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Articles
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| City is moving forward with its plan to lease the Old Naval Hospital |
VOICE writes, "BY PATTI SHEA
The city is moving forward with its plan to lease the Old Naval Hospital, despite efforts by a current tenant to stay on the property.
The D.C. Office of Property Management made final Aug. 31 its selection of the Hill Center as the new tenant of the historic building at 921 Pennsylvania Ave., SE. The Hill Center, backed by the Capitol Hill Community Foundation and Old Naval Hospital Foundation, was unanimously selected by a public-private selection committee to lease the property, including its carriage house."
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Property office spokesman Bill Rice said the agency hopes to have the lease with the Hill Center settled by the end of the year.
That’s unsettling news for carriage house occupant, Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Community Action Group (CAG), which is fighting to stay put.
On Sept. 9, some 100 group members marched in protest from its treatment house at 15th Street and Independence Avenue to East Capitol Street, then turned west through Lincoln Park toward Eastern Market, down Seventh Street, finally ending at the carriage house.
Negotiations last month between the Hill Center and community group ended with no agreeable solution. The two parties were asked to find a compromise by the Southeast Capitol Hill advisory neighborhood commission during a July 19 public meeting. At that meeting, the property office said it would provide a 30-day public comment period before making a final decision.
The Hill Center plans to partner with local groups to provide education and lifestyle classes for children and adults. It will contract out office space and provide meeting space for government and community groups. Plans also call for converting the hospital carriage house into a café for center patrons to use.
Center representatives offered to share the carriage house with the Community Action Group as a compromise, but the group’s board of directors rejected that offer.
Community Action Group director Hal Gordon made a plea to the neighborhood commission during its Sept. 11 meeting, asking the group to revise its stance backing the Hill Center.
The commission said it did not have enough information from the city or stakeholders to revoke its decision, but said it would confer with Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells about the city’s timeline.
Gordon said he was disappointed with the neighborhood commission’s decision. “It seems the ANC didn’t exercise much interest in bringing a resolution at the community level,” he said.
Gordon said the board of directors will meet tonight to discuss to do next. In the meantime, he said that he is willing to talk about another compromise with the Hill Center.
“If we can come up with a workable resolution, we’re all for that,” he said.
Hill Center representative Guy Martin said the advisory neighborhood commission acted appropriately and that the organization is ready to begin lease negotiations with the city.
“There is a certain point when you can’t be in a maybe position,” Martin said. “We have to move forward.” He added that the Old Naval Hospital Foundation is preparing a report to give to the neighborhood commission that details the mediation process with the Community Action Group.
As for a preliminary construction timeline, he said the center expects lease negotiations to last from two to four months, with an architecture-completion phase to last from one to two months. They’re banking time-consuming permit process but estimate construction to begin in late fall 2008. Construction should last from six to seven months, he said.
Asked when the community group would have to leave the carriage house, should no compromise be reached, Rice said the property office “has not thought about when it would be vacating the premises.”
Rice said the office supports the mission of the Community Action Group and will try to help it find alternative office space, possibly inside the Hill Center, which was offered to the group during negotiations.
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Posted on Sep 13, 2007 19:27pm.
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