Devel­op­ers, Char­ter Schools Inter­ested in Vacant D.C. Schools

By Jonathan O’Connell

Despite the real estate slow­down, D.C. seems to be attract­ing inter­est in some of its vacant school build­ings, but mem­bers of the D.C. Coun­cil aren’t so enthused.

More than 150 peo­ple crowded into a “pre-bidder” meet­ing Jan. 9 to hear details on 11 for­mer D.C. school build­ings that city wants to put to new use in part­ner­ship with pri­vate devel­op­ers. In the crowd were rep­re­sen­ta­tives from a bevy of devel­op­ers, includ­ing Dono­hoe Devel­op­ment Co., Four Points LLC, PN Hoff­man Inc. and William C. Smith & Co. The meet­ing also attracted char­ter schools look­ing for new space, includ­ing some that asked for room in empty schools last fall.

The schools, some of which were closed last year as Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chan­cel­lor Michelle Rhee restruc­tured the school sys­tem, are scat­tered across the city and range from plots of land just under 1 acre to more than 5 acres, with build­ings up to 131,000 square feet.

Offi­cials from the office of the deputy mayor for eco­nomic devel­op­ment asked devel­op­ers to sub­mit cre­ative ideas for re-use of the schools and told them they could bid on more than one prop­erty or bid with mul­ti­ple teams on the same property.

With the dif­fi­culty in financ­ing new devel­op­ment, inter­est has waned in bid­ding for some D.C. projects, such as the Park Mor­ton hous­ing devel­op­ment. But Corey Lee, the city’s project man­ager, said only one deposit of $50,000 — smaller than usual — is required for an unlim­ited num­ber of bids. Lee also said the city will con­sider the dif­fi­cult lend­ing envi­ron­ment, which he called “extremely unique, to say the least,” when mak­ing selec­tions. One of the city’s fre­quent requests, ask­ing devel­op­ers to build below-market-rate hous­ing, is not listed in the solicitation.

Fenty’s plan to develop the prop­er­ties still faces mul­ti­ple hur­dles. Although he solicited inter­est in the build­ings last fall from char­ter schools, as required by law, none has yet received space, and char­ter school advo­cate Friends of Choice in Urban Schools is argu­ing that the mayor is eschew­ing his duty to con­sider char­ters for for­mer school buildings.

Lead­ers from a num­ber of char­ter schools, includ­ing Cap­i­tal City Pub­lic Char­ter School and Wash­ing­ton Yu Ying Pub­lic Char­ter, a new Chi­nese lan­guage immer­sion school, attended the meeting.

Mem­bers of the D.C. Coun­cil are also unhappy with the prospect of sell­ing off old schools.

Coun­cil­man Tommy Thomas, D-Ward 5, whose dis­trict has lost more schools than any other ward under Rhee, sub­mit­ted leg­is­la­tion that would tighten the process of sell­ing or leas­ing city property.

The vacant school solic­i­ta­tion “high­lights the impor­tance of estab­lish­ing a rig­or­ous process for deter­min­ing whether District-owned prop­er­ties are no longer needed for pub­lic pur­poses,” Thomas said in a statement.

Sim­i­larly, a new bill by Coun­cil­man Mar­ion Barry, D-Ward 8, calls for the State Board of Edu­ca­tion — not the deputy mayor’s office — to con­trol vacant schools and estab­lish a process for giv­ing char­ter schools the first oppor­tu­nity to bid. The mayor’s office says it offered the build­ings to char­ter schools first and that char­ters are still free to part­ner with developers.

Coun­cil­man Jack Evans, D-Ward 2, backed the mayor in try­ing to return life to the empty build­ings. Ward 2 is home to one of the most valu­able and dis­cussed prop­er­ties on the list, Stevens Ele­men­tary School.

“I think the process is work­ing fine,” Evans said. “I don’t agree with Coun­cil mem­ber Barry or Thomas as to why they would want to slow these things down.”

His pref­er­ence for Stevens, on 21st Street NW, would be a use that acti­vates the neigh­bor­hood out­side of 9-to-5 on weekdays.

“Putting cor­po­rate offices in any of these build­ings is not some­thing I would be sup­port­ive of,” Evans said. “Res­i­den­tial, hotel, retail, any com­bi­na­tion thereof, is really impor­tant, par­tic­u­larly in these down­town areas.”

He added, how­ever, that there may be enough sen­ti­ment on the coun­cil against sell­ing the schools to dis­rupt the solic­i­ta­tion process.

“It’s going to be a chal­lenge on where the votes are,” Evans said.
Bids for the schools are due Feb. 27.
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