Delores Graves remembers how some Deanwood residents squawked in the 1980s when they had a choice between a halfway house or a church moving into a home at the corner of 47th Place and Nash Street NE.
They got the Rome Baptist Church, which, at the time, many felt was the community's saving grace. Now there are 32 churches in Deanwood, five within a few blocks of Graves's home.
Resident Delores Graves, left, and ANC member Muriel Chambers say neighbors haven't been consulted about plans for new churches in their area.
(Larry Morris -- The Washington Post)
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Construction recently started on a building across from Rome Baptist Church. Graves thought it was a house but later learned it will be another place of worship, the Seventh Church of Christ Scientist.
Graves, 64, said she doesn't want any more churches in the community.
She and other Deanwood residents say they are not opposed to churches but to the traffic they bring to the narrow streets, the shortage of parking spaces and worship services with loud music that run late into the night.
"We have enough churches on this street," said Carolyn Ricanek, who lives next door to where the Seventh Church of Christ Scientist is under construction. "We need a moratorium on building churches. Instead of being Deanwood, it should be Churchwood."
Ricanek, who moved to her home 39 years ago, said parking for the 70-seat church will cause "nothing but chaos."
Bettie Thompson, who has identified herself to residents as the church's pastor, and other church members did not respond to several telephone calls and a note left at the church's current yellow brick Capitol Hill storefront at 509 11th St. SE.
Advisory Neighborhood Commission representative Muriel Chambers, of Ward 7, said Thompson has said the building under construction will be a church library. Chambers said the ANC was not consulted in advance about the latest neighborhood addition.
"There are 32 churches in a half-mile radius," said Chambers, who lives across the street from Macedonia Community Church and down the street from Randall Memorial United Methodist Church. "We feel we're being dumped on. There's a house church on that corner, a big church behind it. We've decided to fight back."
Deanwood residents say they have been exploited by city zoning and other officials who have allowed a cluster of halfway houses, drug treatment centers and churches to open in the city's far Northeast corner.
Instead of churches and other tax-exempt facilities, the residents want housing that will create tax revenue.
It may be too late to stop the Seventh Church of Christ Scientist from locating in Deanwood, but residents plan to lobby Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7), their newly elected council member, to sponsor legislation that would stop churches from being built in Deanwood without more community involvement in the planning.
Gray said this week that the residents have a legitimate concern and that he wants to work with both sides to reach a compromise -- without resorting to legislation.
Chambers, saying "it's hard to go against a church," complained that another church, the Beginning Church of God, remains unfinished after several years.
Last month, Chambers and a group of Ward 7 residents took a bus tour to look at single-family houses they said had been built in Deanwood by a developer who did not have the proper permits.
They stopped at the half-finished Seventh Church of Christ Scientist and asked to see its building permits, which a contractor produced.
Although the permits show it will be a small church, Ricanek said, it is one more place of worship on her block.
"We are the ones that are suffering in this community," she said. "I have been fighting this for years."
