A Tough Sell

But for Skyland, it really isn't.

Business Plan

Skyland, at Alabama Avenue and Naylor Road SE, is the story of a city faced with battles over property rights, differing visions of commerce, and class tensions -- with Franco and dozens of other Skyland merchants caught in the headlights of change. The players in this fight -- including a multiethnic bloc of merchants and an affluent African American community -- defy the white-black script of many other gentrification battles around the city.

Franco and other Skyland merchants and landowners say they are operating viable businesses that have a large and loyal customer base. Sure, Skyland could use a renovation, they say, but that doesn't mean existing businesses should be forced out.

So they are battling the D.C. Council and the quasi-independent National Capital Revitalization Corp. (NCRC). In the D.C. Court of Appeals, they are arguing that the D.C. Council's declaration of eminent domain violated their property rights in favor of private political and financial interests -- not for the public good, as the U.S. Supreme Court says must be the basis for eminent domain. Other aspects of the land seizure are being contested in U.S. District Court and D.C. Superior Court.

Skyland: The name sounds so retro, as if a bowling alley should be there or a drive-in theater. Instead, it is a commercial potpourri, with beauty salons, a "gentleman's" club, record store, a couple of shoe stores, an auto parts store, a discount supermarket, a couple of liquor stores and a few fast-food joints.

There is nothing aesthetic about Skyland, no overarching architectural design. Even its matching awnings along one strip of shops don't add coherence to the place. Compared with the Safeway-anchored Good Hope Marketplace strip mall across the street, with its renovated suburban-country design and landscaping, Skyland's aesthetic shortcomings are all the more glaring. The shopping center looks old and poorly maintained. People loiter in front of its liquor stores or drink in its large parking lot, which also is a dumping ground for broken-down cars or cars for sale, says 6th District Metropolitan Police Commander Robin Hoey. And illegally dumped trash piles up in a wooded lot behind the shops, area residents say.

But Skyland has been fully occupied for years. There have been no boarded-up shops. Business has been brisk.

Nonetheless, the D.C. legislation that empowered the NCRC to exercise eminent domain says that Skyland is blighted. A redeveloped center, it says, "will create hundreds of new jobs, attract businesses that are desired by the community and stimulate economic activity east of the Anacostia River."

It says that Skyland's "fragmented and absentee ownership" made problems of crime, trash and other "blighting factors" only worse because of the difficulty of coordinating a diverse roster of 16 property owners and 27 businesses. And it called Skyland "an impediment to the economic revitalization of this area of the District."

Francoadmits that the shopping center needs an upgrade, though he stands on Alabama Avenue one day and points at the strip of bustling shops and declares defensively: "You can't consider this blight. This isn't blight."

NCRC officials say that eminent domain was the only way for their development plans at Skyland to go forward. Otherwise, they say, it would have been virtually impossible to get so many property owners and businesses on the same page.

Some Skyland owners say that isn't true. And they proved themselves united when they unanimously backed a plan for a privately financed development last year. They tried to get the NCRC to support the plan devised by First FSK Ltd., the largest landowner at Skyland. First FSK argued that the private development would not cost the city money.