The Word Is Out About Bloomingdale

By Mara Lee
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, April 19, 2008

Bloomingdale could be the friendliest neighborhood you've never heard of.

Some real estate agents, and even some residents, consider it part of LeDroit Park, but the Bloomingdale Civic Association, established in 1921, says the two-block-wide strip in Northwest Washington between Florida Avenue and the McMillan Reservoir makes up a neighborhood in its own right.

On a recent spring afternoon, Alice Bullock sat on a chair on her stoop while her great-grandchildren played on the sidewalk.

Bullock, who rented her house on Randolph Street for $125 a month before buying it with her husband for $1,600, can't remember how long it has been her home now -- 35 years? 40?

Several of her 10 children were already grown by then. "I just love it. This is where we got our feet at and started doing good," she said.

Bullock, who turns 88 this month, lives with a daughter, son and daughter-in-law.

She remembered how it was decades ago: "We had a block club; it was nice. We had somebody keep our street clean. We used to have a party in the street. . . . Only three of us living [now]."

But her neighbors aren't strangers. As she talked, a man on a bicycle said hello. "My older brother Ronald went to school with [your son] Donnell," he yelled as he pedaled by.

Houses in Bloomingdale began going up in the 1890s. The neighborhood is a mix of three- and two-story bay-front rowhouses; a few grand Victorian mansions; some later, simpler rowhouses; and a smattering of low-rise apartment buildings. During the real estate boom in the first half of this decade, many of those became condominiums. So did the 104-year-old Gage School, which had seen more than a decade of failed development plans.

For decades, the neighborhood was almost all black. Even eight years ago, the 2000 Census reported that the area was more than 90 percent black.

However, Bullock describes Bloomingdale today as mixed.

Stephanie Parris, 16, lives with her father, sister and grandmother. The grandmother owns their house.

"It's way nicer than it used to be," she said of the neighborhood where she has lived nearly all her life. "People used to get shot. People used to sell drugs. Places used to get robbed. Most of it's stopped."

Her block started improving when the vacant apartment building across the street was renovated and turned into condos, she said. There were more than a half-dozen abandoned houses on her block a few years ago, she said.

In 2000, nearly 20 percent of the housing stock was vacant, the Census found.

"People live in all the houses now, except for that one -- they're working on it," Stephanie said.

"I just think everything's changed for the better," she said. "I know a lot of people don't like it because the cost of housing has gone up, but it's just good people moving in."

Thomas Reel, who has been renting in Bloomingdale for five years, is one of those with mixed feelings about the changes. He said police cameras have made the neighborhood safer, though he still worries about his 11-year-old daughter.

But it's no longer affordable, he said. He pointed to a basement apartment and said that landlords, when they find out a tenant has a Section 8 rent subsidy, will jack up the rent from the listed $800 a month to close to the program maximum for a two-bedroom apartment, $1,200. "When those people move out, that's what they think they can get," he said.

And they do, sometimes. Marissa Jennings shares a two-bedroom basement apartment with her mother. It costs $1,200. Jennings looked in other transitional parts of Northwest before choosing Bloomingdale a year ago.

Although the neighborhood isn't particularly close to a Metro station, it's still convenient, she said. "Even yesterday, I took the bus to go downtown," she said. "It took me less than 15 minutes."

Even as prices go up, there are still affordable rentals available. Petrona Chavez and her husband moved into their apartment in a rowhouse two years ago and pay $700. She said she thinks the neighborhood has gotten safer since they moved in. "The area, the atmosphere, it's changed," she said in Spanish.

Matt Waldron agrees that crime is waning. He and his wife bought a condo on Rhode Island Avenue in 2004 for $300,000. They had been outbid on at least eight places in the Columbia Heights, H Street NE, Brookland and Gallaudet areas.

"The first month we moved in, we were breaking up a mugging," he said. As the couple were out walking their large dogs about 10:30 p.m., they saw a woman on a bicycle being hit by a man trying to take the bike, he said. Waldron's wife charged, and the man ran. "Luckily, the girl wasn't hurt," he said.

"We came into it with our eyes open," Waldron said. "That's part of the lower prices."

They said they like the neighborhood and hope they can afford to trade up to a house in a few years.

Mike Giordano said he hopes his family will stay in Bloomingdale for the long haul, too. He and his partner moved there in 2000. Giordano, then a social worker, is now a stay-at-home dad to their daughter, 4.

"We knew more people in a week here than we did in five years in Takoma Park," he said.

That's not to say they didn't encounter friction as early gentrifiers. "Certainly I have felt tensions, and I understand them -- but we are very fond of our neighbors and have found them outgoing to us regardless of our race."

The family has applied for out-of-boundary public schools and charter schools for Kayla, but if she doesn't get a spot, they will leave.

They would be sad to go, Giordano said. The family, who paid about $185,000 for their house in 2000, wouldn't be able to afford Bloomingdale if they were buying today, even though prices have come down from the peak.

Carlos Garcia, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Capital Properties, said many rowhouses used to sell in the low $600,000s and now are listed at the mid-$500,000s. The median sales price for a rowhouse last year was $531,000. Half the houses for sale now are listed at less than $495,000.

"In the run-up, people looked to alternative neighborhoods they could afford. People who were priced out of, say, Columbia Heights, turned to Bloomingdale," Garcia said. "People who were priced out of Bloomingdale turned to Brookland."

As condo prices moderate in Columbia Heights, developers in Bloomingdale should cut prices to compete, he said. "Developers need to be very cautious right now," he said. In gentrifying neighborhoods such as Bloomingdale, he said, the price for a two-bedroom condo should be under $400,000. There are five houses in the neighborhood for sale below $400,000.

Garcia has two listings in the neighborhood, including one on Quincy Place that has been on the market for four months, with a drop from $585,000 to $574,000.

He said it had a near-miss sale that is a sign of these uncertain economic times.

"It was under contract. The contract fell through because the buyer got nervous about her job," he said.