Lauren Parnell Marino / Flickr

A stretch of 14th Street NW.

The 14th Street NW corridor continues its transformation, as work on luxury condo buildings marches on and announcements of restaurant openings stream in. The older businesses that opened along the strip in the aftermath of the 1968 riots are, one-by-one, closing shop (and getting millions of dollars in exchange for their buildings, if they own them). Some newer businesses are moving, too.

Development comes in waves, from pawn shops to fancier locally-owned businesses, and eventually, to chain retailers. That’s according to a few real estate experts interviewed by The New York Times, who say that 14th Street NW could eventually see its small, albiet upscale businesses, replaced by national chains and junior-sized box stores.

People move into gentrifying neighborhoods partially because they see how it could change, but also because of the unique character of such places. If  national chains come, will a neighborhood lose its desirability among such newcomers? From the Times piece:

One [resident], Tim Christensen, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1989 and is president of the Logan Circle Community Association, wondered about the cost.

“I’ve said before that when the last pawnshop and the last storefront deli leaves 14th Street, I will leave,” he said. “It’s that mixture of the gritty and the upscale that gives the neighborhood a unique character. If one day it’s all gone, I think we will feel a sense of loss.”

Gentrification does indeed come in waves. Some of the first businesses that contribute to the revitalization of a neighborhood can get priced out when turnover is complete. This is especially true for business owners who lease space and have no building to sell; they can become victims of the success they helped to create.

Elahe Izadi / DCentric

A sign on 14th Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW asks "What would you build here?"

Businesses play an important role in the transformation of neighborhoods. A certain restaurant or store can attract newcomers, make a block seem “desirable” or become a gathering spot.

But as it stands now, the public generally doesn’t have a say on what specific businesses open up in their neighborhoods, says developer Ben Miller. Should that vacant storefront be a coffee shop or a pet store?

That’s why Ben Miller and his brother, Dan, started Popularise.com in late 2011. They were trying to figure out what to do with the building they purchased at 1351 H Street NE, and wanted public input. So they posted the project online and asked people to vote on ideas they had already explored or submit suggestions. About 1,000 people responded, and Ben Miller says they’ll announce the final project within a few weeks.

The site is in its early stages and currently features five buildings. People sign up by providing their names and zip codes and can then comment on project ideas or suggest new ones for the featured buildings. Building owners, developers and others then use the feedback as a factor in the eventual outcome, along with economics, construction issues and other things.

“A lot of people aren’t in the process of how neighborhoods get built. They don’t know how decisions get made,” Miller says. “A lot of it can be changed by including lots of people who normally don’t get involved.”

But is targeting an online audience the best way to increase involvement? A persistent digital divide in the District means there’s a good chunk of the population who is not connected, and they’re mostly low-income folks.

Elahe Izadi / DCentric

A large sign for Popularise.com asks passersby to weigh in on what should open at 14th Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW.

Miller says that his website isn’t shutting people out from the conversation, but rather widens it. Real estate development is an “opaque” process, he says. (Ben Miller, 35, grew up in D.C. and his father is well-known developer Herb Miller, whose company had a hand in Gallery Place, Potomac Mills and Washington Harbour).

Often times, few people show up to community meetings and a “very vocal group dominate the discussion. I don’t think they represent the majority,” Miller says. “Most people are busy and don’t have time to wait for hours in church basements. I think this is a much broader and more inclusive process than what [exists] today.”

Still, it’s clear that the website thus far has appealed to a particular demographic. According to the site’s data, the typical user is between 25 and 34 years old, lives near H Street (which makes sense, given their first project’s location) and likes frequenting Little Miss Whiskey‘s and Rock and Roll Hotel. But Miller says the site is essentially a self-organizing tool, and anyone can become part of the process. Community groups in other parts of Northeast have already approached him for help on revitalizing commercial corridors. United House of Prayer, which has helped build affordable housing in the city, is using the site to help develop some of its vacant properties, Miller says.

Miller doesn’t view his website as gentrifying neighborhoods since most of the projects involve vacant or blighted buildings. He calls them “win-win” properties, places people want developed.

For instance, there are few sit-down restaurants east of the Anacostia River, something residents have complained about. Miller says opening nice restaurants there would be an example of growth in an underserved area, not gentrification.

“My experience is everyone wants good schools, good services and a beautiful neighborhood,” Miller says.

hellomarkers! / Flickr

This sculpture is on top of an Anacostia warehouse

On Tuesday, local blog Greater Greater Washington tweeted that the Lumen8Anacostia could signal “a new dawn for Anacostia” and Washington City Paper pondered whether Anacostia could be the next Williamsburg. That sparked a conversation between locals, including Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry, about gentrification, displacement, race and the arts.

We’ve rounded up the conversation here.

Elahe Izadi / DCentric

Downtown Lock Co. (center) has been on 14th Street since 1910. The building has been sold to make way for luxury condominiums along a street that's experiencing rapid redevelopment.

The evolution of 14th Street NW continues with regular announcements of new upscale restaurants and residences opening up along the corridor. But 14th Street wasn’t always the epicenter of fine dining in the District; in recent decades, it was more well-known as a place where drug dealers and prostitutes congregated.

A few older businesses still remain along the strip, but they’re starting to close shop, too. Take Downtown Lock Co. at 1345 14th St. NW, the building sold to make way for five, ultra-luxury condos.

“Back when we were there, the street had a lot of drugs, prostitution, a lot of drifters,” said Downtown Lock Co. co-owner Reuben Houchens. “You had to sort of establish yourself, first of all, that you weren’t afraid to be there. Of course we weren’t. [The way] we grew up, as we used to say, we knew the streets. And you had to basically hold your ground, as far as ‘we’re here and we will only tolerate so much.’ I’m talking about the pimps prostituting the girls, and drugs addicts and drug pushers — you had to be tough.”

Elahe Izadi / DCentric

Work has already begun to transform Downtown Lock Co. on 14th Street NW into luxury condos.

Downtown Lock Co. started as a family business, and had been on 14th Street since 1910. Houchens, 70, is a D.C. native from the H Street NE corridor. He said he grew up in the shop, and recalled how celebrities would stop by from time to time because the locksmith and electronics repair store was one of the few places in the area to be an official service center for Lionel toy trains. Houcheons said senators and people like Johnny Cash and Jerry Lewis would visit during his years working there.

Houcheons and his partners bought the business in the 1970s, along with the building at 1345 14th St. NW. This was shortly after the 1968 riots that destroyed more than 1,000 buildings in D.C.

“Somebody looked [at us] and said, ‘You’re pretty stupid buying that building,’” Houchens recalled. “It turned out to be a good investment for anyone who bought property there.”

A good investment indeed; Houchens said they bought the building for $37,000, and sold it for $2.5 million. Downtown Lock Co. has temporarily relocated to Hyattsville, Md. where space is cheaper, but most of their business remains in the District.

Houchens isn’t bitter about 14th Street’s transformation (perhaps because he profited so handsomely from it). He acknowledged that perhaps some people don’t like the changes because they are afraid that D.C. “is becoming like New York City. Space isn’t available anymore.”

“After being there for so many years, you miss it,” he said. “… But the neighborhood changed for the better. It became a safer place. People thought it was safer to come there.”

zzub nik / Flickr

Author Charles Murray has been criticized and praised for his latest book, “Coming Apart,” in which he argues that white America is in crisis and that the country is divided primarily by class, not by race.

Murray’s argument is that “the super wealthy, super educated and super snobby live in so-called super-ZIP [codes]: cloistered together, with little to no exposure to American culture at large,” reports NewsHour. Murray’s book includes the “bubble quiz,” meant to determine just how out-of-touch respondents may be (and it’s presumably intended for whites).

A caveat to one of the questions may be of particular interest to our readers. The first question states, “Have you ever lived for at least a year in an American neighborhood in which the majority of your fifty nearest neighbors did not have college degrees?” But, the quiz qualifies, it doesn’t count if the neighborhood is gentrified and you’re one of the gentrifiers. In other words, Murray argues, gentrifiers are still in an upper-class bubble, even if they don’t technically live in one. Do you agree? It’s a salient question in D.C., given the number mixed-income neighborhoods.

And you can take the quiz here.

Yeah, that’s all well and good but what usually happens is that the neighborhood improves to the point that poor families can no longer afford to live in it.  The increased tax base continues to attract so-called wealthy people to the neighborhood which decreases the number of poorer families with children.  The new so-called wealthy people benefit more from all of the new facilities, the playgrounds, improved schools, better services, etc… [SIC]

Harold Neal / Flickr

Gentrification is one of the main reasons behind why more poor District children now live in wealthier neighborhoods. Such neighborhood revitalization, which brings along amenities that children can benefit from, also increases property values. As a result, low- and moderate-income families renting at market rates may get priced out.

Those living in public housing, however, could be somewhat buffered by the negative impact of rapid gentrification, since rents remain steady. Take Columbia Heights, where public housing apartments are on the same block as million dollar homes. But good luck to anyone seeking public housing — the waiting for affordable housing vouchers in the District has swelled to more than 37,000-people long.

Hawkins / Flickr

Columbia Heights is an economicaly diverse neighborhood, home to luxury high-rises and public housing.

Researchers have long noted the ills of growing up in a neighborhood of concentrated poverty — graduation rates are higher lower, access to healthy food is more limited and violence is more common.

“Neighborhoods of concentrated poverty are really hard on children,” said Gwen Rubenstein, deputy director of DC Action for Children, who ran the recent Kids Count report that found that concentrated poverty has dropped in D.C. She noted that children from upper and middle class families who live in high-poverty neighborhoods have an increased chance of being poor as adults.

But do poor children benefit if they live in neighborhoods of concentrated wealth? It’s a question that hasn’t been explored much in D.C. but one worth asking, given that the city’s childhood poverty remains high — one in three District children lives below the poverty line. At the same time, fewer kids live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty now than a decade ago, but it’s not because their families are faring better. Rather, as more affluent people moved into neighborhoods that once had high poverty rates, more poor children are finding their neighborhoods transformed into wealthier places.

There’s a reluctance “to talk about concentrated privilege,” Rubenstein said. “Areas of concentrated privilege and poverty — we need to be talking about it and what it means for a community.”

One way children could benefit from having wealthier neighbors is through an increasing tax base — if more affluent people live in the city, that means more tax money is coming in, which could potentially be used for schools and services benefiting low-income kids. Living in communities with affluent neighbors could also mean more amenities, better-resourced parks and increased transportation options, Rubenstein noted.

“There are ways that more income diversity is better for all kids,” she said. But Rubenstein is quick to note that such increased income diversity hasn’t made a dent in how many kids are living in poverty; while the city’s median income has increased by 12 percent, “childhood poverty barely moved.” And for those families, paying for housing, food and healthcare remains a challenge.

Perhaps a better way to measure how children are faring is by looking at a neighborhood’s median income, a figure that isn’t skewed by a few people making a lot or little money. In 2003, researchers with the non-profit RAND corporation examined the impact of concentrated poverty and concentrated wealth on kids in school. They found that children’s reading and math scores were more likely to be affected by how high or low a neighborhood’s median income is rather than whether they lived in neighborhoods with pockets of wealth or poverty.

So we wondered: is gentrification much different when gentrifiers aren’t white, so much so that it requires its own term?

Alex Baca tweeted that having a separate word for this kind of gentrification is unnecessary:

It's class-based. Don't need fancy names. RT @elaheizadi On gentrification & rhetoric when non-whites are gentrifiers http://t.co/IrO6Et65

January 11, 2012 2:06 pm via Tweetie for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@alexbaca

alexbaca

But others argued that gentrification by non-whites does have different implications for neighborhoods. Commenter Gente Negra, wrote:

I have witnesses this phenomena in Orlando, and Miami, in which upper class and affluent African Americans are revitalizing [sp] formerly blighted areas which were once Historically African American communities. In the Orlando Parramore district they have relocated FAMU (an HBCU) Law School, renovated an African American history Museum, built a mixed income housing complex, and relocated the Orlando Magic stadium. Unlike the case when city developers destroyed the Parramore in Orlando, and Overtown in Miami, with I-4 and I-95 respectively. This new form of gentrification and [African American] led gentrification seems to be more sensitive to the preservation of the historical nature of the surrounding areas.

In D.C., gentrification by whites hasn’t necessarily come at the cost of completely wiping out a neighborhood’s history. In some instances, the renewed investment has helped to preserve it. For example, the historic Howard Theatre in Shaw is being renovated at the same time the neighborhood is being gentrified. Honoring a neighborhood’s history can also come with smaller gestures; on H Street NE, restauranteur Joe Englert named one of his restaurants Granville Moore’s as a nod to the building’s former occupant, a renowned African American doctor in the 1950s. Englert told the Washington Post that knowing the building’s history gives “the neighborhood a depth and it shows that these main streets didn’t just spring from the head of Zeus.”

But what kind of impact does paying such homage to the past have on longtime residents, some of whom may be getting priced out of their neighborhoods? Another DCentric commenter wrote:

What’s your take: what does gentrification by non-whites look like? Is gentrification all the same, no matter the race of the gentrifier?

Brandon Anderson / Flickr

D.C. was once called “Murder Capital.” In 1991, at the height of the crack epidemic, 479 people were murdered. But the end of 2011 brought good news: the number of homicides in D.C. had reached a 50-year low. The Washington Post reported that meanwhile, Prince George’s County experienced a slight increase in its number of murders, and that D.C.’s poorer residents moving into the county have taken neighborhood disputes and other issues with them, contributing to the uptick in crime.

Given the city’s demographic changes, a number of people are pointing to one reason in particular: gentrification. The narrative seems logical enough: violent crime tends to be higher in poorer neighborhoods, and demographic changes have left D.C. a wealthier city. That may make sense in D.C. neighborhoods where there has been gentrification. But it doesn’t fit when examining District communities that have historically had the most homicides and the highest poverty rates.

Since 1990, the percentage of people living in poverty has remained relatively stable or slightly increased in the east of the Anacostia River communities, places which also experienced the biggest recent decreases in murders. The number of murders dropped by 55 percent in 2011 in the police’s 7th District, where more than one-third of people live below the poverty line, according to census estimates. In 1990, about 28 percent of residents there were impoverished.

In recent decades, many people moving out of east of the river communities settled in Prince George’s County. But those individuals who were moving weren’t the poorest people in their communities, and they didn’t leave because of gentrification, according to demographer Roderick J. Harrison. Many moved to the suburbs because they could afford to and they were getting more for their money further away from the city.

What does explain the drop in murders east of the river? For one, violent crime nationwide is on the decline, and the exact reasons aren’t fully known.

“I don’t think anybody can say exactly what it is,” D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier says of dropping crime in D.C. “But I disagree that the demographics and the economic development is solely responsible. I think it contributes to our overall fight of crime but it is just one of many, many things.”

She continues: “East of the river is where we’ve seen the most success and there’s been very little [demographic or economic] change in that area of the city.”

Chief Lanier does cite a few reasons she believes contributed to the drop in of east of the river murders: a more coordinated policing effort; the addition of 100 patrol officers to those communities; and almost all of the Metropolitan Police Department’s specialty units focusing on violent crimes and offenders in the department’s 7th District.

“The other thing that I think is 50 percent responsible is that the community over there has been absolutely tremendous in terms of working with police,” Chief Lanier says. “That has historically not been the case. We had to go out there and really build relationships with people in the neighborhood. They have to trust us.”

Elvert Barnes / Flickr

Stan's has been on H Street Northeast since 1978.

The H Street Northeast corridor has plenty of new bars and restaurants that draw evening crowds, but the area is low on daytime foot traffic. A new grant program is intended to change that by boosting the corridor’s retail options.

In the past, we’ve written about the $1.25 million grant program and about some fears that businesses catering to newer and wealthier clientele would benefit rather than longtime businesses. The grant was made available to new or existing businesses, as long as they weren’t restaurants, bars, liquor stores, hair salons or barbershops.

The first round of winners were announced Wednesday morning. They include Bikram Yoga Capitol Hill, H Street Care Pharmacy and Wellness Center and The C.A.T. Walk Boutique, all of which opened along the corridor between 2006 and 2010. That may lead to easy charges that the program is benefiting newer businesses over older ones. But also winning a grant: Stan’s Inc., a clothing store that has been in D.C. since 1947 and on H Street since 1978. DCist reports that owner Leon Robbins will renovate the store and expand its clothing line using the $85,000 award.

Stan’s is one of H Street’s last remaining clothiers, stores that have operated on the corridor in the aftermath of the 1968 riots. These stores cater to an older, African-American male clientele. But they’ve suffered setbacks in recent years: the recession, streetcar construction and demographic changes. In 2010, Robbins told the Washington City Paper that his business has been declining since 2000. “Customers are richer than before,” Robbins said. “My customers used to only own the shirt on their backs, that’s why they had to look so good.”

Other businesses can still benefit from the grant program. Another round of applicants are under review and there may be a third round of awards, as well.