Anacostia

Mayor Gray Wants FBI HQ to Move to Poplar Point

By Prince Of Petworth


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From the Mayor’s office:

Mayor Vincent C. Gray and Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Victor L. Hoskins, through the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED), officially submitted one site in the District of Columbia for the General Services Administration (GSA) to evaluate in its consideration of a new location for a consolidated Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters. The site is Poplar Point, located at Anacostia’s border at the nexus of Interstates 295 and 695, in walking distance to public transportation, and convenient to bikers traversing area bike paths.

“In Poplar Point, the District of Columbia offers a prime real-estate location that presents the GSA with an opportunity to recommit to the District – our nation’s capital,” said Mayor Gray. “Here, the federal government has the opportunity build a new facility tailored to the needs of the FBI on an accessible parcel with ample space to meet the federal agency’s square footage, parking, security and sustainability requirements.”

Poplar Point is one of the last great urban waterfront redevelopment opportunities on the East Coast and the only viable District site to meet the new FBI headquarters facility requirements. Bounded by South Capitol Street, I-295 and the 11th Street Bridge, the site is largely unused but contains some National Park Service and U.S. Park Police facilities. Yet, the 110-acre site is a signature District parcel that boasts attractive views, outstanding transportation infrastructure, and a host of nearby urban amenities with its location just minutes from downtown. Additionally, 70 acres at Poplar Point are reserved by the federal government to be maintained as parkland, leaving a total of 40 acres to construct a new FBI headquarters and a private, mixed-use waterfront development.

Continues after the jump (more…)

Scuttlebutt: Busboys and Poets to Open a 5th Location in the former Uniontown Bar and Grill Space?

By Prince Of Petworth


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On Aug. 27th Uniontown Bar and Grill closed at 2200 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE in Anacostia. At the time WJLA reported:

Late last week, Uniontown Bar & Grill owner Natasha Dasher pleaded guilty to two felonies and may face up to 20 years in prison. According to the Washington Post, she pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute cocaine and a conspiracy charge. Then, on Friday, her landlord evicted her and the restaurant, which was housed at 2200 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE, because Dasher owed $18,000 in back rent.

In the meantime, the closure of Uniontown leaves another hole in a market that has a dearth of sit-down restaurants and is leaving residents lamenting its loss.

Well that hole may be filled by none other than Busboys and Poets. Busboys has two other locations in the city at 14th and V St, NW and 5th and K St, NW (plus one in Shirlington and one in Hyattsville.) I’m hearing rumors that they’d like to open a 5th location in the former Uniontown space. More info as it becomes available.

Miniature Pomeranian Stolen from a Home Nov. 7

By Prince Of Petworth

“Dear PoP,

A pomeranian was stolen from someone’s house in Anacostia by teenagers. could you help us in getting the word out? They could have taken it to any neighborhood.”

“Monday, November 7th, between the hours of 12pm and 2pm, my home was burglarized by 7 African-American teenagers, 6 males and 1 female.

Our home was burglarized of all valuable items. Among them they stole one of our three dogs. We believe we were targeted. It was the second successful attempt at stealing him. The first attempt we prevented less than a month prior.

If you see a teenaged African-American female, about 5’5 to 5’7 in height, with a miniature Pomeranian please call 202-904-0048 to collect the reward. Miniature Pomeranians are rare in Washington DC.

$1500 Reward

Description of Dog:
3.5 lb., Blonde & White, Male, Pomeranian
Please call with any pertinent info.: 202-904-0048”

Big Chair Coffee Applies For Liquor License Will They Face Same Obstacles as Big Bear Coffee

By Prince Of Petworth

Back in January Big Chair Coffee opened up in Anacostia (2122 Marthin Luther King Jr Ave SE) to much fan fare. It turns out they’d also like to add some more options and are applying for a liquor license. The application says:

“New restaurant serving American food and coffee with Sidewalk Café. Occupancy load is 52”

Restaurant hours including a sidewalk cafe will be open until 2am.

I wonder if they’ll have an easier time than another coffee shop trying to get an alcohol license?

Flip’t: It’s Finally Finished by David Garber

By Prince Of Petworth

David Garber is a DC neighborhood blogger and real estate entrepreneur. His mission: help bring back DC’s neighborhoods, one rotting house at a time. You can read David’s previous posts here.

It took seven long months to finish this place, but it’s finally done. For some
reason it’s always the last few things on the renovation checklist that end up
being the most gruelingly difficult to finish. Even though I swore this would
never happen again after it did during my own home renovation, my general
contractor ran off with a couple thousand before finishing the job, so I had to
squeeze out the final touches on my own. With each project I do, I keep
learning that you pay for what you get. If you’re pinching pennies, you have
to be extra careful about the quality of work completed and how the
contractors are managing your money. As much as I don’t enjoy
micromanaging people, it’s a total must – especially on tight-budget projects –
to take charge.

Take the interior paint, for example. Absolutely grueling. Why? Because my
contractor made the assumption that I wanted the entire house the exact same
color. When I agreed to only do one color on the walls as a way to save
money, somehow that translated to painting the ceilings and the trim the same
linen color. To be honest, after countless similar episodes throughout the
project, it was almost a relief when he left the job.

The interior of the house is totally new. Nothing original from its humble c.
1890-1905 birth year remains. So, I chose a dark stain for the red oak floors
because I wanted to give the house a rich, oozing with history feel. Not to be
fake about anything, but to restore some dignity to this home that had it all
stolen away over time. Matte black doorknobs offer a crisp contrast to the
white doors. Crown molding is made of three separate pieces of trim and
makes the transition from wall to ceiling all the more graceful.

Continues after the jump. (more…)

Flip’t: The Long Winter – by David Garber

By Prince Of Petworth


U Street in January. Hint: stucco is best applied in the warmer months.

David Garber is a DC neighborhood blogger and real estate entrepreneur. His mission: help bring back DC’s neighborhoods, one rotting house at a time. You can read David’s previous posts here.

As much as I like to keep up the appearance as someone who 100% knows what he’s doing in all renovation matters and has done this and that with houses a thousand times before – this is actually one of the very first times I’ve done this scale of project. Over the past 5 months I’ve been managing about five renovations, and every day at each job I learn about two or three new lessons about who to hire, how to communicate, and which steps to follow to make sure that the final outcome comes fastest and with the most satisfying result. Might sound easy, but the learning part is typically paired with the worst kind of president-going-gray-in-his-first-year frustration. And yet somehow I still love my job.


the Big Blue Bubble, which gave the exterior work some much-needed momentum

Over the past four months the U Street House has evolved into something a lot more livable and likeable than the mess it began as. The snowstorms contributed about a month of downtime due to our forced timeline: the exterior had to be sealed and stuccoed before most of the interior work could begin, and the exterior could only be worked on in temperatures above 40 degrees. Enter the big blue bubble, above, which added a touch of whimsy, but also enough warmth to allow the stucco to dry in sub-par conditions. Post continues after the jump. (more…)

Flip’t: Progress and Learning by David Garber

By Prince Of Petworth

[David Garber is a DC neighborhood blogger and real estate entrepreneur. His mission: help bring back DC’s neighborhoods, one rotting house at a time. You can read David’s first post here.]

The U Street House is at the center of the photograph, just steps from MLK Ave. In a couple of years, a streetcar stop will be located just left of this intersection.

It’s month two and progress is finally being made. Because I am essentially fixing the shoddy work of a previously-attempted flip, a lot of this initial work is less Crazy Wow That Looks So Different stuff and more invisible and less exciting things: “old” wiring ripped out and new wiring put in, recessed lighting re-aligned, plumbing adjusted and replaced, and window holes measured and cut.


I found some awesome brand new transom windows at Community Forklift that I am using in the back bedroom at eye level. If you’re stranding tall, you will be able to see views out of them, but they’re meant to add a little bit of a modern feel while drawing in dappled sunlight.

There was one hiccup that stalled the project since the last update – the realization that I actually had a few more steps to complete with the bank before I could get the construction money. Although I had been totally approved for the money and the loan was closed on when I purchased the house, the fine print was that I needed to create a draw schedule with my contractor so that the bank had a way to regulate the disbursal of funds. That took a couple weeks to work out: schedule made, opened a new bank account in my LLC’s name, and gave the first big fat check to the contractor.

For those of you interested in how I got the loan in the first place, here are the Cliff’s Notes: approached Washington First Bank – because they are headquartered locally and deal with me like a human rather than a number, pitched my idea and included numbers and neighborhood development narratives, and found both an equity partner and a guarantor for the loan. Banks these days aren’t just giving money on whims, so they make sure to cover all their bases – but I ended up with a construction loan in one of the worst ever recessions. My suggestion – deal with local people. The 1-800 number name-brand banks don’t really care about you or the neighborhoods as much.


The new wiring is pretty gorgeous – neat lines and bright colors. When renovating an old house and are already opening walls and floors (okay, yes, this house essentially a brand new house in an old shell), I recommend redoing all the plumbing and electric if you can afford it. Definitely worth it considering it’s an investment against future nightmares.

Despite the sort-of slowdown, the project is still moving – and some excitingly visible things Are finally happening. From the exterior, the U Street House looks like a complete hodgepodge of stucco styles, and window sizes. It’s a cute little house, but it has some awkward features on the outside that I am going to try to unify through the use of windows, trims, and a new coat of stucco all around.  Continues after the jump. (more…)

New Guest Series – Flip’t DC: Introducing the U Street SE House (By David Garber)

By Prince Of Petworth

House flipping: the act of buying and renovating a residential property with the intent to sell immediately when finished. Easiest when done at the height of a real estate market … but more interesting to watch when there are a hundred moving parts and you’re in an untested neighborhood. Enter David Garber, DC neighborhood blogger and real estate entrepreneur. His mission: bring back DC’s neighborhoods, one rotting house at a time.

Part 1: the Before
Flip’t is to typical house flipping what Chop’t is to the everyday house salad: fresher, greener, and more appealing. Our first subject property is on U Street SE in Historic Anacostia. Three bedrooms, two and a half baths. At the foot of the 11th Street Bridges, a 10 minute walk to Metro, half block from future streetcar, views of the Capitol Dome, and steps from the fast-changing main drags and hip-hopping galleries of MLK Avenue and Good Hope Road.

clockwise from left: the front porch (actually on the side) is looking pretty sad; the tools of the trade; David Garber, house flipper

It’s been exactly five months since I exchanged my first sales contract with the seller of the U Street House. I’ve been eying this particular property since I first moved to the neighborhood in 2007 because it looks so terrible from the outside but is in an amazing location considering everything that’s coming to MLK Ave. From the outside it looks like an old cinder block: two-toned patchy stucco, no windows or doors, and a half-done addition on the back that someone slapped up thinking they’d make a quick buck. There are houses like this all over PoPville: exposed plywood, poor decision-making, vinyl blahness – like nobody loved them enough to really give them a chance at a better second life.


from left: how it looks from MLK – notice the addition; from across the street

But it’s November now – just about the time when I thought I’d be finishing construction, and this long process of price negotiations, third-party inspections, and estimates from a handful of contractors is finally over. This troubled little cinder block is finally mine for the marking, and I’m finally going to give it the love, attention, and heaps of money it deserves. And then I’m going to put it on the market. You’d think it was a rescued animal, but I’m just really into forlorn real estate.


from bottom left: upstairs, looking through three bedrooms and two bathrooms; downstairs, the view towards the kitchen; looking down at the living room from the stairs

As you can see, a lot of the framing is already up. Three years ago another house flipper / contractor tried his hand at redoing this house but went about it in all the wrong ways: didn’t get the approval of the Historic Preservation Review Board, no permits, totally sloppy detailing. I made sure that everything was in order and legal before I bought this place so I wouldn’t be hit with expensive approval and permitting surprises during the 2-3 month period that I hope it takes to get this house looking amazing.

The U Street SE House is going to get the works: all new windows and doors, new trim, new stucco exterior, a restored porch, and a snazzy interior. Sure there’s added pressure when there’s an audience – but I can’t wait to hear your suggestions and comments – and might even do some polling to help pick certain details.

Jai ho! Let’s get this thing started.

[Note: if you are interested in purchasing this house before all the design decisions are made – or have a property you need renovated or flipped – email David at [email protected]]

photos by Jacki Waring and David Garber

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