It's been a big "news" week for this project and, as usual, most of the information came our way as the result of FOIA requests and conversations with the developer rather than from direct communication between DC officials and the community. The short version is (a) Janney has been kicked back to the end of the school modernization queue, (b) LCOR won't be building or renovating the school, and (c) we can thank Mary Cheh and Allison Feeney for both of these developments.
As the following timeline indicates, the continued pursuit of a public-private “partnership” for the Janney/Tenley-Friendship library site is delaying not only the construction of the library, but the school’s modernization project as well.
October 31 – The Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) issues a “Solicitation of Offers” for a public-private development project that would involve rebuilding the Tenley-Friendship Library and modernizing/expanding Janney Elementary, while adding a residential building to the site. Private developers are offered public funds to build both the library and the school.
February 28 – All three developers who submitted proposals are given the opportunity to present them to the public. LCOR’s presentation includes a detailed site plan for Janney’s expansion and modernization.
March 31 – Janney is placed at #8 in queue in a draft Master Facilities Plan (MFP) submitted to DCPS officials by their consultants, FHAI. Both the budget and the timeline for Janney in this plan are totally inconsistent with the budget and timeline for the school that was laid out in DMPED’s Solicitation of Offers, suggesting that, thus far, there has been no coordination between DCPS and DMPED regarding the Janney modernization project.
April 28 – DMPED officials Neil Albert and Eric Scott insist that Janney is number 100-something in the MFP queue; at this point, they are unaware of DCPS’s March 31st draft MFP.
July 10 – The Mayor announces that he has decided to pursue the public–private option and has chosen to negotiate exclusively with LCOR. LCOR’s press release that day says “LCOR will develop the school and library while developing the nearby apartments.”
July 12 – CM Cheh urges Neil Albert to “co-ordinate with those responsible” to act on Allison Feeney’s suggestions that the way to engender community support for the PPP is to shut down the possibility that Janney could be near the front of the modernization queue without a PPP and to put Allen Lew’s shop in total control of Janney’s modernization project.
Sept 10 – DCPS makes its new MFP public and Janney has now been moved back to the end of the modernization queue. LCOR VP Tim Smith tells ANC special committee members Anne Sullivan and Sue Hemberger that his company will not be designing or building any of Janney’s facilities; that will be a DCPS project under Lew’s direction. The only thing DCPS is deciding with respect to the LCOR deal is how many parking spots it wants to buy in the underground garage.
The assertion that Janney was moved up in the queue only because of the PPP flies in the face of all of the evidence. If it were true, we’d expect Janney to move forward rather than backward after the Mayor’s July 10th announcement, but the opposite happened. Janney’s scheduled completion date went from 2012 (March/pre-PPP draft) to 2014 (September/post-PPP draft).
A paradigm shift in DCPS’s approach to school modernizations is what lead to Janney's move to the front of the queue in March. Right-sizing is the new priority and that meant relieving overcrowding (and increasing capacity at successful schools) as well as shutting down low-performing schools to eliminate excess capacity in the system. On this model, Janney belongs near the front whereas on the older model, where the priority was fixing the facilities in the worst condition first, Janney had been near the end.
And the fact that the current anticipated completion date (2014) is earlier than the anticipated completion date under the older pre-takeover Master Facilities Plan (2015) has absolutely nothing to do with the PPP. It’s an artifact of the new regime’s decision to modernize at a much faster pace, and move through the whole queue in the next 5 years. Under the new draft MFP, no school modernizations are scheduled for completion after 2014. And, incidentally, the start dates in both the pre-takeover MFP and the current version are the same -- 2013. The claim that Janney’s modernization schedule has been hastened as a result of this PPP is pure fabrication and, as Allison’s email suggests, it’s a fabrication whose circulation is urged by those whose primary motive at this point is to promote a PPP rather than to get better facilities for the school sooner.
In addition to Cheh's advice to Neil Albert, there's another reason why the prospect of a public-private partnership would argue for postponing Janney's modernization. Odds are, Allen Lew has reached the point where he now assumes that the PPP is a done deal and he is planning accordingly. It woudl be a real nightmare to stick with the consultants' proposed 2011/12 Janney modernization if LCOR were working on the adjacent site simultaneously. So in his position, the rational thing for Lew to do would be wait to start the Janney project until after LCOR is basically done and gone. The other option would be to modernize Janney before LCOR is even ready to break ground but, in the absence of any site planning/campus design efforts or even a binding decision about how much land Janney will lose to the deal, that's just not feasible.
Currently, no one is engaged in site-planning for Janney. LCOR will plan its apartment/library building (in conjunction with DCPL) and acquire Janney land to build that structure. Janney’s modernization/expansion will be planned only after its campus shrinks.
This is precisely the outcome that the ANC special committee has been arguing against for over a year now. It should not be the case, when public land is at issue, that private developers have their needs met first, while the school is forced to make do with the land left over. It’s a perversion of priorities and an evasion of the law. The right approach is first to figure out how to best meet our facilities needs, reserve the land that’s required to do so, and, then, if there’s land left over, consider whether, how much, and what kind of private development makes sense for the site.
Janney will end up with less -- not more -- as a result of this deal and it’s not even a “we’ll take less to get it sooner” scenario any more. Maybe DCPS gets some revenue (but not much – which is why DC government forbade the developers from information about the financial structure of their proposal during public presentations) from this deal, but it’s not revenue that is needed for school modernizations which already have an ample and dedicated funding source. And, of course, it’s always the case that DCPS could raise money by selling off schools or the land under them. But DCPS’s function is to provide schools not make real estate deals. We’re not getting something for nothing or something extra here. We’re liquidating irreplaceable assets in an area -- and on a campus -- slated for growth. It’s a short-sighted decision that will be detrimental to both the school and the neighborhood.
