A Tough Sell

The NCRC gave First FSK 21 days to provide several types of information, including letters of interest from lenders and investors as well as a vision of its alternative development program. But First FSK already had given several alternative site plans to the NCRC. And considering the notoriety of the Skyland development conflict, potential lenders would want to know the NCRC's position before throwing any weight behind First FSK, the latter company argued.

David Burka, the manager of the First FSK properties at Skyland, suggested in a letter to the NCRC that its demand for information and its deadline were "unreasonable" and would "set up" the owners' proposal to fail.

The NCRC stood firm, though, and rejected the First FSK proposal.

"First FSK did come to us with a proposal for a mixed-use development," Ted Risher, the NCRC project manager for Skyland, said in a recent interview. "We gave it due consideration and we actually formulated a business plan. However, in the time we gave First FSK to produce some nominal information on their idea of the project, they were unable to come up with that information."

And so the publicly financed NCRC project goes on, with a price tag so far of $130 million.

The bottom line, for Franco, is simple.

"They don't want us here."

The Retail Mix

As an Orthodox Jew, Franco, 53, of Kemp Mill in Montgomery County, says he believes "whatever is going to happen is going to happen." He's seen his share of events over which he had little control.

In the discount trade since he dropped out of the University of Maryland to help his dad, he's in his second displacement battle.

"I don't know if I'm cursed or what," Franco says good-naturedly.

Just a few years before his dad's discount store, known as J.D.'s, was displaced in the early 1980s from a spot at 12th and G downtown to make room for Hecht's, Franco's first Discount Mart, located at Seventh and E downtown, was forced out by construction for the Metro in 1976. He reopened in one Skyland storefront that same year, then moved two doors down in 1978, taking over the huge old Naylor Theater building that anchored the original shopping strip.

Built in 1945 and expanded over the years, Skyland sits at a crossroads of several neighborhoods: the leafy streets of Hillcrest with its manicured lawns and well-kept Colonials and Tudors; the large new town homes and apartments along Good Hope Road, some still under construction; the garden apartments of Naylor Road; and several low-income apartment complexes that dot the area. From white-collar professionals to young mothers on public assistance, Skyland's environs run the socioeconomic gamut.