The Invis­i­ble Hand: the Future of West End Library, Fire Sta­tion #1

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Plan­ning and Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment (DMPED), led by Eric Scott, with Dedrick Boye, Chief Jor­dan, and Jose Sousa, held a meet­ing last Wednes­day at the West End Library. Billed as a follow-up on the future of the library (located on the south­ern end of Square 37), the meet­ing actu­ally focused on an RFP (Request for Pro­pos­als) that DMPED is plan­ning to issue to devel­op­ers in November.

It seems that per­sis­tent com­mu­nity efforts to spur DMPED to seek fed­eral assis­tance for a new, expanded Fire Engine Sta­tion on M St NW (located on Square 50), are being ignored. The RFP guide­lines will be released, giv­ing devel­op­ers the abil­ity to bid on one or the other indi­vid­ual prop­erty
or com­bined prop­er­ties, and require a financ­ing plan. Upon receipt, the DMPED will review and make a deci­sion in Jan­u­ary. The DMPED rep­re­sen­ta­tives indi­cated that whether the land itself will be
leased or sold to devel­op­ers has not been final­ized. This was a sur­prise to FBN who remem­bers Mayor Fenty’s June appear­ance before the FBA and his assur­ance to us that pub­licly owned assets—such as the above-mentioned prop­er­ties specifically—would be leased not sold.

The mat­ter of ongo­ing oper­a­tions costs for the pub­lic facil­i­ties was raised with­out any com­mit­ments
one way or another. After the ini­tial deba­cle with these prop­er­ties in 2007, includ­ing the City Council’s emer­gency leg­is­la­tion (see Aug 28 issue of FBN avail­able on www. savefoggybottom.com, Mr. Scott indi­cated that keep­ing an ongo­ing line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with “stake­hold­ers” is essen­tial.
We sug­gest that a first step is to cease refer­ring to res­i­dents as “stake­hold­ers.” We are the own­ers of our pub­lic assets, and appointed and elected City offi­cials are the “stake­hold­ers,” the stew­ards, of said assets and, frankly, they need to start act­ing like it. — FBN