUD). See a short explanation of PUDs here and 21 pages of official PUD regulations here. The PUD is on the agenda for tomorrow's meeting of ANC2F's Community Development Committee, scheduled for 7pm at the Washington Plaza Hotel (10 Thomas Circle).

HPRB live-streams its meetings and then preserves them in a video archive. The discussion of the deal to preserve part of 911 L Street can be seen by going to this page and clicking on the link for the October 23 meeting, then clicking the tab labelled "Shaw Historic District".

Logan Circle ANC Endorses Raze of Building on "Most Endangered Places" List

At its regular monthly meeting on October 1, Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 2F/Logan Circle voted unanimously to endorse the raze of two historically-protected buildings at 911-913 L Street NW. On October 8, the DC Preservation League included this property on its annual list of "most endangered places".

The property in 2007 (from Flickr, licensed for reuse)

"911 L Street is one of the oldest buildings to survive in the Shaw Historic District," the DC Preservation League says on its website. 913 L Street "was constructed in 1892 and designed by well-known Washington architect Appleton P. Clark."

See articles about the DC Preservation League's 2014 list of most endangered historic properties from the Washington Post here and the Washington Business Journal here.

A small piece in a big puzzle

If the raze goes forward, it will be a small part of a larger plan to build two separate Marriott hotels and a 12-story residential building near the intersection of 9th and L Streets in Shaw. The planned complex would cover a large part of the city block bordered by 9th, 10th, L and M Streets, close to the Washington Convention Center. (This should not be confused with another Marriott hotel, the Marriott Marquis, which opened nearby in May.)

The construction of the hotels and residences is part of a Planned Unit Development (PUD), a planning tool which allows developers of large projects to bundle benefits to the community and concessions from the community into a single package. (See a short explanation of PUDs here and 21 pages of official PUD regulations here.)

But before the PUD process can move forward, the developers and city must deal with the historic preservation aspects of the project. There are currently nine historically-protected buildings on the site, which is in the Shaw Historic District. The developers plan to incorporate seven of the nine into the design of their hotel and residence complex. 911-913 L Street are the other two buildings on the block.

ANC2F's Community Development Committee (CDC) had, on September 24, recommended after community discussion that the full ANC support the raze application with the condition that the existing materials be preserved and reused as much as possible -- see SALM blog post of September 30.

The discussion at the full ANC meeting

At the October 1 meeting, ANC2F Commissioner Greg Melcher (district 06) started the portion of the meeting dealing with this matter by noting the building was in the downtown development district.

"Something's going to have to come down," he said. "I'm inclined to vote for it. It's not a wholesale tearing down of the building."

911-913 L Street is in Melcher's ANC district.

Sherri Kimbel, Director of Constituent Services at the Office of City Councilmember Jack Evans (D-Ward Two) told the ANC that Evans had spoken to "several people" about the development. The people Evans talked to were supportive of the two hotels but not the residential component, Kimbel said.

"There was a requirement to have housing," Kimbel said. "That requirement was not in place for the Marriott across the street" -- meaning, the new Marriott Marquis.

Robert Knopf, Senior Vice-President of the Quadrangel Development Company, spoke on behalf of the developers.

"We're very interested in putting in the residential component," he said. "We need the residential component to cover costs."

As it was, Knopf said, the development had to pay "retail price" for the lots where the planned hotel and residences would go, and then were compelled to shrink the size of the project due to historic preservation requirements -- from an original plan of 237 units to 200.

"We feel like we've been tricked," Knopf said. "We were told we would not have to preserve the building."

All applications to raze buildings in historic districts have a public hearing before the Mayor's Agent in the Historic Preservation Office. A hearing on this project was originally scheduled October 15. On September 19 (well before the meetings described in this article), attorneys for the developers asked for the hearing to be postponed until November, because the developers needed time to respond to comment on the project's overall design from DC historic preservation authorities.

See an article about this development's struggles with historic preservation authorities from the blog BadWolfDC here.