The largest landowner of the Skyland Shopping Center has dropped a win-win redevelopment plan on the desks of the National Capital Revitalization Corp. and D.C. Council members Kwame R. Brown and Vincent C. Gray.
Members of the Fred S. Kogod family delivered the plan with the conviction that the mom-and-pop merchants of the Southeast mall and the city’s taxpayers can be spared the pain and cost of a politically induced foray fraught with questions and gaping holes.
The Kogod family owns nearly four acres of the 16.5-acre tract and a belief that right is on its side. They come with an architect’s vision and financial clarity that ought to penetrate the wall of indifference of the city.
Here is a redevelopment plan that should satisfy all, if only it were that simple in the den of bureaucratic ineptitude. Here is a straightforward plan that costs the city nothing, not a penny.
Here is a plan that is not dependent on the whim of corporate suits looking to fleece the city.
Here is a plan that leaves the social engineers out of it and eliminates the developers looking to get rich off the work and sweat of the little people.
The appeal is elementary.
The Kogod family: We will assume all the cost and all the risk of redeveloping the shopping center.
Ted Risher, NCRC senior development manager: Your vision is not our vision, so tough.
So the unelected officials of the NCRC proceed ahead, accountable to no one really, dangling the threat of eminent domain over those reluctant to relinquish their pieces of the American dream.
They feel a sense of empowerment after the recent Supreme Court decision that ruled in favor of the nickel-and-dime politicos of New London, Conn., and quashed the homeowners there.
They clutch their idea of a better tomorrow and ignore the unyielding realities of the marketplace.
If the good people of Hillcrest want a sit-down restaurant with tablecloths, well, then, by golly, the social engineers of the NCRC plan to make it happen, regardless of the modest demographics that would dissuade potential investors.
None of the political maneuvers along Alabama Avenue and Good Hope and Naylor roads are steeped in economic viability.
If the corporate honchos of a three-star dining entity thought the area was a good financial bet, you can be certain they already would be there.
At least that is how it normally works in the marketplace, and work it does, with an efficiency that requires no sweetheart inducements from the city.
The heavy-handed operators of the NCRC have not acted in good faith with the property owners and merchants of Skyland. They have acted like the neighborhood bully.
They have been huffing and puffing and threatening to raze the shopping center for too long now, discouraging the owners from making even the slightest improvements to their properties.
Theirs has been the self-fulfilling prophecy of a run-down mall.
How mentally challenged would a merchant have to be to pump money into a property with the callous manipulators of the NCRC lurking outside with a wrecking ball?
Theirs is a tough job, no doubt, kicking the little people out of their places of employment, with nary a word or plan to relocate them.
No, you do not hear anything from the NCRC about its plans to relocate the displaced. All you hear is official glee over the Supreme Court decision.
You wonder how these people sleep at night. You wonder how they explain their occupation at dinner parties.
Question: What do you do for a living?
Mr. Risher: Oh, I write condescending letters to the representatives of the property owners before I take their properties and award them to developers.
His is a Grand Canyon-size leap from the original mission of the NCRC.
The mandate of the NCRC was to create economic opportunities where they otherwise would not occur.
Now, the out-of-control NCRC has adopted the contradictory position of stifling the redevelopment plans of the Skyland owners.
It is shameful.
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