Landowners in Stadium's Path Fight to Stay Put

"I've switched gears," Wyban said. "Now I see this as something that just may have been meant to be."

He stepped out to the front of his house, where he has a clear view of the U.S. Capitol dome.

"I'm definitely going to miss this view, though," he said wistfully.

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Ghiglino and Lopez bought their building in 1990 -- for $300,000.

Ghiglino says she came to the United States from her native Peru in 1977 when she was 27. First, she worked at the Spanish embassy. Then she took a job with the National Institute of Mental Health.

It wasn't until she married Lopez, who worked in the art restoration business, that Ghiglino turned her attention to the arts.

They worked out of a building doing restoration in Shady Side, but needed more space. So they found the building near South Capitol Street. It was vacant, with no working electricity or plumbing.

"We had to do it all," Ghiglino said. "The first day, I remember running across the street to borrow the bathroom from neighbors" at a car shop.

The former headquarters of an ice cream company, the building had morphed many times -- into a sign shop, a carpet store and an auto repair company.

The couple brought in huge 16,000-pound steel presses, electrical panels, kilns. Lopez worked on projects all over the city. He most famously restored the lions on Taft Bridge along Connecticut Avenue NW.

They also did blacksmithing, flamework, bead-making, glass-blowing, mosaics, stained glass, stone-carving and bronze-casting. Three years ago, Ghiglino started offering adult classes out of the building. They painted the bricks yellow and added a sign announcing the Washington Sculpture Center.

Their offices were on the second floor, with a view of the Anacostia. Ghiglino stood there on a recent day, staring out, remembering aloud how birds would crowd on the narrow windowsill.

She recalled the Metrobus drivers waving to her, the transvestite pride parade and the time in the early 1990s when a two-story mountain of trash piled up at the transfer station in the next block -- a mountain that the city government ignored for a month until Ghiglino and the other neighbors complained loudly enough.

This was a place the city had long ignored but was now suddenly eager to own.

"This isn't all about money," Ghiglino said. The city has offered her $1.7 million, but she and Lopez have not agreed to sell. "It's very hard when you build something and dream about building it and you build it slowly. You never think it will be taken away."

For now, the supplies and equipment will be placed in storage while she and Lopez work temporarily out of their suburban Maryland home. They're not sure what is coming next, but they've been in this uncertain place before. Tears well in Ghiglino's eyes, but she dries them quickly.

"You laugh and cry and remember certain little anecdotes. Part of me will stay with this building," she said. "Now that you know that it's really happening, you need to step out and relax and look to the future."