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Articles
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| NPR to move to NoMA after city offers tax incentives |
VOICE writes, "BY BEN WEINSTEIN
National Public Radio will stay in the District and build its new headquarters in Ward 6 on North Capitol Street, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced last week.
The decision was welcome news for development officials who negotiated a $40 million deal to keep NPR in the city. But the move from its current headquarters, in Mount Vernon Square, to 1111 North Capitol St. NE, means the future of 225 Virginia Ave. SE remains unclear.
Late last year, after the city canceled plans to move police headquarters to the Virginia Avenue building, reports emerged that NPR was considering moving into that Near Southeast warehouse space. It was also considering downtown Silver Spring.
A group of Near Southeast residents opposed the police headquarters move to Virginia Avenue — the plan also called for moving six police units to the building — saying it would worsen a bad traffic and parking situation and create a new security threat. And some Southwest residents also opposed the plan, as it called to move 1st District police headquarters from their neighborhood to Near Southeast."
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First District headquarters will still move to facilitate building the city’s new forensics complex at 4th and School streets, but it will stay in Southwest. The city plans to move the 1st District station into Bowen Elementary School’s building after it closes at the end of this school year — Bowen is one of three Ward 6 schools slated for closure.
By scrapping the 225 Virginia Ave. move, the city avoided paying for the planned $100 million renovation of the old Washington Star printing press warehouse. But it still holds the lease to the building.
Fenty announced last year that private parties might sublease the space from the city, saving the District $19.1 million a year.
The mayor’s office did not return a call requesting comment before press time.
On North Capitol Street, NPR plans to build a 10-story, 400,000-square-foot building on the site of a former Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. warehouse.
"NPR is a Washington icon," Fenty said in a release. "Their decision to not only stay in the District, but to build a new headquarters in one of our most important emerging neighborhoods says a lot about how far we've come in transforming our city."
As part of the deal, the city will suspend property taxes on the new building for 20 years, and it will not raise property taxes on its current building more than 3 percent for either the next 20 years or until NPR sells it.
The city will also complete streetscape improvements around the new headquarters building.
The release from Fenty’s office says the city needed to give the incentives to help keep NPR, and its 600 employees, in the District. “NPR was aggressively courted by economic development officials in the surrounding jurisdictions with lower land values,” according to the release, which also says that the NoMA neighborhood is slated for more than 20 million square feet of new development.
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Posted on Mar 22, 2008 08:43am.
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