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Lipstick On A Pig: How D.C. And The Downtown BID Tried To Mask A Dre

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  • Lipstick On A Pig: How D.C. And The Downtown BID Tried To Mask A Dre

    LIPSTICK ON A PIG: HOW D.C. AND THE DOWNTOWN BID TRIED TO MASK A DREARY CORNER

    Washington Business Journal, DC
    Nov 12 2014

    Nov 12, 2014, 2:54pm EST\\

    Michael NeibauerStaff Reporter- Washington Business JournalEmail
    | Twitter

    At the corner of 14th and G streets NW, in the heart of downtown D.C.,
    a historic bank building sits vacant, and there's little the District
    can do except try to mask it -- and tax the heck out of it.

    The Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District, in coordination with
    the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, has installed a
    fence outside the Federal-American National Bank (also known as the
    National Bank of Washington) and wrapped that fence in a colorful
    banner advertising downtown commerce.

    "It just looks so blah, for lack of a better really good PR term,"
    Karyn Le Blanc, Downtown D.C. spokeswoman, said of the bank, which
    was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.

    DCRA put up the fence, Le Blanc said, and the BID installed the banner
    "just to liven up that corner with a little bit of color."

    The banner doesn't hide the bank building, but it does at least draw
    the public's attention away from what has become a blighted corner.

    This is what the District can do, given the stalled effort by the bank
    building's owner, the Minneapolis-based Cafesjian Family Foundation, to
    redevelop the property into the Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial.

    The building was sold to the Armenian Assembly of America in 2000
    for $7.25 million, using funds provided by multiple donors, including
    $4 million from the Cafesjian Family Foundation. The museum project
    faltered, and under a complex real estate arrangement, the building's
    ownership reverted to the foundation as of Dec. 31, 2010. Years of
    litigation between wealthy publisher and philanthropist Gerard L.

    Cafesjian (who has since died) and the Armenian Assembly was finally
    settled in July by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

    "This legal saga has been long-lived," Judge Robert Wilkins wrote in
    the July 15 decision, on behalf of a three-judge panel. "What began
    as a single lawsuit to collect on an unpaid promissory note quickly
    escalated into a morass of litigation. More than seven years and
    millions of dollars in legal fees later, much of the parties' work
    to achieve their dream of a museum appears to have been for naught,
    which is regrettable. Whatever happens next, hopefully our decision
    today can at least serve as the last word on this dispute's protracted
    journey through the courts."

    What happens next may be a massive tax hike. The Cafesjian foundation
    paid $393,363 in real estate taxes this year for the bank building
    and four adjacent G Street properties (1336, 1338, 1340 and 1342),
    three of which were recently razed.

    The bank building is currently taxed by the District at the Class 2,
    standard commercial rate. But now that the litigation is complete,
    the District is free to raise the rate to either the vacant tax level
    ($5 per $100 of assessed value) or the blighted level ($10 per $100
    of assessed value), so long as the building isn't for sale or under
    renovation. D.C. Councilman Jack Evans, D-Ward 2, said Wednesday he
    will ask the tax office to "investigate the status of that property
    and implement the tax laws accordingly."

    "We want to force whoever owns that now to fix it up," said Evans, who
    represents downtown and chairs the Committee on Finance and Revenue.

    "It is unacceptable any longer to have a prime real estate corner
    like that in the condition it is and has been so long in downtown
    Washington given the progress we've made."

    At $5, the bank building tax bill would soar from $123,240 in 2014
    to $359,777 in 2015. At $10, the foundation would be hit with a
    $719,555 levy. The Cafesjian Family Foundation has not returned calls
    for comment.

    All of this effort to jump-start the revitalization of a building
    that is certainly worth saving. From the 1994 application for historic
    designation:

    It is an excellent example of early-twentieth-century Classical Revival
    bank architecture, designed by the nationally prominent bank and
    skyscraper architect Alfred C. Bossom, in association with J.H. de
    Sibour, the distinguished Washington architect who was among the
    city's leading proponents of Beaux-Arts principles. It is the only
    building designed by Bossom in Washington, and exemplifies many of
    the best characteristics of the forty banks he designed around the
    country between 1912 and 1926.

    The building epitomizes the striving of a 1920s financial institution
    to express its financial prowess through a distinctive building. It
    also illustrates the dangerous tendency, typical of the period,
    for some banks to over-invest in lavish building campaigns, to the
    detriment of their financial stability. The building's subsequent
    history as the main office of a newly constituted Depression-era bank,
    the Hamilton National Bank, and a much larger financial institution,
    the National Bank of Washington, demonstrates its sustained appeal
    as a banking headquarters.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2014/11/lipstick-on-a-pig-how-d-c-and-the-downtown-bid.html?page=all

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