Wednesday, October 29, 2008 - 12:50 PM EDT

Councilmembers want D.C. to abandon Tenleytown project

Washington Business Journal - by Jonathan O'Connell Staff Reporter

Two members of the D.C. Council are asking Mayor Adrian Fenty and Deputy Mayor Neil Albert to abandon a "fatally flawed" public-private development in Tenleytown and allow the reconstruction of a public library there to move forward independently.

Albert chose LCOR Inc. in July to build new housing on 3.6 acres that include Janney Elementary School and the site for a rebuilt Tenley-Friendship Heights neighborhood library, which was demolished in 2007.

But in an Oct. 29 letter to Fenty, Councilmembers Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, and Kwame Brown, D-at large, chair of the economic development committee, asked that construction of the library be allowed to proceed independently. "This approach will allow the library to move forward now, on its own timetable, with its design intact, and with monies already allotted," the letter reads. The officials suggest that the city rebuild the library right away and that it include structural supports so that development could be added on top at a future date.

The current agreement with LCOR, they said, should be terminated: "As for the current LCOR proposal, we believe that it is fatally flawed; we cannot and will not support it."

Cheh supported the project initially because she, with Albert, thinks that the site should bear more than a library; it is located on Wisconsin Avenue NW across from the Tenleytown Metro station, a prime opportunity to build more housing accessible to public transit.

But her conditions, including preserved green space for Janney and hastened construction of the library, have not been met. The library system's board of trustees has been urgently pushing to allow the library, which has been operating in an interim space since December 2004, to be rebuilt right away.

Tim Smith, a senior vice president at Berwyn, Pa.-based LCOR, said he had not heard about Cheh and Brown's letter but that he had been working to meet Cheh's conditions. He declined to comment on how their opposition might affect the deal.

Ferocious opposition to the project now burns in some corners of the wealthy neighborhood, where residents and advisory neighborhood commissioners have accused Albert's staff of corruption, submitted public document requests, testified at council hearings, rallied outside the mayor's offices and created an online petition opposing the project. In March, even before Albert made his choice, a group of Janney parents and staff planning the school's expansion announced that they opposed a public-private deal, in part because of concern about the loss of green space.

Brown said that a number of issues have not been resolved since he and Cheh first raised concerns in the spring, but that the stagnated library construction was the main concern, saying "to have it sitting there for years and years and years is unacceptable."

"They just haven't come to us with something that assures that we won't have to wait on the library. People have been waiting on the library for a very long time," Brown said.

Thursday, October 30, 2008 - 11:35 AM EDT

D.C., LCOR moving forward in Tenleytown

Washington Business Journal - by Jonathan O'Connell Staff Reporter

D.C. Deputy Mayor Neil Albert and developer LCOR Inc. plan to proceed with a mixed-use development in Tenleytown despite opposition from Councilmembers Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, and Kwame Brown, D-at large and chair of the economic development committee.

The councilmembers wrote Mayor Adrian Fenty Wednesday to say they would like the city to abandon the project and allow the Tenley-Friendship library, demolished on the site last year, to be rebuilt on its own. LCOR plans to build 174 units of housing along with a new library and a new, expanded Janney Elementary School.

A spokesman for Albert, Sean Madigan, said the deputy mayor still believes the project benefits the city by bringing more transit-accessible housing and new money to a rebuilt Janney, and those outweigh the delay in rebuilding the library.

"This is a project that is going to be there for 30 or 40 years and we have to do it absolutely right," Madigan said. He said the development will meet conditions Cheh requested in July: no net loss in green space for Janney, added revenue for Janney, an accelerated rebuilding timeline for Janney and no significant delay in the library construction.

"We think there's a really great opportunity to do a mixed use project that meets all of our policy goals," Madigan said.

Tim Smith, vice president of LCOR, also said his company was "fully committed to the project" and was working to meet Cheh's goals. "We have been working on all of her issues, and certainly we were surprised by the letter," Smith said.

Smith did not, however, offer a timeline for when construction might begin. The development requires zoning changes that frequently require more than a year to approve. The library has $1 million set aside for construction and would not require zoning changes.

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