Benning Station's Star Tenant Two Months From Big Move..To Near Southeast

The newly renovated Washington Star building in Southeast -soon to be CFSA headquarters. (From JDLand.com)

[May 11, 2012, Washington, D.C.]
Today, D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, once slated for a move next door to the Benning Road Metrorail Station, has confirmed it will be moving into a newly renovated, Near Southeast building that once headquartered the Washington Star newspaper, this August -right on schedule.  When all the vans have been unloaded, the lights switched on and computers set-up in the old Star offices, Benning area and East-of-river residents will surely recall the big move's one, silent casualty: the $108 million mixed-use Benning Station project, gutted and left for dead in 2010, by the D.C. Office of Property Management ex-director, Robin-Eve Jasper.

In 2009, the real estate blog, DC Mud, reported that developer and Fenty Administration friend, Ben Soto, had invested eleven million dollars into pre-development of Benning Station, which stood to introduce the popular TGI Fridays restaurants to the River East area.  Conveniently, Jasper, now president of the No'Ma Business District, was rushing through relocation of CFSA to [Guess where!] ..NoMa, just before the Vincent Gray Administration replaced her in 2011 (as reported by Mike Debonis reported in the Washington Post).

I cannot help but think how unfair it is that the east-of-river Benning neighborhood, an area of Northeast Washington that has so little commercial development, was cheated out of having D.C. Child and Family Services headquartered, at promising, unrealized Benning Station.  While Jasper insisted that CFSA should move into a finished building, already being leased by the D.C. Government, ..we now see it, under the Gray Administration, moving into a building that took millions of local tax dollars to renovate.  Now, mere two months from CFSA's move, one cannot help, but wonder if the 'ready building' demands that Ms. Jasper used to justify keeping it out of the development-starved Benning neighborhood ever really had any merit.

 

 CFSA, as it might have looked, headquartered at Benning Station, in River East. (From Bonstra.com)

Just the same, as a proud and long-standing River Easter, I can't help but smile at how poetic it is, that, in spite of NoMa President Jasper's machinations, ..her neighborhood won't be getting CFSA, either.

While it is hardly news that the D.C. Child and Family Services Administration will move from its present location in Southwest to the old, long-abandoned Washington Star building, it is significant that, in the span of a year, it is happening, right on schedule, ..somewhere other than Benning.  It should be significant to residents of Benning and of River East, because Benning Station, in one form or another, has been in the planning/development pipeline for over TEN years, ..and they are still waiting for their opportunity to join a new D.C. we all see stretching into the sky, like a bright, shiny rocket!

Its hopeful, red glare, ..dimming.

Get more details, here.

Mel Dyer