From Ruin to Rebirth in D.C.

In the absence of major developers, churches, foundations, community organizations and the federal and local governments were part of the answer.

By 1970, the District built 13 playgrounds and basketball courts within the three riot corridors. A year later, two churches collaborated to construct the Lincoln Westmoreland Apartments on Seventh Street, the neighborhood's first new housing. In 1986, on the spot where the riots had begun, the District government opened the Frank D. Reeves Municipal Center, a $50 million building intended to stabilize terrain that had been commandeered by drug dealers and prostitutes.

On 14th Street, the Development Corporation of Columbia Heights put up housing and a strip mall in the mid-1990s, the neighborhood's first new retail hub since the riots.

On H Street, the local community development corporation turned a vacant lot into a $20 million office building that it leased to the District in 1987. "The architecture was plain but the point was larger," said William Barrow, executive director of the H Street CDC. "You were signaling a rebirth."

But those improvements were incremental compared with the opening in the 1990s of four Metro stations, two in Shaw, one in Mount Vernon and one in Columbia Heights.

More than two decades after the riots, the stations reconnected Seventh and 14th streets to the rest of the city.

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By the late 1990s, deep-pocketed investors had descended on the riot corridors, spurred in part by the District's offer of tax incentives. On Seventh Street, along a stretch where there had been minor looting and window-breaking, Abe Pollin built the MCI (now Verizon) Center, injecting new life into what had become a vista of despair and desolation.

Then developer Douglas Jemal and builders Herb Miller and John E. "Chip" Akridge III invested millions on the same street, bringing new offices, housing, restaurants and shops.

On 14th Street, from 1998 to 2004, Jim Abdo developed a dozen high-end residential and commercial projects. At first, Abdo recalled, banks refused to provide financing, telling him that he should focus on well-established neighborhoods such as Dupont Circle. But Abdo saw possibility in the frayed, historic buildings around Logan Circle.

Whole Foods popped up on P Street in 2000, followed by more apartment buildings, a wave that extended north on 14th Street to Columbia Heights, culminating with the new Target-anchored shopping center that opened last month.

On H Street, the administration of Mayor Anthony A. Williams devoted new attention to rebuilding the corridor, pledging $50 million to reconstruct sidewalks and roadways and add streetcars.

The city's investment helped drive more development. Williams himself recently paid more than $1 million for a condominium in a new Abdo building on H Street. Four more residential projects are planned, in all adding 1,700 units of housing to the neighborhood. At the same time, the number of vacant buildings has declined by half since 2002, and 75 businesses have opened during the same period.

Anwar Saleem grew up in the neighborhood -- he was 13 at the time of the riots -- and now heads H Street Main Street, a community organization that promotes the corridor. Every new cafe and club opening, he said, is further proof that H Street's long decline is over.

"Times have changed, and everything around here is going to change with it," Saleem said.

But those changes cause trepidation. For all of the city's newfound affluence, one in five Washingtonians lives in poverty, the highest level in a decade, even as the supply of low-income housing has declined sharply. Indeed, the number of families seeking housing subsidies is almost six times as great as the number available.

Barry stressed that the redevelopment has not solved the city's social problems.

"We did a lot to move forward," he said. "But the progress is not what it should have been in 40 years. Poverty has gotten worse. What happened in this city is we moved poverty. We didn't solve it."

The changes also touch homeowners and merchants, who worry that rising property taxes and rents will force them out or crush their livelihoods.

"I have built a rapport with my customers," said George Butler, owner of an H Street clothing shop that he opened seven months after the riots. But where will they go, he asked, as the city grows more expensive? "I worry about them all fading away," he said.

Abdo said that none of his projects on 14th or H streets caused displacement because each was built on vacant land. And if the development forces up prices and taxes, he said, it also helped bring new retail and services and generated wealth.

"If I increased the value of your home fourfold because of the investments I made, I won't apologize for that," he said.

No one would argue that rebuilding the riot corridors hasn't created prosperity. But civic and community leaders question whether, in the new Washington, all races and classes share in the benefits. The city's renewed spirit is palpable, they say, yet so is the economic peril.

"It's incredible," said Maudine R. Cooper, president of the Greater Washington Urban League, who has lived in Washington since 1958. "It doesn't resemble old Washington, even before the riots. It was your low-end stores, where you could get a dress for $10. . . . What has come back, what is coming back, is much more upscale. Economic revitalization is the only way to get the city going. But there will be casualties."

Researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.