FBA mem­bers and guests were audi­ence to a fas­ci­nat­ing panel dis­cus­sion about city­wide trends in real estate and how the FB His­toric Dis­trict fits in with these larger trends. First up was his­toric preser­va­tion spe­cial­ist Emily Eig, Founder of EHT Trac­eries, Inc., who was the tech­ni­cal con­sul­tant respon­si­ble for assist­ing Foggy Bot­tom with its orig­i­nal HD appli­ca­tion. She described how ten­ta­tive the (Mayor Barry) admin­is­tra­tion had become on his­toric dis­trict nom­i­na­tions at the time, and that the offi­cial des­ig­na­tion of the FBHD a few years later was immensely wel­comed in the community.

Next was Tim Den­nee, of the DC His­toric Preser­va­tion Office (HPO), who briefly touched on a poten­tial GW His­toric District—an ele­ment of GW’s approved 2007 Cam­pus Plan—that might pre­serve some of the remain­ing his­toric build­ings on its FB cam­pus. Addi­tion­ally, Den­nee shared details of recent cases before the His­toric Preser­va­tion Review Board, explain­ing how his agency can pro­vide the his­toric period tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion to aid home and build­ing own­ers in their ren­o­va­tions. Before you rush out to pur­chase “what is avail­able,” HPO can assess your build­ing and tell you how to han­dle the doors and win­dows, i.e. by inspect­ing them, deter­min­ing whether or when they were pre­vi­ously replaced (in another style), as well as what color the his­toric build­ing exte­ri­ors would be painted at that time.

Senior Hous­ing Plan­ner in the DC Office of Plan­ning Art Rodgers dis­cussed chang­ing city demo­graph­ics. He shared that prop­erty val­ues in FB/ WE have held up for the most part. But he cau­tioned that as a result of so many high-end con­dos com­ing on line in the last ten years, sell­ing prices might have been skewed.

Fol­low­ing the pan­elists’ pre­sen­ta­tions, a lively Q&A and com­ment ses­sion ensued, includ­ing an impas­sioned trib­ute by HD res­i­dent Bob Vogt on behalf of the late Maria Tyler’s immense con­tri­bu­tions to the neigh­bor­hood, includ­ing her work on the HD.

Every­one agreed that we’ll have to wait and see what the next few years have in store for us, but it can only add to our already-storied history.—FBN