By Jeffrey Anderson
That is partly true. Since 1987, when the city purchased the Ward 5 parcel just off North Capitol Street from the Army Corps of Engineers for $9.3 million, a debate has raged about whether to develop it for maximum economic gain or preserve it as a park with an emphasis on green space.
Such polarized rhetoric is misleading, and has obscured issues about how the city does business, a central theme of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s (D) “Fresh Start” campaign. In less than a year, Bowser has triggered alarms by undoing a development deal negotiated by her predecessors at the historic Franklin School and by allowing her advisers to form a super PAC fueled by unlimited donations from companies that do business with the District.
Both missteps are characteristic of a culture that in recent years has damaged careers, sent elected officials to prison and embarrassed the District. Now, her handling of McMillan threatens not only to perpetuate a toxic era in local politics but to stick the District with a town center of little distinction that will pave over an iconic site engineered and designed by Post-Civil War visionaries Allen Hazen and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.
A look at some largely ignored history is in order.
In 2002, under Mayor Anthony Williams (D), the Office of Planning endorsed a plan for McMillan that called for a medium-density mix of condominiums, retail and businesses, with an emphasis on open space, historical preservation and cultural amenities. As the D.C. economy grew, and the time became ripe, the National Capital Revitalization Corporation (NCRC), a quasi-government development agency, chose VMP from a field of five to act as a “land development partner.” The solicitation, and subsequent term sheets and agreements between NCRC and a community representation group called for VMP to “embrace and adaptively reuse the historic nature and features of the site,” and, importantly, conduct additional bidding to select a master developer.
In 2007, Mayor Adrian Fenty (D) dissolved NCRC and seized control of the city’s vast real estate portfolio to be managed by his deputy mayor for planning and economic development. Unbeknownst to community representatives, DMPED, without further bidding, granted VMP exclusive rights to purchase and develop the site and appointed itself as co-developer. This sleight of hand has allowed DMPED to obtain zoning and planning approvals for years from agencies under its direct authority. As VMP gravitated away from written agreements to abide by the original planning recommendations, objectors armed with petitions containing thousands of signatures have been fighting to “Save McMillan Park.” They are losing, and the game is rigged.
This year, in a series for Capital Community News, I exposed Fenty’s highjacking of the project, the bizarre hiring by VMP of a public relations firm to discredit the site’s neighbors and an arrangement that has District taxpayers paying for VMP’s architects, engineers, lawyers and consultants at a rate of $1.3 million per year. On Oct. 19, D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson expressed concern in a letter to Mendelson about VMP’s expanded role and concluded that, “Just as it is common knowledge in the construction industry that government practice is to re- bid a project if there is a material change to the scope of work, certainly, the change to VMP’s role and giving it exclusive rights are material changes that warrant a new competitive process.”
This is not news to Bowser, who, as council member from Ward 4, brought the project to a council vote last year to secure approval to surplus the land and sell it to VMP. Nor is it news to Mendelson, the lone member to raise an eyebrow. At a hearing last week on Bowser’s request to extend for five years the “land disposition agreement,” set to expire Tuesday, Mendelson gently questioned VMP and a visibly nervous DMPED project manager about financial aspects of the deal, which is in the D.C. Court of Appeals on disputes over land covenants and historical preservation. About 30 “McMillanistas” testified emotionally about various subjects, at times cementing a media stereotype of them as green-space purists unable to accept the realities of urban planning.
The more dispiriting reality is that Bowser and Mendelson can’t get together with an eye toward acting upon the reasoned analysis offered by Patterson, a former three-term council member and widely respected D.C. official. Neither has publicly defended the decision to allow a historic site with 20 majestic, underground vaulted cells that took more than a decade to build fall into a chasm between politics, the law and responsible urban planning.
While it is true that Bowser does not own the project from inception, she is complicit in guiding it to an uninformed, unprincipled council vote in 2014. A change of course would require conviction and creativity, if she could demonstrate long-range vision and respect for a landmark. Patterson has given her and Mendelson what they need to pump the brakes on a train that is leaving the station, headed toward years of litigation.
Instead, Bowser is hitting the accelerator. Mendelson, who believes the project is inappropriate for a historically preserved site, blandly concedes that McMillan — and DMPED — do not exemplify “best practices.” In doing so, they are choosing not to seek a result that will garner public respect and stand the test of time. They also are abandoning the better part of public policy from one era, only to hold tight to the worst of it from another.