Call to Action : Advice for Letter-Writers

The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) has indicated that all comments on the public-private project should be sent by e-mail to tenleytown@dc.gov. I suggest that you also send your comments to key decision-makers in both the executive and legislative branches, as well as a courtesy copy to ANC Special Committee Chair Anne Sullivan.

E-mail addresses are provided below. Based on recent experience, I have also provided some letter-writing tips designed to ensure that your statement will not be mischaracterized. And because DMPED seems to count letters rather than signatures, I’d encourage each adult member of your household to send a separate e-mail message, ideally from a separate e-mail account.

LETTER-WRITING TIPS

Letters can be short. Three paragraphs, each with a couple of sentences or bullet points, works well.

The subject header should clearly indicate the issue you’re writing on – e.g. “Tenleytown PPP.”

Your first paragraph should clearly state your stance on the Fenty administration’s proposed public-private redevelopment of the Janney/Tenley Library land. To avoid misclassification, if your position is that you are opposed to this approach, then it is imperative to have the word “oppose” somewhere in the letter’s opening sentence. It is equally important not to have the word “support” (regardless of what you say you’re supporting) anywhere in the first paragraph. Politicians and their staffers are not always close readers of texts! This paragraph might also include some background information about you and your stake in this project or this community – e.g. how long you have lived in DC (or in Tenleytown or Friendship Heights) and what has motivated you to express an interest in this particular project/controversy (e.g. I'm a Janney parent, library user, neighboring homeowner).

The second paragraph can simply elaborate on the concerns expressed in the first paragraph or briefly enumerate a number of concerns. If you would like to review or fact-check information about the various proposals, http://www.anc3e.org/minutes.html is a good resource. The developers’ presentations are all there, as are the ANC’s critiques. But there’s no need to do research to write a letter. The recipients are more interested in gauging the extent and intensity of public opposition than in your reasoning.

In the third paragraph, provide an action item. Tell the recipient what you want him or her to do (or not to do). One thing to think about in this context is if you are asking the Mayor (or other decisionmaker) to reject all three current offers, then what do you want to happen next? If you do not want the library project re-incorporated into a new Solicitation of Offers, now is the time to say so.

Your signature block should include your full name as well as your address.

E-mail addresses:

To be considered by DMPED, your letter must be emailed to tenleytown@dc.gov. DMPED’s deadline for public comments is April 9th. In any event, sooner is better than later. As previously suggested, it also would be extremely useful to send your comments to the mayor, other key executive-branch decision-makers, and several Councilmembers, with a courtesy copy to the ANC Special Committee. Here’s a complete list of the relevant addresses you can cut and paste: tenleytown@dc.gov, adrian.fenty@dc.gov, mayor@dc.gov, neil.albert@dc.gov, ginnie.cooper@dc.gov, michelle.rhee@dc.gov, mcheh@dccouncil.us, vgray@dccouncil.us,

schwartzc@dccouncil.us, kbrown@dccouncil.us, hthomas@dccouncil.us, pmendelson@dccouncil.us, dcatania@dccouncil.us, acsullivan@starpower.net,
If you’d like to be more selective (and/or to customize your comments), here is the relevant contact information for specific officeholders:

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty: adrian.fenty@dc.gov and/or mayor@dc.gov
Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Neil Albert: neil.albert@dc.gov
Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper: ginnie.cooper@dc.gov
DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee: michelle.rhee@dc.gov
Council Chairman Vincent Gray: vgray@dccouncil.us
At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz (chair of the committee that handles surplussing decisions): schwartzc@dccouncil.us
At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown (chair of the Council’s Economic Development committee): kbrown@dccouncil.us
Ward 3 Councilmember Mary M. Cheh: mcheh@dccouncil.us

Councilmember Harry “Tommy” Thomas (chair of the committee on Libraries): hthomas@dccouncil.us

At-Large Councilmember David Catania: dcatania@dccouncil.us

At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson: pmendelson@dccouncil.us

ANC 3E Special Committee Chair Anne Sullivan: acsullivan@starpower.net

Janney SIT urges rejection of all three offers

Their letter to DMPED is available at http://www.janneyschool.org/PTASITPPP/Library%20development/sitresponseto3proposals-march2008.html. This means that a consensus has emerged within the community -- neither the ANC nor the School wants to see any of these projects built. Hopefully, this will be enough to convince Mayor Fenty to pull the plug on this RFP. At the February meeting of the Tenleytown Neighbors Association (TNA), Fenty pledged that he would listen to the community once it spoke with a united voice.

Where consensus breaks down (perhaps even within the SIT, judging from the wording of the letter) is whether the next step should be a decision that the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization (headed by Allen Lew of stadium fame) will be responsible for the Janney project (ideally on an earlier timetable than previously announced) or whether the whole RFP process should be re-started and done right this time with well-defined limits on acceptable private development on the site and/or the re-inclusion of the library project and land.

Not surprisingly, I'm strongly in favor of the OPEFM option.

Truth is, we've already explored the PPP-with-the-library-in-the-mix option. One of the three current proposals (LCOR's) is based on that scenario, and it was rejected by both the SIT and the ANC. The notion that including the library's land solves the problem is a mirage. To the extent that Roadside's original ("unsolicited") offer looked more acceptable than the post-RFP proposals, that's primarily because its site plan was predicated on a gross underestimation of Janney's *interior* facilities needs (it contemplated a 10,000 - 13,000 SF addition rather than the required 39,000 SF). In short, it left more playground space because it failed to build the necessary classrooms.

And at this point the costs of doing the RFP are much greater than they would have been (or maybe then they appeared to be) last summer when DMPED originally decided to explore the PPP option. The library is substantially further along (and delaying its construction will be costly). Also, as this round of submissions demonstrated, a mixed-use project is likely to take 4-5 years to complete -- once a proposal is accepted. That means that a new PPP is unlikely to speed up Janney's modernization. And the mixed-use project will be much more disruptive to both the Janney and St. Ann's campuses than consecutive library and school modernization projects would be.

So what would be the benefit of trying this again? The school gains nothing compared to an OPEFM modernization (no more land to work with, no faster timetable) and the library loses (its re-opening would be delayed, its design compromised, and its construction costs increased). By now, we've thoroughly explored the PPP options at this site. Remember, this is the second time around. In 2003 Janney looked at a residental PPP and DCPL investigated the possibility of a mixed-use library project -- both ideas were ultimately rejected. It's time to move on. The concept is clearly more attractive than the reality.

I wish that DMPED had done a better RFP in the first place because then its myriad screw-ups wouldn't leave some people convinced that there's some brilliant-yet-undiscovered PPP that could still happen at this site. In fact, I think that a better process would have shown from the beginning that, despite its Metro-accessibility, the size and layout of this site and our public facilities requirements leave no room for economically viable private residential development.

I've given up predicting what DC government will do. But, at a minimum, if a new RFP is to be issued, I hope that it will be based on a "plan first" model in which fairly comprehensive site-planning for the school precedes any solicitation of offers and in which the solicitation itself defines and limits the acceptable scale and location of private development on the site. Conducting another "fishing expedition" would be a waste of everyone's time.

Again, even if this isn't your neighborhood, I urge you to follow what's happening at Tenleytown. The privatization of public land over the strong objections of the local citizenry is a real and growing problem under the Fenty Administration.

Special Committee Report on RFP Submissions

ANC 3E SPECIAL COMMITTEE REPORT ON RFP SUBMISSIONS

The analysis in this report is based developers’ presentations at DMPED’s February 28th meeting (and subsequent review of those presentations, which each developer made available to us in electronic form) as well as written and oral responses from all three developers to a set of questions we sent to each regarding project specifications. DMPED has refused to make public any part of the developers’ submissions in response to the RFP, despite repeated requests from the ANC and other community members.

Based on the evidence available to us, we feel strongly that the community’s interest would be better served by leaving the modernization of Janney School in the hands of DCPS rather than by adopting any of the three proposals submitted.

• All three proposals involve the sacrifice of campus land for non-educational use.

• None of the three provides all of the exterior program space mandated by DCPS’s current educational specifications for an elementary school campus of 550 students. Not only is the multi-purpose PE playing field miniaturized in these proposals, but children are also deprived of the playground (including hardscape) space to which they are entitled and which could easily be provided on campus if land were not devoted to non-educational uses. The imminent closure of many other DCPS elementary schools is likely to increase enrollment pressure at Janney and we’ve previously seen recently modernized schools (e.g. Oyster) instantly overcrowded. Under the circumstances, voluntarily accepting fewer facilities than DCPS’s educational specifications envision for an elementary school of 550 students strikes us as foolhardy.

• None of the proposals offers a realistic assurance of speeding up the school’s modernization and each will be significantly more disruptive to the education of students at both Janney and St. Ann’s than a stand-alone school modernization project would be.

• While DMPED has deprived us of access to the financial details that would enable us to assess and compare the exact costs associated with each project, the facts that the RFP offered DCPS’s capital funding for Janney’s modernization to the winning development team (and none seems likely to turn $20+ million down!) and that two of the three teams have explicitly referenced the use of PILOT financing, suggest that there will be no cost savings to the city if a public-private venture is used to redevelop this site. On the contrary, it seems most likely that the level of public subsidization for this project would be increased.

We therefore urge the ANC to endorse the “no PPP” option, and to continue to push for the soonest possible modernization and expansion of Janney’s facilities by OPEFM.

Because the ANC Commissioners may wish to express preferences among, or flag issues related to, the various responses to the RFP, we felt we should include some comments on the comparative merits of the three proposals/teams, in addition to our more general recommendation.

UniDev/See Forever:

Basically, there is almost nothing in this project for either Janney School or Tenley-Friendship Library – not even fair-market compensation for their loss of land. UniDev’s goal is simply to build affordable housing on public land. That’s a laudable goal, but we don’t see why it must be pursued at the expense of playground and sports facilities for DCPS’s most overcrowded elementary school campus.

Roadside/Smoot:

This proposal appears to us to involve a serious element of “false advertising” designed to garner community support at the expense of a clear understanding of what is being consented to. For example, this team holds out the prospect that Janney will have a new addition by September 2010 and that the children can remain on campus throughout all phases of construction. We find the first claim non-credible. Both other teams estimate that there will be two years of approvals and predevelopment work before ground can be broken on this project. And Roadside’s own timeline calculations are based on indisputably fictional premises (unless they were actually awarded the deal last week and have already filed a PUD application!) as well as on contingencies that seem quite unlikely (e.g. that funds for the school’s construction will be made available to them in 2009 rather than in 2013, as the RFP specifies).

Our swing space concerns stem from comparing Roadside’s timeline with its site plans and seeing that, for a substantial portion of two academic years, Janney’s historic building would be flanked by construction on both sides, at a time when the demountables and teacher parking lot would necessarily still be in use. Trapped between two construction sites, with little or no land available for outdoor play, students will find it very difficult to learn in this environment and teachers will find it quite challenging to teach.

The analogy to Smoot’s “swing-in-place” experience at Key is specious. Key’s construction project was half the size of what Janney’s modernization/expansion will be, it took place on a campus almost as large (3.17 vs. 3.29 acres), and it involved 285 fewer children. And, of course, there was no residential building being constructed on Key’s campus while the school was being rebuilt. For what it’s worth, we do believe that a swing-in-place strategy would be possible if Janney’s modernization were the only construction project on campus and that DCPS will pursue such a strategy if that is the case.

Secondly, for a number of reasons, the O Street Market project raises serious concerns about Roadside’s ability to deliver on a project of this complexity. Roadside acquired site control of O Street Market in 2001, but still hasn’t broken ground there. At different points, its plans were shot down by the Historic Preservation Review Board and by the Zoning Commission, two agencies whose approval will also be needed for the Janney project. Clearly, not all of the circumstances that have contributed to the slow progress at O Street Market are Roadside’s fault (e.g. a freak snowstorm and a grocery chain takeover also played a role), but, equally clearly, Roadside significantly overestimated its own ability to win approvals and underestimated how long it would take to get things done, and the Shaw community has suffered as a result.

While we’re happy to see that the fortunes of the O Street Market project are rapidly improving (HPRB approval has been granted and ZC approval seems within reach, although $40 million in TIF financing still looks iffy at this point), we have serious concerns about whether Roadside has the capacity to take the lead on two major projects of this complexity simultaneously. They lacked even the manpower to send representatives to both events when a separate meeting for each project was scheduled on the same night last week. Because the O Street project has been delayed for so long, there will be significant pressure to move forward quickly once it finally does get funded and approved. The Tenleytown project could easily become the lower priority if conflicts were to arise.

LCOR:

We have no real qualms about LCOR’s ability to undertake and complete this kind of project. And we believe that their proposal takes a relatively realistic and responsible approach to the project presented in the original RFP. But we also think that it is precisely this realism – i.e. about how much housing would have to be built to make the deal economically worthwhile, about where traffic should be routed, about how much field and play land would be lost, about how long it will take to redevelop the site and whether Janney students should be relocated to swing space during some phases of the construction – that makes its proposal less than appealing even to those community members who have eagerly advocated a public-private venture at this location.

The Oyster experience also leads us to flag an issue regarding the purported economic benefits of a joint public-private redevelopment of this land. To put it bluntly, LCOR does a much better job at negotiating than DC government does. The PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) arrangement for Oyster may well turn out to involve a 20 year tax break for the owner of that apartment building. The ordinary property tax liability is edging very close to the agreed-upon PILOT payment (which will soon function as a cap) and may surpass the PILOT amount even before DC government has collected enough additional revenue from it to cover the fair market value of the public land sold!

Moreover, from an income tax standpoint, the apartment building that consumed virtually all of Oyster’s exterior space is most likely a low-performer. It was sold to a corporate housing provider and its tenant base includes many sojourners who are legal residents of tax jurisdictions other than DC. The obvious analogy in our neighborhood would be if a rental building at the Wisconsin & Albemarle site were to become a literal or de facto off-campus dorm for AU students, over 90% of whom are not legal residents of DC and who typically have low incomes (but parents able to afford high rents, especially when units are shared). This isn’t an issue that arises only in the context of LCOR’s proposal – Roadside plans to build apartments as well and both companies seem more likely to sell the building than to manage it long-term. Odds are, they won’t have the luxury of choosing their buyer or of determining who rents the units.

Finally, there’s the issue of the library. Again, this is not an issue that is unique to LCOR, since each development team has indicated that it would be delighted to see the library land thrown back into the project. But LCOR’s proposal raises the question most saliently, because there seems to be a real possibility that LCOR will withdraw from the project unless the library land is made available. Both in the press and in our community meeting, LCOR indicated that they weren’t sure that a project involving only the school’s land would be economically feasible. And they did not revise their design to propose such a project. By contrast, both Roadside’s and UniDev’s current plans assume a stand-alone library – albeit not the particular library (i.e. footprint, location, height) that DCPL plans to build. Accepting either of those offers would, therefore, require some change in plans – but the change could be in the residential plans rather than the library plans.

So the questions remain as to whether DCPL’s current plans for a stand-alone branch should (or will – these are different issues) be derailed once again to accommodate mixed-use development on this site. We hope not -- especially since it seems likely that the best chance of meeting Janney’s facilities needs and expediting its modernization would be to have OPEFM undertake the project and to devote the entire campus to school facilities rather than additional uses.

When this discussion began, community interest in a public-private venture was premised on the notion that allowing private development on this public land might be worthwhile if it enabled the city to provide better public facilities. Yet now we find ourselves at the point where we’re being told that it’s not enough to sacrifice our school’s facilities needs to make private development possible at this site – we must sacrifice our library as well, by delaying its reconstruction and compromising its exciting design. To our minds, that’s a real perversion of civic priorities.

The public-private redevelopment option for this site has now been thoroughly explored. And the results are in -- it should be rejected.

Where Community Input fits in this "Model Process"

Well, the "community meeting" sponsored by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) was even worse than their format led me to expect. They got off to a good start by announcing that they were providing only 8 days for public comment. And, yet again, the deadline they imposed seemed deliberately chosen to preclude official action on the part of the affected ANCs. Project Manager Eric Scott promised that they would put copies of the developers' public presentations up on the web the next day, but that didn't happen. After a few days of lobbying, Neil Albert agreed to extend the comment period to the more customary 30 days. But, still the powerpoints didn't appear online, so the ANC asked for 30 days from the date of posting. Arguably, it took testimony at a Council oversight hearing to get them posted and then they went up without announcement and on a different website than the one previously established for community contact on this project.

But back to February 28th. So here we had the spectacle of a community meeting when the community wasn't entitled to speak and where no written information about these complex projects was made available before or during the meeting. The lethargy in the audience was palpable -- and yet inscrutable. There were no displays of enthusiasm for any of the proposals but no expressions of disapproval either. In short, no one in the roon knew what other people were thinking and that's exactly what DMPED had in mind. Comments are to be submitted via email -- i.e. privately. And then DMPED will represent public opinion as supporting whatever DMPED wants to do.

The one argument that could have been made for DMPED exerting such tight control over information in this context would have been that because this was the first time the public would see these designs, it was important to ensure that complete, coherent, and comparable information was presented and that developers could not present misleading accounts about what they could accomplish on the site and when.

But given both the character of the restrictions (how can anyone make an informed judgment regarding which deal is the best or whether any of these deals is worthwhile without seeing the bottom line?) and their implementation, it's clear that what DMPED is trying to censor is hard truths rather than seductive fictions.

Roadside, whose unsolicited proposal prompted this RFP, offered a timeline that claimed that it would have a 120-150 unit condo building with a couple of levels of underground parking built by July 2010. This despite the fact that the land hasn't been surplussed, Roadside hasn't been awarded the PPP, the project hasn't been designed yet, and it will necessarily involve a PUD and/or a map amendment. And that's before we get to (censored) questions of financing. When the powerpoint presentations finally did go up, it took a magnifying glass (virtual or literal) to see that Roadside's calculations were based on obvious fictions. They planned, for example, to be given the deal a week later (on the day the comment period would have ended!) and to file their PUD application the Monday thereafter. Council approval of any sort wasn't in their plans, and they assumed DCPS would hand over funding for the school modernization project 4 years earlier than the RFP indicated. All this fine print was illegible in their presentation, of course -- but the conclusion it led up to was in a large boldfaced font. And this was a presentation the Deputy Mayor's office pre-cleared?!

What to do? ANC 3E's special committee on this project (of which I'm a member) decided we'd hold our own uncensored community meeting the next week. We invited all the developers and posed them a series of basic questions about project specs in advance. Two of the three participated (Roadside had a prior engagement) and the meeting fell like a minor vindication of democracy. It was a friendly and quite informative discussion which required no more policing than asking people to form a line to ask questions and periodically reminding them of the time. Alas, no representative from DMPED (or any other part of DC government for that matter) was present to witness the spectacle.

As the result of the March 6th meeting (and Roadside's submission of written answers to our question on March 12th), the community now has access to much more information about each proposal. But the problem is that it's all self-reporting on the part of the developers because DMPED ignored the ANC's recommendations that the RFP provide for expert vetting of finances and construction timelines by OCFO and OPEFM (Allen Lew's department). And, of course, DCPS's plans still haven't been presented.

While the Fenty Administration has repeatedly claimed that "none of the above" is always an option with respect to this RFP, it's not providing (or seeking) the information necessary to determine whether a PPP (which will, in any event, use DCPS's already budgeted capital funding to modernize and enlarge Janney) offers any advantage over simply moving Janney up in the queue to address its overcrowding.

I really hope that people outside our neighborhood will pay attention to what's happening here. This project is supposed to be a model for the rest of the city and, if that's true, we're all in trouble. DMPED is eager to make deals -- not plans -- and is willing to run roughshod over communities that resist. What's really perverse is that DMPED doesn't seem to know or care whether the deals it's so eager to make are even good ones. And DCPS seems to be showing similar proclivities. Who knows what will be left of public land, public schools, and public debate a few years from now if we keep headed in the current direction?


For those interested in the specifics of the proposals, the three Developer presentations from February 28th, the March 6th Meeting notes, and a table comparing the project specs for each proposal are all available at http://www.anc3e.org/minutes.html.