Activists Prefer Car Lots to High-Rises
Victories Seen by Some as Intimidation

By Elissa Silverman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 9, 2006

For Carolyn Sherman, the latest front in the ground war for her neighborhood is a used-car lot steps from the Friendship Heights Metro station. She says a proposed 79-foot-tall building with condominiums and ground-floor retail would be more of an eyesore than the old Buick dealership on the site.

"It doesn't fit in," explained Sherman, insisting that a seven-story, boxy edifice would be "destabilizing" to the area she loves. Sherman moved to upper Northwest 13 years ago and enjoys listening to the robins chirp in her back yard, watching children play on the tire swing down the block and walking to an independently owned coffee shop just off Wisconsin Avenue.

Although many neighborhoods in the District clamor for new construction and national retailers along their commercial corridors, Sherman and some of her Ward 3 neighbors have been fighting to limit development in the zone between Tenleytown and Friendship Heights. Featuring a hodgepodge of mattress stores, ethnic eateries and small office buildings, the commercial strip seems to some residents to be out of character with its affluent environs. But members of the Coalition to Stop Tenleytown Overdevelopment and the Friendship Neighborhood Association believe the low-density storefronts suit the neighborhood just fine -- even the 24-hour Steak 'n Egg Kitchen.

"High-rises don't build community," said Jane Waldmann, a coalition member and a Tenleytown historian who wants to preserve the area's historic views. Adds Sherman: "How many people say, 'I love to walk in Van Ness'?"

The activists have compiled an impressive record of victories: At the former Babe's Billiard Cafe site, near the Tenleytown-AU Metro entrance, they objected to a proposed condominium building. The developer, IBG Investors LLC, agreed to trim the structure to six stories but eventually sold the property.

The same group rallied against a nine-story mixed-use building pitched for the current site of the Martens Volvo dealership. "At this moment, we've abandoned the project," said Steuart Martens, president of the company .

And residents recently won a five-year struggle against American Tower Corp., which planned to erect a 756-foot telecommunications tower in the heart of Tenleytown. The neighbors stopped the construction about a third of the way up, and recently the city agreed to pay the company $350,000 to have the tower dismantled.

Turf battles over "infill development" might seem more likely to happen in Fairfax or Montgomery counties, where real estate around transit centers was originally designed for low-density use. Yet the single-family residential neighborhoods of upper Northwest have become bull's-eyes for developers searching for land that is close in, Metro accessible and convenient to the region's employment centers.

Coalition members want new construction to fall within current zoning regulations -- which in most areas is 50 feet. Activists greet proposals that would exceed that limit with an action plan, usually a blitz of phone calls, e-mails and requests to city officials for public information. Sherman said her coalition listserv goes out to more than 200 members.

They call it civic participation. Critics call it intimidation.

In January 2004, for example, Sherman and her neighbors sought a meeting with the mayor to object to a city planning study suggesting denser development around their Red Line Metro stations. They showed up at a mayoral event at Woodrow Wilson Senior High and chanted: "Keep the zoning, keep the view, dump the study or we'll dump you!"

Williams promised to meet with the group, but it didn't happen immediately. So Sherman, who was teaching business writing near the John A. Wilson Building, camped out at the mayor's constituent services office on her lunch hour and coffee breaks every day for more than a week. She got her meeting, and the study was shelved in November.

"We feel there's a lot at risk," said Gina Mirigliano, a member of the Friendship Neighborhood Association and a resident since 1989.

The concern, these residents say, goes beyond whether a desirable part of the city can stand a few more swinging singles parking their Mini Coopers and drinking Starbucks coffee. How the upper Wisconsin Avenue corridor is designated as the city revises its comprehensive plan, the blueprint that guides growth in the District, could have long-term implications for the neighborhood.

The current comprehensive plan states that Ward 3's economic development goals "differ" from the rest of the city and that "large-scale retail" should be directed first to other wards.

That unique status is being threatened, coalition members claim. A map accompanying a draft of the revised comprehensive plan places the corridor in a "growth management area" rather than a "conservation area" much more prohibitive of development. They believe this proves that the Williams administration's objective of attracting 100,000 new residents and a bigger tax base comes at the expense of those who have already invested in the city.

District officials disagree. "The Office of Planning considers quality of life of neighborhoods the most important principle," said the agency's head, Ellen McCarthy. "[We are] constantly accused of promoting these smart-growth principles only to create revenue for the District. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Some Ward 3 residents supportive of development projects warn that the activists' victories are creating an undesirable landscape: A currently abandoned storefront at the Babe's site, and empty storefronts next door. A car dealership at Martens. And at the Buick dealership site, more used cars in front of a Metro bus barn that's also on the block for development.

"We'll have noxious fumes hanging around longer because of the outrageous tactics of the Northwest NIMBYs," said Tom Quinn, a member of the Ward 3 Smart Growth Coalition who lives across the street from the Friendship Heights Metro. "It's really a very small, very tenacious, well-organized group of people who oppose development. . . . It's squeaky-wheel democracy."

The activists plan to seek victory in the upcoming elections, too. For the Ward 3 council race, many support Cathy Wiss, a candidate who favors the current height restrictions. Wiss is one of seven candidates seeking the seat.

Sherman and other coalition members said that they won't automatically support their current council member, Kathy Patterson (D), in her quest for council chairman. "She has not taken a leadership role," said Sherman. "I doubt we will campaign against her, but we won't do anything for her."

In fact, the residents recently got one of Patterson's challengers, Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7), to write a letter to the mayor echoing their concerns about the comprehensive plan.

"I think I've done the job the best I know how, balancing competing interests," Patterson responded.