These vacant properties on the 1500 block of 9th Street NW, owned by Shiloh Baptist Church, would be renovated with funds from the sale of two other properties at 8th and Q Streets under a plan approved by church membership last week. Photo by noahdevereaux

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.

The church membership voted last Wednesday to move forward with plans to sell its properties at 1600 8th Street NW and 1543 8th Street NW, with the hope that the sales will generate enough capital to begin long-discussed plans to renovate a string of units in the 1500 block of 9th Street NW. Plans for the Shiloh-owned 9th Street properties include a senior citizen center and/or housing, and a youth learning center.

“It was a church decision,” said Barry Lumsden, an insurance agent with offices on 9th Street and active member of the church who was at Wednesday’s meeting. “The members of Shiloh are committed to making a beautiful community.” Lumsden also serves on the board of directors of Shiloh’s Family Life Center.

Shiloh’s properties have laid fallow for decades, stirring tension between neighborhood residents and the church leadership since at least the 1980s. A 1990 Washington Post article, re-posted by the blog Renew Shaw a couple of years ago, provides some insight into how long the church has been promising to convert them back into use. Neighbors (of which this author is one) have long complained that the empty, crumbling buildings were attracting drug users, rodents, and piles of trash that constituted a fire hazard. Shortly after Mayor Adrian Fenty took office in 2007, six of the properties were condemned by the city, forcing the church to perform repair work to make them more secure and bring them up to code.

The church’s recent decision is a “great victory for the neighborhood,” said ANC 2C01 commissioner Alex Padro.

“These decades-long vacant properties have been a nuisance and a health challenge for the neighborhood for a very long time. They’ve been filled with termites and rats and are regular targets for graffiti and public urination and defecation,” Padro said.