Second of two articles
In the District's fast-changing Bloomingdale neighborhood, a group of residents gathered on a recent snowy Sunday for homemade doughnuts and conversation. Talk turned to property values.
Vicky Leonard-Chambers, part of the first generation of urban pioneers to lay claim to this center-city enclave in the early 1990s, recalled people's lament that "$400,000 now buys you only a condo."
The Windows Cafe and Market, opened last year at Rhode Island Avenue and First Street NW, is one sign of the neighborhood's upward movement.
(Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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"Back when I bought my house, you could buy three complete two-story homes for that," said Leonard-Chambers, who works for a trade association and is active in a local effort to bring new retail to the North Capitol Street corridor.
"It's exciting to see that you have an investment that's increasing in value faster than your 401(k) plan at work," Leonard-Chambers said. "But the downside is that as it appreciates, so does your tax burden. You know that it's difficult for many of the seniors."
Residents of Bloomingdale and other District neighborhoods will get the government estimate of how much their property values are rising this month, when the Office of Tax and Revenue mails out proposed assessments for 2006.
City officials say the valuations, which have risen sharply in recent years as the city has emerged from fiscal and political turmoil, will continue to climb -- especially in formerly working-class neighborhoods such as Bloomingdale and nearby Eckington and LeDroit Park, all rapidly going upscale.
"Either you sell, or you make do," said Cleopatra Jones, president of the Bloomingdale Civic Association and a resident of Eckington and Bloomingdale for 40 years. She said she scrimps and saves monthly to keep up with taxes for her home on R Street NE and a rental property she owns nearby. "You wink and you go eenie-meenie-minie-mo and you decide which bill is going to be paid."
In these neighborhoods, which straddle North Capitol Street near Rhode Island Avenue, change is easily visible.
Home prices have more than doubled in the past three years. Dozens of houses sport "For Sale" signs. Construction crews renovating old rowhouses provide near-constant background noise.
Most of the once-ubiquitous metal awnings and green outdoor carpeting have disappeared from porch stoops. Instead, houses sport brass light fixtures, heavy wooden doors and fresh paint.
A modest coffeehouse called the Windows Cafe opened last year, to much fanfare, at First Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW. More than 50 neighbors turned out to hear a jazz band and to celebrate the conversion of an old bodega into the area's first restaurant where, after ordering at the counter, patrons can sit down to eat.
In the evenings, sidewalk traffic reflects the growing number of upscale professionals -- black and white, male and female, gay and straight.
"It's changing very fast, just from last year to now," said Hunegnaw Abeje, who with his wife, Roman Teklu, runs the cafe and an adjoining market, where the wine selection includes Chalk Hill merlot for $49.99 a bottle.
