Landowners in Stadium's Path Fight to Stay Put

But the specter of moving may weigh most personally on the people like Ghiglino and Lopez, and Ken Wyban, who owns and lives in a house at 21 N St SE -- people whose emotions, not just livelihoods, are attached to their properties.

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Wyban, a retired Army sergeant major, was stationed at Fort McNair in the late 1990s, when he first saw the five-bedroom, red-brick detached house while jogging. He bought it in 1998 for $161,000 and planned to retire there, and started renovating the basement to use as a bed-and-breakfast.

Now, the city is offering him $1.2 million, but he's not satisfied. The property all around the city has soared in value, and comparable plots across the street are going for much more, according to several developers. Wyban has decided to try to use his profits to buy property in Florida and Ohio, where his parents live, but he's still sad to have to go.

"I see all the development here and thought I'd be right in the middle of it," Wyban said on a recent day, sitting in his kitchen, sipping tea warmed on an industrial Vulcan stove. "I never thought I'd get knocked out of it."

He is nonplussed by city officials who say that they have offered him a fair deal and that he'll make a huge profit on his property.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime payoff. I'm going to make a million dollars," Wyban said. "But can you imagine if I held on to this house for five more years? Condos in this city are going for a million. It's incomprehensible."

Wyban stopped his home renovation after Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) announced in September 2004 that a stadium would be built at the site. "My life kind of came to a screeching halt," he said.

His dining room has been set up as a "war room," his long dining table stacked with documents related to the stadium, anti-stadium fliers and posters, and business cards from the many reporters who have visited him.

Last fall, he got a visit from people he was surprised to see: descendants of the man who built his house in the 1840s, a brick-maker named Alfred Richards. Ted Olmstead and his family called on Wyban after hearing of the stadium debate in the news. They told Wyban they lived in Maryland but empathized with his fight to keep the house from being demolished -- Wyban had called on the city to incorporate the house into the stadium design.

Then they handed Wyban a bunch of pictures of Richards and of his descendants at the house. He gave them one of the original bricks Richards had made.

"I feel relief that it's just about over," Wyban said. Movers were expected within a week. He's found a rental apartment in Florida near his mother and will move on, although his lawyer is still fighting the city for more money.