About a dozen years later, Latino immigrants began putting down roots in the neighborhood, alongside the lower-income African American families who had stayed when others fled or were moving into the subsidized apartments being built on some empty parcels.
The 1990s saw the arrival of more affluent urban pioneers, priced out of fancier neighborhoods such as Dupont Circle and Georgetown and willing to rehabilitate the worn rowhouses that dominate the side streets back to their original grandeur.
Thirty years after closing, the renovated and reopened 80-year-old Tivoli theater at 14th and Park streets NW is the new home of the GALA Hispanic Theatre. The complex, called Tivoli Square, also will house retail and office space, a supermarket and duplex condominiums.
(Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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The opening of a Green Line Metro station in 2001 accelerated the influx. When the quasi-public National Capital Revitalization Corp. put the riot-scarred parcels out to bid, developers rushed to snap them up.
Catherine Hammonds, who lives on Clifton Street NW and has served as an advisory neighborhood commissioner since 1984, welcomes the changes. "I fought so hard," Hammonds said, recalling years of neighborhood cleanups and safety patrols, which gained strength with the arrival of new residents. "It was a long struggle. Even the cabdriver didn't want to bring you home or to pick you up."
Plans for the new projects have evolved slowly over the past four years, often changing to accommodate community concerns. City and NCRC officials heeded calls from preservationists to protect much of the original Tivoli building structure, for example, even as it was converted into a much smaller performance space for GALA Hispanic Theatre, with the rest of the building converted to retail and office space. The complex, known as Tivoli Square, also includes a supermarket that will open this spring and 40 duplex condominiums.
After hearing from advocates for the homeless, Donatelli & Klein agreed to reorient one of its buildings to accommodate an existing men's shelter, and the District has committed to upgrade it.
DC USA, the Target-anchored complex planned for across from the Tivoli, has pledged to reserve some low-rent retail space for locally owned businesses and to recruit residents for many of the 1,000 jobs that will be created by the project. Tony Freeman, chief executive of National Capital Revitalization Corp., said his firm will work to ensure that D.C. residents are tapped for those jobs. The corporation also has committed to relocate the two remaining businesses on the project site -- a coin laundry and the decades-old Waffle Shop -- elsewhere in the neighborhood before construction begins.
Though Jordan said he and other longtime residents are cautiously optimistic, he said they also are skeptical about whether the promised jobs will materialize. He noted that even as the new apartment buildings are rising, the shopping center has been delayed by several financing complications and will not break ground until at least the end of this year.
"That's the one with the jobs," he said. "It's getting further out. But the projects that are housing, that put more pressure on, they are coming right up."
D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who represents the area, has fought for preservation of affordable housing and the Tivoli, and to include amenities in the new projects that serve longtime residents. He said each effort was difficult but should prove worthwhile.
"This is a neighborhood that, just a short time ago, we couldn't get fast food into. And now it will have everything," Graham said. "There are tensions, but the mix is good."
