Parkside Terrace Rehab Gets Underway

In hard hats and with big sledgehammers, city officials and developers yesterday knocked down a wall at Parkside Terrace -- a 12-story apartment building in Southeast shut down and emptied in 2005 after being plagued by drugs, crime and other social ills.

"We can't really do a groundbreaking because we're not building anything new," J. Michael Pitchford, president and chief executive of Community Preservation and Development Corp., said of the $73 million rehabilitation project.

There was no dirt to move, he explained. Instead, the ceremony celebrated a change in thinking about affordable housing.

"It was like a warehouse for low-income families. . . . It was an example of failed public housing," said Gerald H. Joseph, vice president and director of real estate development for Community Preservation and Development. "You had 290 families here, isolated from services with two elevators."

By summer 2009, the new Park Terrace will have 181 one-bedroom apartments for low-income seniors and 135 one- and two-bedroom apartments for small families, particularly families headed by government workers. Previously, all the tenants received federal subsidies through the Section 8 program. The refurbished complex will have a mix of federally subsidized and unsubsidized housing.

Community activity rooms, a gym, a computer room, a health-care suite for seniors, a laundry, a playground, a convenience store and a hair salon will bring amenities to residents on site.

Union Bank of California, the D.C. Housing Finance Agency, the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development and other government and nonprofit agencies helped finance the project. The work is being done by Community Preservation and Development and Crawford Edgewood Management Inc., a company headed by former D.C. Council member H.R. Crawford.

From a window in Parkside Terrace, which sits on a hill, the Washington Highlands neighborhood in Southeast looks brand new. Townhouses -- brick and pastel yellow with hunter green shutters -- appear in a valley below, along with newly paved streets lined with Victorian-style lampposts.

From another angle, two white bubblelike structures house the tennis courts at the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center, which opened in 2001, an enhancement for the neighborhood and a haven for children who otherwise might not be exposed to the sport.

Parkside Terrace, with its 12 floors and dozens of problems, had been holding Washington Highlands back, according to housing advocates and city officials.

"Now, we're going to have a great mixed-use [building]. You've got two bedrooms for people with moderate incomes, one-bedrooms for low-income seniors. . . . It's going to fit into the townhouses right next to them," said council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), chairman of the Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs. "It creates a different dynamic in the neighborhood."

Yesterday, people attending the ceremony could view a model one-bedroom unit that smelled of new paint. The tan carpeting was covered in plastic to protect it from muddy high heels and boots.

Crawford said he was the first manager of the building, which opened in 1968. He was a public employee then. His company managed the building through the tough years before it closed, when residents complained of rodents and heating problems. Many former residents will be able to return, he said.

Seniors and moderate-income residents will provide stability for the building.

"No one will know who's Section 8 unless you hold up a sign," Crawford said. "You should integrate people socioeconomically."