A Tough Sell

Franco, whose store grosses about $4 million a year, is not so much worried for himself or his two sons who work with him. Four of his five brothers are also in discount retail in the area. He could merge with one of them.

"But what would I do with all the employees?" Franco employs up to 40 people, among them Sallie Shields, who has been with Discount Mart for 12 years.

It can be a rough place to work sometimes. It's not frequent, but just in case trouble does break out with a suspected shoplifter, she carries a box cutter in her pocket and keeps a length of metal bed frame under her counter.

Despite the uncertainty, Shields isn't looking for a new job just yet. She calls Skyland "raggedy" and "run-down." But Franco's been a good boss, she says. Employees get a 20 percent discount. She'll wait it out with him, wait to see whether and how Skyland changes.

Attention, Shoppers

Once upon a time, the old Naylor Theater played first-run movies. Southeast was a largely white postwar bedroom community back then, in the 1940s and '50s. Fred S. Kogod built the theater with Max Burka, his brother-in-law. They are the K and B of KB Cinemas, the old Washington area theater chain that went out of business in the 1990s as multiplexes took over.

The steady shift of Southeast from white to black was boosted in the 1950s and 1960s with the influx of people pushed out of Southwest during urban renewal. Many of them had relocated from Georgetown two decades earlier.

The District, in large measure, has become a very different city since those days -- and that's precisely the beef of Hillcrest residents.

They have watched rebirth in downtown, on U Street, in the H Street corridor and Columbia Heights -- and still, their community has remained relatively static. And now, with a mayor and city council on their side, and eminent domain providing the muscle, Skyland's detractors are virtually salivating at the prospect of its demise.

"Can't come soon enough," Paul Savage said as he settled into a folding chair in the East Washington Heights Baptist Church basement one Saturday morning last month.

He was there, with about 80 other area residents, to see the design ideas the NCRC is considering for the new Skyland -- or whatever it will be called.

Savage, for one, doesn't even want the Skyland name to remain. Too many bad memories. He doesn't call the area Southeast, either; too many negative connotations. He prefers to call it East Washington.

He's a Hillcrest man, a prime mover behind Mayor Anthony Williams's first run for office, and a founder 15 years ago of the Skyland Revitalization Task Force. The task force represents the aspirations of the affluent African Americans, with a few whites sprinkled in, of Hillcrest and other nearby communities.

Ask Savage, a former D.C. official, which of Skyland's shops he'd like to see return to a redeveloped shopping center there and he says flat out: "I can't think of one." Well, maybe the CVS, he adds.

"I haven't shopped there in 15 years," he says of Skyland. "It's not good enough for me."

And that really is the story: Folks in Hillcrest, Penn Branch and other neighboring communities view Skyland as a demeaning presence, what Savage calls the "classic ghetto type of offering."

Savage and others among the Hillcrest activists say the merchants and owners of the Skyland property have ignored repeated calls over the years for the shopping center to be improved and cleaned up.

Speaking of the Skyland landlords, Vincent Spaulding, president of the Hillcrest Community Civic Association, says, "They weren't adversely affected by the blight and the unsafe conditions and the eyesore that this place created. . . . They thought we were powerless to do anything."

Those owners have since learned otherwise.

"The only way we can improve it is to get these people out of our face and out of our neighborhood," Savage said in an interview at the Saturday meeting, referring to both owners and merchants at Skyland.

The plans show a new center that won't be your typical strip mall or big-box center. Rather, it would be a "town center" shopping complex with retail on the ground floor and residential on a second level, with an architectural feature such as a clock tower as the focal point. (The First FSK proposal called for this mix of retail and residential, too.)

At the meeting, Target, the purported anchor store, was mentioned only hypothetically. It has not committed to the site, though its officials had conducted several site visits, Gary D. Rappaport, president of the Rappaport Cos., the lead partner in the NCRC development team, said later in an interview. (Target officials did not return telephone calls seeking comment.)

"I think Target is going to be the anchor tenant of Skyland, whatever the design turns out to be," Rappaport said. "Now that the plan is to have a higher, denser plan in a town center setting, Target will soon be part of the process of reviewing such plans and the expectation is that we will design the town center with a plan that is also acceptable for a Target store."

Savage said Target is a good choice because it can serve all income levels.

"People work very hard to earn their dollars," he says. "And if you are on a fixed income, there's absolutely no reason why when you go to shop you should not go to an environment that is safe and inviting. There's no reason for your dollars to be treated in a second-class manner."

Risher announced at the meeting that groundbreaking will be next summer. He did not mention the ongoing court battles.

Burka, the grandson of Max Burka, remains bitter. Economically speaking, he thinks the new center will fail, that the broader community cannot support it.

"This whole thing makes me sick," he says. "They're going to replace an existing, viable shopping center, spend $130 million and have something that doesn't work."

But the NCRC and the Hillcrest crowd say the new Skyland -- or whatever it will be called -- promises to be a roaring success.

Closeout

"There are so many ways to make this block beautiful," Franco says, sitting on a bench outside his store, showing off the recent green paint job on his facade.

He's pensive, a bit melancholy. He's looking down the busy sidewalk. "The guys hanging on the corner drinking beer are completely innocuous," he says. "But it doesn't look good."

There's something wistful about him, like when he says, "The very day we opened, it was awesome. It was awesome!" He's talking about 1976, talking about his love for the discount trade, a trade for which "you don't have to be a rocket scientist."

He shakes hands with some local guys, guys he's known since they were small. He's been on this block for 30 years, seen customers have kids and seen those kids grow up.

Skyland has been like a second home. Soon it may be a thing of the past.