Park View, D.C.

Park Morton in 1965

Last night, representatives from the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, the DC Housing Authority, and the members of the development team selected to redevelop Park Morton met with community members at the Georgia Avenue Community Development Task Force Meeting. While all provided an overview and answered community questions, very little was shared that hadn’t already been known.

According to Kimberly King of the D.C. Housing Authority (and formerly Director of the New Communities Initiative), the Park Morton development is currently in a review stage. Mayor Bowser is committed to getting the project moving and all are interested in doing it in a positive way for the community. This includes reviewing the old plans from several years ago to see if they need any adjustments and to incorporate any ideas that have been brought forward since then.

The next stages include a design charrette and forming an inclusive community process to actively participate as the plans move forward.  One thing that was not shared last night, and which no one was able to answer, was what the timeline for the development would be. This led to questions about the current living conditions at Park Morton and strong advocacy that maintenance and repairs need to be made to provide the quality living units that are basic to any renter. The DC Housing Authority representatives at the meeting responded that those issues are addressed by their Operations unit and that they would relay the concerns to them. Former Park View UNC President Marcus Hedrick was in attendance and asked if Operations representatives could be at future meetings as maintenance and quality of life issues will continue to be a concern until the development gets underway … and the D.C. Housing Authority responded that this would not be a problem.

While there continue to be more questions than answers, the meeting was helpful to the process. The community members attending the meeting expressed a sense of urgency, the need for community involvement, and an unwillingness to accept failure at Park Morton.

The development team selected to redevelop Park Morton is made up of Dantes Partners and Community Builders. News to date on the Park Morton New Communities Initiative can be found here.

This entry was posted on March 26, 2015 at 7:01 am and is filed under Development, Housing. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Development, Park Morton