A Comeback Story Decades in the Making January 30, 2008 A few excerpts from the longer A Comeback Story Decades in the Making - New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/realestate/commercial/30district.html\ ?scp=1&sq=eugene+meyer&st=nyt>
Many neglected urban neighborhoods have been renewed across the country in recent years, but few cities have experienced changes as extensive as [these]. The area, long known for poverty, crime and other urban ills is finally starting to attract the kind of residential and commercial development that turns pessimism into hope. "Our neighborhoods east of the Anacostia have been starving for real investment for decades. What we're finally seeing is an unprecedented influx of new development." Some projects are changing the residential face of the area from crime-ridden public housing projects to low-rise condominiums and market-rate rentals . A decade ago, the district government began demolishing the worst projects, replacing them with mostly market-rate homes .The new residents, mostly African-Americans but more affluent, created a demand for retailing. Developers, however, were slow to enter the market. They were apparently concerned about reports of drive-by shootings and other crimes . But bad news increasingly seems an anomaly these days. Martin Luther King Avenue resembles an early-20th-century Main Street. A new 600,000-square-foot $77 million headquarters is to be built there for the city's Department of Transportation, housing 800 workers. The developer Doug Jemal, an investor in downtrodden areas that ultimately revive, is poised to take advantage of the changes. The redeveloped Skyland is to include a public square . But to some residents of the east side, William C. Smith's most exciting new development is a 63,000-square-foot supermarket . Residents marveled at the store's gourmet deli and Mediterranean olive bar, and its assortment of 200 cheeses and 15 varieties of artisan breads, like those seen in the suburbs but seldom in the inner city here. Residents had been pining for a supermarket; their last one closed a dozen years ago. "A lot of things fell together, like a big puzzle."
