Georgia Ave. Awakening

There were starts and stops to several plans to revitalize Georgia Avenue. The plans got lost in a lack of city funding and poor organization. But somehow, timing and economics have finally reached Georgia. The city's downtown space has been tapped, and neighborhoods such as U Street and Columbia Heights are also reaching capacity. Private developers see Georgia Avenue as an untouched resource, another frontier. Williams made the Great Streets project a priority for his administration, and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) made cleaning up Georgia Avenue a campaign pledge as a council member.

With the help of the city, residents are trying to ensure that Georgia continues to have the mix of people that make it Georgia. Most of the projects are on schedule to be under construction this year and completed by 2008 and 2009. Land deals, permits and other factors that often hold up development are in place so that this time, the renewal of Georgia Avenue is real.

The city plans to turn the Park Morton public housing complex, a few blocks south of the Metro station, into 348 affordable and market-rate homes.

To the north, the notorious Ibex nightclub at Missouri Avenue, near where, in 1997, a police officer was gunned down by a man who had been rejected from the club, has been transformed into 32 luxury lofts, selling for $258,000 to $391,000, and an upscale restaurant. At Taylor Road, the same developer, Neighborhood Development Co., will start construction this year on the Residences at Georgia Avenue, which will have 72 affordable apartments and an organic grocery store. Lamont Street Lofts, another 38-unit loft project just off Georgia at Lamont Street, is open.

On lower Georgia, Howard Town Center is expected to follow at Howard University: a $60 million project of 322 apartments, a 24-hour grocery store and shops. Where Georgia turns into Seventh Street, Radio One Inc. has plans to return to the city from Lanham and build $110 million in offices, 202 residences and stores at S Street.

City leaders said they are disappointed that the Army has decided to sell Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which takes up 113 acres and has entrances on Georgia, to the General Services Administration and the State Department. The hospital will close in 2011, but city officials are trying to see whether they can get some land for development.

"You put all these things together, and you have the true new Georgia Avenue," D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) said.

How people feel about that depends on where they stand.

At one community meeting, someone asked former planning director Ellen M. McCarthy whether Georgia Avenue would someday look like Wisconsin Avenue, upscale development nestled in predominantly white neighborhoods.

"It will," McCarthy blurted.

She instantly regretted it. "When I said that, I realized I shouldn't have said that," she said later. "Georgia Avenue is its own street."

How much will survive? The street pulses with sound. Gossip at the beauty salon. The passing of knowledge at the row of Afrocentric bookstores just north of Howard. The giggles of students from Banneker High. Go-go blasting from stores that specialize in local music. At Amazyn Hair Design, the air smells of hair singed by hot combs and curling irons. "That's that old smell from a long time ago," said Mary "Pee Wee" Jeffries, a hairdresser. Older women get their hair pressed and watch Martha Stewart on a small television.