Growth Fight Invades Soldiers' Refuge

Running the home is a costly proposition because it subsidizes much of the veterans' costs. These are the veterans, most of them career military, who cannot afford to retire in such places as Florida or Arizona. The average contribution from veterans living at the home is $800 a month, or about $9,600 a year -- a fraction of each resident's $31,000 to $41,000 annual living cost.

"The people we serve are truly low and moderate income," Cox said. "And this will be their only home until they die."

The developed part of the land is checkered with amenities, including a golf course, chapels, banks, a convenience store, a barbershop and beauty salon, residential towers and greenhouses leased to the Smithsonian Institution.

The home's master plan did not state the amount of money officials need or hope to make. That was a concern for planning commissioners, who made a financial strategy part of the requirement for further consideration of a revamped master plan.

The proposal was challenged at a National Capital Planning Commission meeting this month, when more than a dozen speakers, including a neighborhood woman with her two babies in tow and a bespectacled historian worried about the future of Lincoln Cottage, spoke out against the proposed development.

After hours of debate and speeches at the Feb. 2 hearing, the commission voted against approving the master plan. In particular, the panel took exception to the proposed 9 million square feet of development that would surround a National Historic Landmark and block one of the best views of the nation's capital. The Historic Preservation Review Board similarly swatted down part of the plan in January, citing the proposed development as "too great to avoid very serious adverse effects."

Both commissions asked home officials to reconfigure the proposal and return with a plan that calls for less-aggressive development on the site.

One neighborhood resident called the plan "a developer's dream" and a preservationist's "worst nightmare."

"Hundreds of years after people forget we all were here, they'll come from all over the world to see Lincoln's Cottage," said the resident, James Carstensen. "What a shame if they couldn't see the land as Lincoln saw it. What a shame if they saw row after row of town homes and tall buildings."

Lincoln Cottage was named a national treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and last year was placed on the group's list of 11 most-endangered places in the United States.

Residents of Parkview and Petworth argue that heavy development in an area that is already densely populated will snarl traffic and choke the neighborhoods. It would also devour the green space that was intended more than 100 years ago to be one of Washington's great parks, said Sandra Hoffman of Petworth, an adversary of the project.

"This could be a huge loss, for the neighborhood and for the city," Hoffman said.

"My constituents feel very much excluded from this process," said D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who has filed a formal request under a federal code asking to be an official consulting member of the home.

Before it became a retirement home and presidential cottage, the land and mansion were the estate of George W. Riggs, who went on to establish Riggs National Bank. In 1851, after the U.S.-Mexican War, Congress purchased it as a retirement home for soldiers.

When the nearby neighborhoods were built, planners did not incorporate extra parks or pathways, because the home's land was open to the public and was enjoyed by families who picnicked, relaxed and played on its hills. But in 1925, when areas along North Capitol Street were sprouting with new homes, the retirement home closed itself off from the neighborhood with a wrought-iron fence. After the Washington riots of 1968, the fence was topped with barbed wire.

Part of the home's redevelopment plan carves out small public parks, space that residents haven't had access to for 80 years, Cox said.