Radio One Inc. chief executive Alfred C. Liggins III said yesterday he is lobbying District officials to support a plan to move his company's headquarters from Prince George's County to the District, near Howard University.
Radio One would like to construct a 76,000-square-foot office building at the corner of Seventh and S Streets NW for his 69-station radio group, which was founded in the District 24 years ago.
Chief executive Alfred C. Liggins III wants to move Radio One to the Shaw neighborhood.
(Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
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Liggins said in an interview that the company has asked city officials for financial incentives and will also need the approval of the National Capital Revitalization Corp., a quasi-independent organization created to spur economic development in the District. It controls development of the property.
"We've been talking to a number of city officials," Liggins said, including Councilman Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), as well as Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and community leaders in the Shaw neighborhood. He said he would like to "make a deal in the coming months."
The site chosen by Radio One is a vacant lot on a once-thriving commercial corridor that suffered years of urban decline but is starting to revive. Near the Seventh and S Street corner is a long-shuttered WonderBread factory, once used to make Twinkies, where D.C. developer Douglas Jemal now plans to put 80 mid-priced housing units. Trammell Crow Co. is also planning to build apartments and retail buildings on a nearby parking lot across from Howard University.
Graham said he supports the project. "Having this premiere African American broadcast enterprise located in the neighborhood near U Street in this historic African American community is obviously a bull's-eye," Graham said. "It is strong economic development. It fits the history and tradition. I'm very excited about the prospect, and I hope we can work it out."
Chris Bender, a spokesman for the D.C. Office of Planning and Economic Development, said the city is also interested. "We have for a long time wanted to grow the broadcast sector in the District, especially the local, urban broadcast sector. It allows them to attract bright young, working people into the city to live," Bender said.
Bender said discussions are still in the early stages, and the city has not yet crafted a financial incentive package or offered Radio One tax breaks. "We will get into a conversation about incentives. We don't have a resolution on that yet, [but] we'll try to get some movement," he said.
Liggins will also have to negotiate with NCRC, a nonprofit that controls the development of many abandoned or foreclosed parcels that had been taken over by the city in recent decades. The parcel Radio One wants is among those. It was part of several parcels that the city gave to NCRC in 2002 to redevelop.
NCRC said it got an unsolicited proposal from Broadcast Center Partners LLC, which includes Radio One and some developers, for the northeast corner of the site at Seventh and S streets. Broadcast Center Partners' deal proposes putting 200 condos, 21,000 square feet of retail and 76,000 square feet of offices on the NCRC parcel and others around it.
