By Trinity Kinslow
Two sides are going against each other in Cleveland Park.
One side calls themselves “urbanists”, who say they want to introduce policies that preserve the history of the neighborhood while encouraging growth.
The other side is a historical society that is against those changes, looking to preserve their historical neighborhood.
Depending on who wins, determines whether new apartments will be brought to the area.
“There is room for well-designed infill development that is compatible with the historic district and that emphasizes more affordable housing.” said Rick Nash, a commissioner with the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission.
The neighborhood has a history of stopping apartments from being built.
New guidelines adopted by the Historical Preservation Board will allow more apartments with subsidized units to be built.
Right now, the law requires that 8% to 10% of housing units be set aside for low-income residents, said Nash.
“D.C.’s current requirements,” he said, “are paltry compared with other jurisdictions like Montgomery County.”
Nash said he would prefer the percentage of affordable units to be raised to 25%, but will settle for the 20% that the guidelines currently outline.
Adding subsidized housing would help undo some of the harm, an official with Cleveland Park Smart Growth said, that existed in previous legal documents that prevented Black people from owning or even living in certain residences.
“We have opportunities to develop and grow the neighborhood,” said the official, Bob Ward of Cleveland Park Smart Growth. “Opportunities to diversify the neighborhood with housing at lower price points.”
The inclusion of more subsidized housing would help to offset the neighborhood’s past of exclusionary racial and economic ordinances, Ward said.
For many of the homes in Cleveland Park, Black people could not live there
Mary Massey, a resident of Macomb Street, lives in a house with an exclusionary racial covenant written within her deed.
The deed, which was posted on Cleveland Park Smart Growth’s website, states that the home “shall never be rented, leased, sold, transferred, or conveyed unto any negro or colored person or any person of negro extraction.”
“If it is in my deed, I wouldn’t know,” said Ellen. “I don’t think it’s in my deed. This neighborhood has been the most embracing of different races. I don’t care what color anybody is.”
Racial covenants were not the only ordinances restricting certain demographics from renting or owning in the neighborhood.
“One was racial but the primary one was an economic covenant,” said Stephen Hansen, director of the Cleveland Park Historical Society. “You may not build anything on a lot less than $5,000. That cuts off much of anybody wanting to build in the neighborhood.”
The new guidelines would also introduce new commercial buildings to attract visitors.
“DC has grown a lot…. The city has phenomenally changed. Cleveland Park used to be a thriving place because people would come from outside of the city,” said Ward. “That doesn’t happen anymore, no one comes to Cleveland Park but the people that live in Cleveland Park.”
Cleveland Park is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. with houses in the residential area dating as far back as 1888. People would travel from across the city to visit the Park and Shop, one of the first strip malls built in America in 1930.
According to the Office of Planning Development Guidelines, Cleveland Park’s population has grown at about a third of the rate of the rest of the District and is financially out of range for a growing range of households.
Cleveland Park Smart Growth partners with other neighborhood initiative groups in efforts to revitalize the area and attract more visitors and tourists.
“We partner a lot with the Main Street organization to revitalize our commercial area. There are a lot of locally-owned businesses that don’t get the consumers they deserve because the neighborhood is so closed off,” said Ward.
Residential groups like the Cleveland Park Historical Society (CPHS) worry that these higher buildings will take away from the architectural integrity of the neighborhood.
“We are not opposed to increased density or height,” said Hansen. “If you’re going to build on top, you set it [new buildings] back far enough so it doesn’t affect the character of the one-story buildings. Office of Planning’s guidelines aren’t quite sensitive to that.”
According to the Office of Planning Connecticut Avenue Development Guidelines, plans have been presented to add to the historic building in Cleveland Park, preserving the original fixture and adding “stepbacks”.
The stepbacks will situate new developments a couple of feet behind the existing building, making the commercial strip look like large steps and preserving the uniqueness of what once was.
“I’m not really in favor of the high rises. Throughout the city, there are neighborhoods that have their own feeling and history. It would be a shame to build everything up like K Street,” said Ellen. “ it’s important to keep the theme alive and not build every city in the country to look the same.”