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Renovation work began late last week on the exteriors of several long-vacant properties owned by Shiloh Baptist Church in the 1500 block of 9th Street NW.

The hugely delayed Washington Convention Center Hotel deal, which in July appeared to be back on track thanks to a city-brokered public financing deal with developers, is once again in trouble. Developer JBG Cos. is suing to stall the start of construction, claiming that the contracting process that gave a 99-year lease to Marriott was not up to snuff, the Washington Business Journal is reporting. The lawsuit could very well mean that the sale of bonds for the project could be delayed, which would in turn push back ground breaking on the project. The city's only hope to keep things on track will be if a judge agrees to toss out the case in short order, as construction has been slated to begin this fall.

It's been a year since D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty shut down the Franklin Shelter, and while homeless advocates are still fighting in court to get the historic Franklin School reopened as a shelter, the Fenty administration is moving ahead with its redevelopment plans. As Ruth Samuelson recently reported over at Housing Complex, the Franklin School RFP seeks "Highly-qualified development teams with experience in planning, financing, building, and operating small to medium scale mixed-use, commercial, hotel, residential, or retail use development projects and experience in working with community stakeholders are strongly encouraged to respond to this RFP." The Business Journal followed up today with a story of its own.

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The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics released the petition documents today of those individuals who filed initiative measure applications for the so-called "Marriage Initiative of 2009." This is the petition put together by a group of D.C. area Baptist ministers, led by the outspoken Bishop Harry Jackson, who are seeking to put the question of whether to legalize same-sex marriage in the District up for a popular vote. Applicants for initiative measures to the BOEE are required to provide proof of D.C. residence, and the papers indicate that Jackson now claims to reside at 1100 First Street SE, Apt. 1310. That's the Onyx on First luxury apartment building, right by the Navy Yard Metro station and not far from Nationals Park.

Washington City Paper reporter Ruth Samuelson ably answers the questions I've had about just what the heck is going on with the Dupont location of Results Gym. Word has been spreading like wildfire in recent weeks that the Results will be shut down at some point in the near future, to make way for a larger, hugely expanded Vida Fitness, which will include a rooftop pool. I had always assumed that the two chains were somewhat related, since both of them offer similar amenities and are often paired with Bang Salons (full disclosure: I'm a member of Results, though I usually frequent their Mt. Vernon location). Turns out the two men who own the separate chains—Results's Doug Jefferies and Vida Fitness's David von Storch—used to be business partners, but they've had a major falling out. And since von Storch, who also owns the various Bang Salons, is the one who actually owns the Dupont Circle property that houses Results, he's decided to push the gym out to make way for a Vida Fitness. Quite the local business scandal!

After decades of promises but little action, Shiloh Baptist Church in Shaw has decided to sell two of its controversial vacant buildings and use the proceeds to fund a major redevelopment of its remaining properties.

PB Capital Corp. agreed to purchase The Watergate Hotel today for $25 million at foreclosure auction, after submitting the one and only bid (via The Washington Business Journal and Housing Complex). Developer Monument Realty, which had to abandon its plans to renovate the hotel after lending markets collapsed, actually owed $40 million to PB Capital, making the sale something of an indicator of these strange financial times. Monument co-founder Michael Darby was reportedly on hand for the auction, and put on a brave face for the BizJo: "Am I disappointed? In some ways yes, in some ways no. We knew this was happening. I’ve lost a lot of money over time, but that’s part of what we do."

The District is facing a massive budget shortfall over the next several years, but despite proposals to cut more jobs, reduce city services and now even raise taxes, the mayor's revised FY2010 budget still includes roughly $13 million for the upkeep of the city's many vacant properties, the Examiner reports today. What does that $13 million get us?: "... rent, utilities, security and other so-called fixed costs tied to 20 empty buildings in D.C.'s possession," writes reporter Michael Neibauer. Now, several of the buildings that are vacant are schools that were emptied by Fenty as part of his DCPS reorganization, and they'll theoretically be sold eventually. But this headline has to sting for the various agency heads who are once again faced with trying to decide which of their remaining employees they're going to have to fire soon.

The long, long saga of the empty warehouse space at 14th and T Streets NW has come to an end. Upscale furniture retailer Room & Board has finally gone ahead and bought the building, after dropping out of negotiations for a while and then eventually coming back and making another offer, Housing Complex reports. The building at one time had been targeted as a comedy club/yoga studio/lounge combo, but all those pipe dreams have at last gone up in smoke. From the press release:

Room & Board, a 29-year-old company offering handcrafted, American-made home furnishings, announced today it will open a new store in Washington, D.C., in the early spring of 2010. The store, located in the historic Taylor Motors Building at 14th and T, will be Room & Board’s second store on the east coast and eleventh store in the U.S.

Continue reading "Room & Board Finally Buys the 14th & T Building"

After last week's news that the Old Georgetown Board rejected a design proposal for an Apple store along Wisconsin Avenue for the fourth time, rumors are floating around that the computer manufacturer's iconic store might end up elsewhere in the District.

Back in December we reported that BoltBus and Megabus had moved their stop from 11th Street NW just above G Street to around the corner on G Street NW between 9th and 10th, right next to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. The move sparked a little bit of controversy, as it wasn't clear whether the location was any better in terms of interrupting traffic, and some customers were reportedly uncomfortable with its proximity to the soup kitchen across the street. Well Penn Quarter Living reports that after Megabus relocated a third time, to 9th Street NW just above H Street along the side of the old convention center site, as of today BoltBus will follow them there. BoltBus's web site confirms the move to 9th and H Streets at the old convention center parking lot.

Remember 2020 Martini, the three-story, 10,000-square-foot brick oven pizza/pasta/sushi/martini restaurant and bar planned for Old Engine Co. 12, the 112-year-old firehouse at 1626 North Capitol Street? We were deeply skeptical of the concept when NextGen Development first announced its deal with Twyla Garrett of Cleveland-based Garrett Entertainment Corp. last year, and now it seems with good reason. The Bloomingdale blog reported recently that the deal has long since fallen through (hat tip to Arts & Real Estate), and the building is now on the market, listed at $1.5 million.

We've argued that the private home rental market for the inauguration has been seriously overblown. Few D.C. residents we've talked to report having successfully rented out their pads via Craigslist or other online listing service. But more and more, we are hearing that locals will be playing host to friends and/or family who are willing to crash on a couch for a chance to be a part of the historic celebrations. Are you hosting any guests for the inauguration?

Yesterday Mayor Fenty announced a new Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs program that will put all 4,800 apartment buildings in the District on a mandatory four-year inspection cycle (two years if inspectors find substantial code violations). Before now, DCRA inspections only occurred after tenants reported problems. The program is being touted as a more proactive way to protect residents, particularly low income ones, from slumlords. (Check out Hamil Harris's story in the Post for an amusing anecdote from the presser, which took place at a Southeast apartment building that Fenty was holding up as an inspection success story. Harris reports that city officials appeared "taken by surprise" by a group of residents who interrupted the mayor to point out existing code violations in the building.)

If you didn't catch this Examiner report by Michael Neibauer this morning, make sure to take a look. The story intimates that the reporter himself was responsible for halting, at least temporarily, a Columbia Heights real estate deal that could have ended up costing District taxpayers an additional $2 million for no good reason. The vacant 32-unit building at 1483 Newton St. NW is intended to be rehabilitated into affordable housing, but there is a huge discrepancy between the building's assessed value and how much the city had offered to pay for it. Given that, as Jim Graham points out in the story, it's unclear whether the rundown building even has usable walls, Deputy Mayor Neil Albert put a hold on the deal after receiving questions about it from Neibauer.

Ever since Barack Obama was elected president, we've heard about the huge crowds coming to Washington for the Inauguration. There have been endless stories for months about D.C. residents renting out their homes and apartments to revelers, and Craigslist is awash in ads. They're even popping up on Gmail and Facebook.

We are deeply skeptical of this New York Post item claiming that Oprah Winfrey is considering buying a home in Washington so that she can be closer to the Obamas. The notion that Oprah would consider uprooting her Chicago-based Harpo Entertainment empire is insane. If she's just thinking about buying an additional residence to use when she visits D.C., well OK then, she's one of the richest people in the world and can do what she wants with her money. Still, this just reeks of Page Six baloney, and we're laying down bets that it comes to about the same outcome as those rumors that Brad and Angelina were moving here.

National Journal has been following the minutiae of the Obama transition on their impressively thorough Lost in Transition blog, and it is there that David Herbert reports that District college students are getting the shaft in terms of raking in the big inauguration-related bucks. Like all living, breathing D.C. residents, students at schools like GWU, American, Georgetown and Howard would love to receive a giant pile of Obamamoney by subletting out their dorm rooms around Jan. 20. Unfortunately, those same schools are cracking down on efforts to sublet by sending out mean, threatening, all-caps emails reminding students of the terms of their lease agreements. Poor D.C. college students. And more potential renters for the rest of us!

The Week in Real Estate is a column from Mark Wellborn of UrbanTurf, a local blog and newsletter that covers the residential real estate scene in D.C., MD, and VA.

This is the first installment of a new weekly real estate column from Mark Wellborn of UrbanTurf, a local blog and newsletter that covers the residential real estate scene in D.C., MD, and VA.

Paul Ruppert, via his kickass arts-focused real estate blog, says Kokopooli's is for sale:

Commercial condos in the heart of Adams Morgan that are currently operating as the Kokopoolis Nightclub. Units 1 and 2 have been combined totaling 2,931 square feet. The auction includes the business and all the contents: 10 televisions, 1 projector, 3 commercial refrigerators, commercial deep fryer, 8 regulation sized pool tables, furniture, 2 refrigerators with 8 keg capacity, surround sound stereo, full inventory of liquor plus many other items in the nightclub. The ABC license is a “Retailer CR 01” and is within the Adams Morgan Moratorium Zone. The unit has exposed brick, open floor plan, 2 entrance doors, 2 bathrooms, office, commercial kitchen, popcorn machine and full complement of glasses and plates. All liquor and food licenses are active and also convey with the sale.

Home to guerrilla art exhibits as well as the city's most famous art guerrilla, the Bobby Fisher Memorial Building at 1644 North Capitol Street NW is coming to a close, after tenants and landlord failed to renegotiate a lease.

The Washington Post is reporting on Mayor Adrian Fenty's announcement today that the city has scrapped any plans to build a new main library at the old convention center site, and instead has reached an agreement with a developer to construct a four-star, 400-room hotel.

The third floor will be devoted to the Mocha Fusion Coffee Lounge, an espresso bar. And finally, a rooftop deck will offer tapas. Sounds a bit ... over the top, to be sure. But aesthetic issues aside, there's some serious questions about the sustainability of such an ambitious project in this neighborhood. The property is being developed by Brian Brown of NextGen Development, and Twyla Garrett of Cleveland-based Garrett Entertainment Corp. Garrett has already built a similar, Italian-themed multi-story restaurant complex in a similarly gentrifying area of Cleveland, which has a music and flash heavy web site you can check out at your own risk. But when you look at the numbers quoted in the Business Journal story, it's hard to imagine how this venture could possibly add up. Brown purchased the property for $600,000, a perfectly reasonably price, but plans to put in $2.4 million for renovations. Garrett plans to add another $1 million herself. How many tables would you need to fill every night to service $4 million of debt every month? It would have to be in the hundreds. It's just hard to imagine a restaurant of that style, in that neighborhood, being able to attract that large of a crowd every night.

The Politico has a story this morning on D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton's ties to real estate developers. A long list of powerful developers have recently made contributions to her re-election campaign, many of whom have projects underway that have benefited from Norton's political support.

The list of Norton’s donors reads like a “Who’s Who” of well-connected real estate developers: the Ratner family, which controls Forest City; Victor MacFarlane, a San Francisco developer who owns D.C. United and has sought to build a new soccer stadium on federal land across the Anacostia River from the Washington Nationals’ new ballpark; John E. “Chip” Akridge, who wants to build a different, 2.7-million-square-foot project near the baseball stadium; Ted and Mark Lerner, owners of the Washington Nationals and major developers in their own right; Christopher Smith, chairman and CEO of William C. Smith Co., a large commercial and residential management company in the District; Benjamin R. Jacobs, managing member of The JBG Companies, a player in the D.C. real estate market for decades; and William Chang, CEO of Westlake Development, co-owner of the San Francisco Giants and a business partner of MacFarlane.

The Washington Post has an interesting report about a new way for house buyers to scope out the market. Local real estate agencies are organizing "Foreclosure Tours," using a big, comfy bus to cart around prospective buyers, along with agents and even a house inspector.

The developers of the new DC USA shopping center in Columbia Heights are still looking for more high end retail, according to a Washington Business Journal article. DC USA, located at 14th and Irving NW, still has about 80,000 square feet of space to fill, which developers hope to fill partially with fancier fare than the Target, Marshalls and Best Buy already planned for the space.

Rorschach Theatre company is in exile.

Big story this morning on the longstanding controversy over whether the District wants to help build a new soccer stadium for DC United. The on-again, off-again Poplar Point location for a new stadium appears to be on again in the minds of the Fenty administration. The Mayor is set to announce that he has selected Bethesda-based Clark Realty Capital as the developer of Poplar Point, and the Post reports that Fenty suddenly has in mind to pull together $190 million in public funding to make the stadium a reality.