Building Blocks

Albert R. "Butch" Hopkins Jr., left, president and chief executive of the Anacostia Economic Development Corp., and developer Douglas Jemal take in the changing sights along Good Hope Road in Anacostia. (Dudley M. Brooks -- The Washington Post)

But in the last few years, there have been some encouraging trends.

Home values are rising as younger professionals move into the neighborhood and bid up prices. A three-bedroom house at U and 13th Streets SE, for example, was $50,000 in 1987 and sold last year for $240,000, according to Patricia Makin, a real estate agent with Remax.

The average yearly household income in the 20020 zip code -- the heart of Anacostia -- rose to $42,684 last year from $38,343 in 2000, and is above the District's median of $40,000, according to statistics compiled by the D.C. Marketing Center.

More important is what lies ahead. D.C. officials say they intend to start construction of the new transportation building, at the 1200 block of Good Hope Road, within the next two years. The quasi-public Anacostia Economic Development Corp. is slated to begin work this summer on an $18 million office building slated for the same block. Together, the two buildings are expected to create the sort of critical mass of daytime traffic and pedestrians needed to support private retail development.

D.C. officials say they expect an estimated $200 million worth of public and private investment to be made in Anacostia over the next five to ten years to renovate storefronts along Martin Luther King Jr. venue, improve a library and put a light rail system into the area. Metro is trying to interest developers in a grassy lot next to its Anacostia station. A Giant grocery store -- one of the few major grocery chains that operate east of the Anacostia River -- is expected to join a retail project in Congress Heights. .

The District's Anacostia Waterfront Initiative calls for a multimillion-dollar redevelopment of the shores of the river into parks, housing and retail; there is also a new study that is expected to look at moving the headquarters of the U.S. Coast Guard onto the sprawling grounds of St. Elizabeths Hospital on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.

"There hasn't been enough daytime consumer traffic to get retailers to come," said Albert R. "Butch" Hopkins Jr., president and chief executive of the Anacostia Economic Development Corp.

David Nikolow, who has owned a liquor store at the corner of 16th and Good Hope Road SE for 14 years, said he sees the neighborhood changing already through the shift in what customers want.

"Before I used to sell very little wine, and now I sell good wines from California, Chilean and Australian wines," he said. "In the last two years, I've seen the customers changing from mostly poor to more middle class. We're not the ghetto here like people think. We drink coffee and we want those same kind of amenities as other neighborhoods."

Louis S. Rizzo, president of Curtis Property Management Corp., the largest landowner in Anacostia, said he is waiting to see the District's transportation building finished before he pursues plans to build shops, restaurants and condos on a parking lot he owns a few blocks away on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE.