The Washington Post concluded a lengthy two-part examination of the changes in my neighborhood today. While the developments are hardly news to those of us who have been living here for some years – and really to anyone who has any interest in the real estate in this area – that this appeared on the front page (slow news week?) and that it comes on the heels of last week’s WP report on the slow-down of the market (In Shaw, as always, has apt comments on that) is worth noting. I don’t think things are really going to cool off in DC, at least in my area, that much.

Wonkette provides excellent snark on the piece:

"Real Estate Boom: Armageddon Apartments? Recent reports that the area real estate market is finally cooling probably have a lot of worried investors looking to God, but only Pastor Theresa Garrison of the Church of the Rapture got an early direct line: "Garrison always says that God channels his wishes through her, and when He said, 'Sell,' it was near the peak of a commercial real estate boom on 14th Street." The Washington Post has been reporting on the gentrification of the corner of 14th and T, and the sale of the 30-year-old church was a watershed moment in letting loose the flood of urban settlers. At first -- in a nod to the church's legacy -- the luxury apartments were to be called "Rapture Lofts." Developers then thought about the target demo a little more closely. It will be called "T Street Flats." Garrison is pleased with the name change: "See, I found out that the rent is gonna be so high that only the rich homosexuals and lesbians will be able to buy this condominium." And bad news for bargain hunters: In case of rapture, these lofts will remain occupied."

Speaking of churches and gentrification in the neighborhood, there is a charming ministry on my little (and almost completely yuppified within the last four years) rowhouse street, which has a small but still active (and absolutely non-obtrusive) congregation and I would hate to see it go. Hell, I can’t even afford to live here and I don’t even have a flock! I’m sure the hawks are circling down on that property ready to pounce, especially since it has unique curb appeal!

I’m surprised there isn’t more blog commentary and activity on these WP post stories. Maybe folks, like me, are just deadened by the climate of greed around here.

I spent more time in Baltimore last week and I learned not to say I’m from DC when I’m there – even though my plans are to live AND work there - Charm City residents seem mighty pissed at the surge of Washington commuters who are driving up their real estate values.

Anyways, here are links to the WP series, which is quite interesting even though the stories are overly-familiar to people like me, and also to a visual neighborhood panorama which they seem awfully proud of.

One Urban Panorama Fades, Another Rises (Part One) here.

A Boom Giveth, and It Taketh Away (Part Two) here.

Clever panomrama here.

Full article text after the jump:

One Urban Panorama Fades, Another Rises Church of the Rapture and Paradise Liquor are Washington relics. As the future moves in, they prepare to leave their corner behind. The first of two parts. By Anne Hull Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, November 13, 2005; A01 On the second floor of a battered building on the corner of 14th and T streets NW, more than 300 worshipers are caught in the driving syncopation of drums and organ. Church of the Rapture has occupied this corner for three decades. Beyond the doors of the Pentecostal storefront, the sun is out and the iPod people walk by. A real estate agent hammers in a "For Sale" sign pointing to a T Street rowhouse that six years ago sold for $282,000 but now has granite counters and is going for $839,000. Upstairs in the church, the music oscillates, and the worshipers are out of their seats, some so deep in the spirit that their shouts of "Yes, Jesus" and "Hallelujah" become bursts of unrecognizable syllables. "I thank God for this church and we can express ourselves," a pastor says when the music quiets. "No one to pull your coattail and make you sit down. We are in a beautiful place, saints, free as a bird flying over this building. No one will hinder us. I see prosperity all over the church." Not only spiritual prosperity. The church that started with nothing more than a sweat-stained tambourine and a small group of followers had just sold its property for $10 million. Its pastor and founder, known to her congregation as the Honorable Doctor Theresa Garrison, a high school dropout with prophecies and visions, closed one of the most lucrative deals in the 14th Street real estate boom. Church of the Rapture was going condo. How much longer would Paradise Liquor be holding down the other corner? The grimy package liquor store is where $2 half-pints of Velicoff are shelved behind bulletproof glass and the customers have names like Bo-Bo, Snipe, Jerome, Miss Brenda, Koo-Koo and Peanut. Now Koo-Koo is standing at the counter next to a young blond man who's asking for fresh limes. "Fresh limes!" says manager David Lee. "These people are so picky! Nothing is good enough like it is." Church of the Rapture and Paradise Liquor are two stubborn relics from a bygone era of a bygone city. This year, after decades of sharing the same tattered geography, both decided it was time to go. The future of the neighborhood stared at them from across the street: the steel-cut letters that said "Saint-Ex" and smoked glass windows that revealed a bistro crowded with white people. Soon there will be luxury lofts in the spot where Pastor Garrison hollers about the end days, a prediction that in one sense is coming absolutely true. * * * It has been more than a decade since the crosswinds of urban renewal started blowing across Shaw, once the crown jewel of black Washington that slipped into blight and is now being re-imagined by baristas and purveyors of tapas. Race and class are colliding on dozens of other blocks in a city where demographics are shifting by the month, but 14th and T represents something else: that split-second before the curtain drops on one era and rises on another. This corner has turned before. The young Duke Ellington used to carry his sheet music here in 1917 as he rounded for home at 1816 13th St. In the 1940s, the Sunny South Market was a corner grocer that catered to the working-class and Howard University faculty members who lived nearby. On the other corner stood Club Bali, where Billie Holliday played, and all along the side streets, tea lights were strung in backyard gardens in makeshift after-hours clubs. History turned again on a balmy night in April 1968 when the radio at Peoples Drug Store on 14th and U announced that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. It was a block south, near 14th and T, that some of the first store windows were smashed, unleashing days of rioting that left 95 businesses destroyed in black Washington's commercial Mecca. After the riots, 14th and T was a boarded-up marketplace for heroin and numbers. The beautiful Bali club operated as Jack's Lounge until 1976, when the owner was slain in his back office. Heroin gave way to crack cocaine. Prostitutes worked out of the second floor of the liquor store building. It was hard to imagine that Sarah Vaughan had once sung "A Night in Tunisia" here. Garrison called it "Sodom and Gomorrah" when she bought the building on the southwest corner in 1974 and made it her church. Arena Stage bought the Bali building in 1985 to use for its Living Stage theater company. In the late 1980s, urban pioneers began snapping up nearby houses at rock-bottom prices, and multigenerational black families were suddenly neighbors with white gay men and other bargain hunters, a demographic trend that only gathered in strength. In a 10-year period, housing costs doubled, then tripled. Fourteenth and T remained essentially untouched until 2003, when Cafe Saint-Ex arrived, bringing Dutch lager to a crossroads that was home to the 40-ounce. Replacing an Ethiopian restaurant and Laval's Good Food To Go, Saint-Ex was a cause for celebration for some, an elegy for others. "It was like Saint-Ex was putting its flag down on the moon," says Rachael Storey, a documentary filmmaker who lives nearby and misses Laval's. Now, the conversion from rough-and-tumble intersection to a smooth-blend urban utopia is in full gear. On a recent afternoon, in the swirl of a single moment: "MAYOR WILLIAMS IS A SELL-OUT," someone has written in pink chalk on the sidewalk on 14th, a frequent refrain of those who accuse the mayor of giving away the city to real estate developers. Brownie and Daisy troops are holding camp at Church of the Rapture while they still can. The rhythms of Latin cumbias bounce down the alley from a mechanic's garage, and a car with fender-rattling hip-hop pulls up to the curb outside Paradise Liquor. The packed No. 52 bus door opens, and the driver shouts for his passengers to get back and make way for new ones. Crossing at the light is a ragtag youth baseball team wearing T-shirts that say "The Art of Hustle." Dropping mitts and blowing bubbles as they pass the sleek new furniture boutique with a $4,000 couch in the window, they are herded home by their coach, 19-year-old Jeremy Drummond. "Y'all keep acting like this, and y'all can just write off McDonald's," he shouts. Drummond, a sophomore at Temple University in Philadelphia, has lived in the neighborhood most of his life. "It seems every time I come home from school, there's a new high-rise going up. A lot of families have moved away." Burning in the sky above is the Church of the Rapture sign, illustrated with a cross and the flames of hell, shouting: "NOW! IT IS TIME TO COME TO CHURCH AND TO GOD." Blinking back at the church is the liquor store sign that says, "Welcome to Paradise." * * * At Church of the Rapture one Sunday morning, the blinds are partially closed against 14th Street below. Rows of good church shoes sink into the seafoam green carpet. On the pulpit there are three ornately carved chairs, but they are rarely used. The pastors sit down with the people, which is why members love this church. Many describe themselves as "country people" though they live in places such as Forrestville and drive Ford Explorers. What they mean is that Church of the Rapture is the roots of who they are. Services last five hours. The drummer keeps a gallon jug of water at his feet, pounding out a military beat unique to Church of the Rapture. The music ranges from old-timey gospel to Christian contemporary to a free-form frenzy. The service thrives on the unexpected. On this morning, Brother Irving is called to testify. He is wearing a royal blue suit. He is deep in prayer, and then the spirit takes over and he hops across the carpet on his invisible pogo stick. Four men surround him, a circle of safety to make sure he doesn't hurt himself. The organ pounds and someone grabs a tambourine. Chairs empty and a swirl of human passion erupts: heads thrown back, tears streaming, people shaking and clenching their fists. Mr. Robinson, the quiet doorman, shouts "Hallelujah" in a high, broken voice, and Minister Darryl comes over and tenderly wipes his face with a handkerchief. Two D.C. paramedics arrive and take a woman out on a stretcher. Children doze peacefully. Brother Irving returns to the front, his white cuffs peeking from his blue suit as he raises his hands, flattening his palms in the air as if against some imaginary window pane. "Deliverance is in the building," he announces. Garrison is out sick, so her husband, Lawrence, does the preaching. Even when she misses church, she keeps an Oz-like presence over the congregation, issuing decrees through her co-pastors. One day she sends word that all women should wear stockings to church. This morning, her husband merely mentions her name and the congregation applauds. Garrison grew up in the District's Clay Terrace public housing, where as a teenager she preached at tent revivals and in church basements. In 1967, she started the Free Evangelistic Church on the corner of Eighth and G streets SE near the Marine barracks, one of the first female preachers in the city. Her style was raspy and ferocious, and her big wide eyes intensified the experience. In 1974, Garrison shocked her congregation when she announced that they were moving across town to 14th and T. "People said, 'Fourteenth and T, are you crazy?'" Althea Jackson remembers. "You just didn't come up here, especially at night." But Garrison convinced her congregation that they were missionaries and there were souls to save. The church paid $220,000 for the old Adams-Burch restaurant supply company building. From 14th and T, Garrison began broadcasting the Freedom Revival Hour on WYBC-AM. Men sat on one side and women on the other, with Garrison up front, her straightened hair flipped low over her forehead, her sermons full of pragmatic prayers for the federal city. "God, I want to be a GS-14," she preached during one of her broadcasts. In those days, some members lived close enough to walk to church or take the bus. Others were joining the exodus to the Maryland suburbs. In 2000, as the real estate market surged, Garrison considered selling the church but decided instead to stay and renovate. Problems followed with contractors and a pastor who took money. The church struggled with debt. Parking grew worse as boutiques opened on 14th. During Thursday-night prayer services, the Black Cat nightclub across 14th was rocking just as hard as the church. Garrison's preaching against homosexuality was no longer theoretical; the neighborhood had become one of the gayest in the city. Garrison put the church on the market and sold last spring. As the search for a new property begins, the congregation is spared details, but tantalizing hints are dropped during services. "I see where we've been, and I seen where we are going," says Charlton Woodyard, who is involved in the sale of the church and the search for a new location. "When you see where we are going, whoo-whee, this is a new day!" The churchgoers are frozen in a humble, working-class mindset. At collection time, the organ plays softly as Pastor Penny takes the microphone and urges, "Give what you can, saints, and if you can't give, just touch the basket." When church is over at 2 or 3 on a Sunday afternoon, they pour out onto the 14th Street sidewalk, holding keys and Bibles, in no hurry to go. Most of the license plates are from Maryland. For many, Church of the Rapture is their last tie to the city. "It's going to be unbelievable when we ride through here," says Theresa Reliford. "'Oh, there was our church, and look at it now.'" Some of the children run up to the KFC on the corner. A man in a three-piece suit with slicked-down hair walks past the Sunday brunchers at Cafe Saint-Ex eating organic eggs and polenta and then past a male couple walking arm in arm. Woodyard is not sentimental about leaving. "D.C. had a lot of black churches back in the day," he says. "It's not that way anymore. It's a business now. This is an occupied territory." * * * Friday afternoon at Paradise is like the old days. The bell on the door jingles madly and customers are lined up at the check-cashing window. A woman with "Daddy's Girl" tattooed across the back of her neck wants two Red Bulls and a pack of Capris. At the far end of the counter, a woman in a pressed nurse's uniform purchases two money orders and two postage stamps. Alfredo from the used car lot across 14th comes in wearing his mirrored sunglasses, leaning down toward the opening in the bulletproof glass, flashing three fingers and whispering in his Spanish accent, "I got a Honda Accord, man, just for you." Inside Paradise, the linoleum floor is peeling up in hunks. Kids throw their bikes in the doorway when they come in to buy cold drinks after school. Trembling hands peel off a few bills to pay for a fifth of gin. This is David Lee's turf. For eight years, he has been crammed behind the bulletproof glass with Prince Albert's Cherry Vanilla, Slim Jims, aspirin, phone cards, Ensure, Snickers bars, Philly Blunts, batteries, peach snuff and studded condoms. Lee was born in Korea but grew up in his parents' corner store in a low-income black neighborhood in Chicago, which explains his Asian homeboy dialect. He wears his hat cocked and his Nikes beaming white. He lives in an apartment in Annandale with his wife and a new baby, but Paradise is home. Lee describes the early years as "a pay-per-view special." Back then, he would leave the window to fight when someone challenged him. Now he is 41 with a bum leg, and the world beyond the bulletproof glass has become unrecognizable. Not long ago, he observed several dogs being led around by one person. Someone explained the concept of dog walkers to him. "Like a human babysitter," he says, bewildered. "That's when I know this neighborhood is really going down the hill." Paradise received its formal death sentence last year when a new landlord bought the rundown building for $900,000, raising the monthly rent from $2,460 to $8,000, an impossible increase for Byung In Min, the owner of Paradise. His 10-year lease expires this fall. The beginning of the end really started two years ago when the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission and others who live nearby -- sick of public urination, drunks sleeping in the grass and empty half-pint bottles glittering in the gutters -- presented Paradise with a 22-point voluntary agreement. Lee couldn't believe the clout of the neighborhood group. Basically, Paradise had to give up its ghetto ways or lose its liquor license. The three-page agreement put it this way: "Licensee agrees to attempt to better serve the needs of the neighborhood residents by selling upgraded, quality products including but not limited to corked wines, juice mixers and other food products, etc." The list of demands called for Paradise to stop selling single beers, single cigarettes, rolling papers and to-go cups. No more cheap black shopping bags. One of the neighbors brought Lee a bag from a Dupont Circle wine store as an example. Lee says the loss of single-beer sales -- the 40-ounce in particular -- severely cut into profits. Longtime customers accused Lee of turning his back on them. "They tell me, 'Oh, you trying to be with them high-class white people now,' " he says. To entice the upscale market, Lee started ordering imported beers he had never heard of, $12 bottles of wines with corks, and single-malt Scotches such as Dalwhinnie for $39.99. He brought in Tia Maria coffee liqueur gift sets. But higher-end customers failed to materialize in large enough numbers. Residents such as Louis Patierno, a mortgage broker who lives a block away, patronize stores that have adapted to the new flavor of the neighborhood, such as the Whitelaw Market on 13th and T, which started stocking Ben & Jerry's ice cream and better wine and listened to Patierno's request for "more table crackers, less pork rinds, please." Lee refuses to take down his bulletproof glass, another request the beautification people wanted. Still too dangerous. So for nine hours a day, he works the area of a gangplank with two helpers. At the far window, Sang Choi runs the lottery machine. Customers are convinced that the bespectacled Choi is gifted with numbers. "No, I want him to do it," a customer insists, pointing to Choi. And there is Nega Mengisto, an Eritrean employee whose halting grasp of English includes phrases such as "Hennessy Privilege." Business is so slow in the afternoons that they sometime just stare at one another. The priestly Choi paces the gangplank with his hands folded behind him. Lee chain-smokes. Mengisto, wearing the Hypnotiq T-shirt a liquor salesman gave him, stocks the cooler with pints of Christian Brothers for the after-work rush. With time running out on 14th and T, the owner of Paradise spends his days searching the District and Maryland for a new location, somewhere deeper into the urban neighborhood not yet touched by gentrification. "Me and black people, we kick it off better," Lee says. "'Thank you, baby,' this and that. Whites, I don't know how to approach these people or serve these people. I get this feeling I'm doing something wrong. Maybe it's my own self-conscious. I say, 'hello' or 'thank you.' There is no expression on their face." One day a young man comes in and says, "We're making mojitos." Lee is prepared for this moment. He holds up a small green plastic lime with a twist-off cap. The man pauses. "I guess that'll work." * * * When Mike Benson opened Cafe Saint-Ex two years ago, he loved the idea of starting a bar around the corner from where Duke Ellington lived. Benson envisioned a place where musicians, artists, bartenders, punks, lawyers and bicycle messengers could hang out on a corner as they do on St. Marks Place in the New York's East Village. The dream came true, for about five minutes. Now the changes that Benson helped ignite on 14th and T are obliterating his original vision. He watches a parade of cabs pull up to his bar and drop off customers in spaghetti-strap dresses. Real estate listings use the bar as bait ("Within walking distance of Cafe Saint-Ex.") for the new lofts and condos going up all around. Saint-Ex is being visited by a khaki aesthetic. "The bridge and tunnel crowd," as one waitress calls them. The people from Reston. But guess what, says John Snellgrove, the general manager, who one Saturday night is checking ID's at the door. They aren't coming from Reston. "They all live here now." To combat the influx of suburbia, Saint-Ex discontinued its trendy Pabst Blue Ribbon nights. Benson wants the deejays downstairs to keep playing his favorite Manchester Brit pop instead of the crowd-packing hip-hop. The art school graduate is 6-foot-3 and wears combat boots and a modified Mohawk. At 39, he looks like a Sex Pistol by way of Chapel Hill. His employees lean toward tattoos, motorcycle chains and arty black glasses, and on their breaks, they read books entitled "21st Century Modernism: The 'New' Poetics." When Benson and his wife, a lawyer, moved to the neighborhood in 1997, he saw that culinary choices below U Street were limited to $7 Salvadoran or soul food dinners and African restaurants with gambling and khat-chewing on the down-low. No one had yet served up the bowl of garlicky mussels and frites that the newcomers were craving. Hip retailers had already opened south on 14th, Home Rule being the first in 1999. On the southeast corner of 14th and T was the red-brick glory of the former Sunny South Market from the 1940s. Benson became interested in the space in 2002 when it was occupied by an Ethiopian restaurant. He approached the owner about buying his lease. So perilous were the racial sensitivities about white interlopers taking property that Lawrence Guyot, a community activist, went to see the restaurant owner. "I wanted to make sure the black man was not forced out," Guyot recalls. "I got that in writing. He was not forced out." Using his house as collateral, Benson borrowed $200,000 and strung together a group of investors, including a handful of bartenders, some pitching in as little as $5,000. They dug out the basement and worked around the clock, going seriously over budget renovating the building. Benson wanted his place to look like one of the old cavern bars along the Seine River in Paris and would name it after the French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery. On opening night, their assets drained, one investor ran across the street to Paradise Liquor to buy four bottles of Stoli and four bottles of Absolut, maxing out the last available dollars on his credit card. Opening night was a smash. Now one of the developers for the Church of the Rapture loft project has approached Benson about opening a bar in the ground floor of the condo. Benson shrugs. "I'd rather that be the case than another Starbucks." One night at Saint-Ex, someone leaves a flier on a table that says "Save Our Black Neighborhoods." The flier calls Ward 1 council member Jim Graham "Gramzilla, the black business killa" and says Graham is trying to "destroy our beloved Black neighborhoods and families." The next afternoon, the flier sits on the bar in front of bartender Demetrios Tsiptsis. "Cities cannot be ghettos anymore," Tsiptsis says. "It's not feasible. I always tell people, 10 years ago this was a ghetto. Years before that, it was a thriving black community. Years before that it was occupied by whites, and before that, Indians." "Gimme two Stella Artois," a guy says, pulling out a platinum United Airlines credit card. Liz Phair's "Whip-Smart" is playing on the iPod mix. A large chalkboard displays the handwritten names of epicurean beers: Tilburg Dutch Brown, Coniston Bluebird Bitter. The flier just sits there, unnoticed among the clink of glasses inside Saint-Ex. Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report. © 2005 The Washington Post Company A Boom Giveth, and It Taketh Away Church of the Rapture, Paradise Liquor and the owner of Cafe Saint-Ex look beyond their corner for a place to be pioneers again. The second of two parts. By Anne Hull Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, November 14, 2005; A01 When Church of the Rapture sells for $10 million this year, the Pentecostal storefront on the corner of 14th and T streets NW hits the jackpot. Pastor Theresa Garrison always says that God channels his wishes through her, and when He said, "Sell," it was near the peak of a commercial real estate boom on 14th Street. The buyer is the West Group Development Co., a behemoth developer from McLean, in partnership with Ellis Development Group in the District. The West Group built Tysons Corner. Although the chief executive of the Ellis company, Chip Ellis, has no sprawling office parks on his rsum, he brings another asset. He was born in Shaw, the historic soul of black Washington and right where the development team hopes to convert a black church into half-million-dollar condos. Church of the Rapture also has a share in the deal, and to make sure that three decades of shouting down Satan at 14th and T won't be forgotten, the 40-unit development would be called Rapture Lofts. Like a veil lifting on the future, the blueprints reveal the dramatic remaking of the corner: glamorous industrial lofts of glass and steel with underground parking and first-floor retail. To test the community's support, the developers hold a meeting in the church. There is no lament for the loss of the church. Nearly every question from the mostly white audience involves parking, construction inconveniences and what kind of restaurant might go in the ground floor. The first official hurdle is the District's Histor- ic Preservation Review Board. The hodgepodge-painted Church of the Rapture building was an auto showroom built in 1919. A smaller adjoining structure also owned by the church was one of the city's first department stores that catered to African Americans. Both buildings are in the Greater U Street Historic District. Besides dealing in the arcana of corbelled cornices, the preservation review board has the authority to limit the height and scale of construction. The idea that 11 preservationists could hinder the development team's profits angers Charlton Woodyard, a church member who wants the lofts to go as high as possible for maximum financial return. "If you can't make money, what good is that gonna be?" Woodyard asks. "Now they are talking 'Historic Anacostia.' Where were you when we needed you? When guns were splayed and people were dying?" To woo the review board, the developers put together some heavy street credibility. Architect Suman Sorg has transformed other buildings on 14th, including another auto showroom. Emily Eig, an architectural historian, is brought on as a preservation consultant. On the day of the hearing, the bona fides of Shaw's descendants are on display as much as the blueprints. Ellis speaks on behalf of the project, introducing himself as a fourth-generation Washingtonian born at Freedmen's Hospital, now Howard University Hospital. Another supporter enlisted by the lofts project, preservationist Lori Dodson, tells the board that her grandparents and great-grandparents grew up in Shaw and that Ellis understands the importance of those roots. "He himself embodies the history, just as the buildings do, so he carries those memories with him," Dodson says. Woodyard testifies that the church wants the project to go forward so "we can move out and leave a legacy behind." Newcomers to 14th are there, too, making the case for the lofts. "I wish the building could be taller," says Eric Kole, owner of Vastu furniture store across the street. "I wish I could see more of the new addition, more of the industrial aspect of it, as opposed to less. But I'm absolutely thrilled that it's going to be . . . "Okay, great," interrupts Tersh Boasberg, chairman of the review board. The city's preservation planner, Steve Callcott, tells the board he is concerned that the design packs too much construction on the existing structures. He recommends that the development team rethink the scale of the project. The board agrees. Woodyard can't believe it. "That church has held that neighborhood together in the worst of times, and now it's the best of times and they are putting a ball and chain around us," he says. * * * Three days after the hearing, the raggedy building rendered gorgeous in dozens of architectural drawings is shaking with fury and joy. A smiling fifth-grader stands at the front of the church with her uncle -- her mother is serving in Iraq -- and holds up an award from school to thunderous applause. Later in the service, an infant swaddled in ivory taffeta is christened, and she, too, is bathed in joyous applause. To the outside world, the church is a mystery, a big slab on the corner with double-parked cars. When drums and organs are bringing the congregation to a boil, sometimes the muffled fury and sharp cymbals seep from the building, causing a man to pause one night outside a prayer service and ask, "Is that a jazz club?" Lawrence Guyot walks the sidewalks of Shaw, watching as small black businesses and institutions are replaced by real estate development and the whims of newcomers. "There is a total avoidance of the value and history of the people we are dealing with," says Guyot, a community activist and former member of a Ward 1 Advisory Neighborhood Commission. "How many people in that area put themselves in mind of the parishioners? What does it do to you, when a church, the place you worship, vanishes? It's not just another building." Guyot knows the story line is not that simple. The church struck a lucrative deal and is ready to go. "What's the best way to exit with grace and aplomb?" Guyot asks. "Millions of dollars is the answer." The changes at 14th and T aren't happening fast enough for others. ANC member Ramon Estrada says he gets "tons" of questions about the corner. Neighbors have called him to complain about noise from the church on Sundays. Others cringe at Paradise Liquor, with its bulletproof glass. "These are people who've just spent a half-million on a house," Estrada says. "I get asked, 'Why do I have to subject my guests to that?' " Estrada belongs to the powerhouse Dupont Circle ANC, whose brownstone aesthetics now stretch east to the once-gritty borderlands of 14th Street. It was Estrada who helped force Paradise Liquor to clean up and stop selling single beers. Advisory neighborhood commissioners influence zoning, alcohol licenses and historic preservation and decree how many sidewalk tables a cafe can have. After Church of the Rapture sold, pastor Lawrence Garrison and the developers came to Estrada, who organized the community meeting in the church. Several weeks after the initial hearing with the Historic Preservation Review Board, the Rapture Lofts project wins final approval, with modifications. But instead of calling it Rapture Lofts, the developers decide that T Street Flats is a more marketable name. So much for legacy. Pastor Theresa Garrison says she doesn't care what the lofts are called. From the pulpit one Sunday morning, she warns that the hallowed church grounds soon will be overtaken by the sinful. "See, I found out that the rent is gonna be so high that only the rich homosexuals and lesbians will be able to buy this condominium," she tells the congregation. One part of what the pastor says is true: The condos will be priced from $400,000 to $1 million, with no set-asides for affordable units. The slow fade of the old 14th and T is underway. Engineers begin taking soil samples from church property. Cafe Saint-Ex, the trendy bistro that arrived two years ago, is hosting oyster night and Bastille Day night and is packing it in on weekends. Paradise Liquor on the other corner has less than two months left on its lease. Gone will be burglar bars that wrap around the doors like ominous orthodontia and the stale air of a package store that failed to change with the times. * * * Late this summer, Paradise customers begin to notice something amiss. The chip rack is empty and stays empty. The liquor shelves aren't as deeply stocked. The "Building for Lease" banner is strung to the roof. "How you doin', Pop?" manager David Lee asks a man who is holding a pipe and a half-pint of gin. "What they gonna do with this building?" Pop asks. "They trying to sell it?" "I don't know. Why?" Lee asks. "You wanna buy it?" In Paradise, where nothing is ever addressed directly, Pop knows he just got an affirmative answer. The Paradise building was bought last year for $900,000, and the new landlord is tripling the rent, forcing Paradise to move out when its lease expires. Eager speculators come in to scope out the space. Paradise might be a wreck, but it's a prime location. One afternoon, a man asks Lee if he can take a look around. He wants to open a day spa. "A day spa!" Lee says. "What about the rats? Talk about jumbo! They so fat they can't even run." Two entrepreneurs strike a tentative agreement with the landlord, and the sign for a beverage license goes in the window: Paradise is going to become a sushi bar. Lee is a tough guy, but something about the agreement makes him know it's all real. "I'll probably pass by here and look at the building," he says. "I might even walk in and order me a sushi." The liquor stores along 14th Street are going away. "The first generation of liquor stores were run by the Jewish," Lee says. "They call Koreans second-generation Jew because we took over all the liquor stores. Now, more Indians. We call Indians second-generation Koreans because they are buying the liquor stores." Liquor stores are places of secrets and desperation, but at Paradise the desperation is rarely disguised. A city employee cuts work to buy a bottle. A size-2 woman in need of a crack pipe comes in and asks Lee whether he sells single-stem rose vases. A man opens a garbage bag containing a fax machine, a color copier and a printer, all available for a low, low price. They come to Lee with their wares: three-packs of underwear, stereos, heavy-duty tools and tubes of toothpaste. But Paradise is also a post office, bank and candy store, full of teetotalers and children and old men from the neighborhood sharing gardening and gambling tips. Every Friday, Paradise cashes $10,000 in payroll checks. Lee takes a 2 percent cut, sometimes more. "You don't like it, you can go to a bank," he tells them. But he knows that Paradise is their bank. Lee has never been robbed. He has two surveillance cameras, but his eyes are superior. Same with his helper, Sang Choi. A couple of days earlier, a guy grabbed a carton of Newports, and Choi chased him across the street to the alley behind Church of the Rapture, where the thief pulled a knife from his shorts and Choi grudgingly gave up. Lee tells everyone the slightly built man was a heavy in the Korean military. Choi smokes incessantly and commutes 40 miles each way to the dingy liquor store from his home in Ellicott City. "Hi, baby," a woman says to Choi, who gives a little bow with his head. "Gimme a pint of that Christian Brothers." Lee goes outside with some empty boxes. He used to have a dumpster, but the ANC made him get rid of it because the homeless were using it as a buffet. "They want to upgrade the neighborhood. I understand that," Lee says. "These ANC guys walk around day and night looking at things. I wonder how they make a living. " As time runs out on the lease, the owner of Paradise, Byung In Min, finds two liquor stores to buy. One is at First and Kennedy streets NW, and the other is off Marlboro Pike in Prince George's County. Lee drives to check out the store at First and Kennedy. A steel gate makes the front look like a jail. There's housing all around, potential customers. Perfect, Lee thinks. He returns to Paradise excited. It reminds him of the old days on 14th and T: hustle and trash-talking and the sound of cash registers. "I'm gonna have to get to know the head of the households," he says. "I'll be selling 40-ounce and 24s. I'm gonna be running it by the neighborhood with nobody telling us what to sell." Lee doesn't notice that not far from the new liquor store is a luxury condo project called the Lofts at Brightwood, with a rooftop terrace and a restaurant featuring "upscale diasporan cooking and an eclectic lounge atmosphere." Whatever washed over 14th and T is pushing across the whole city. * * * Across the street from Paradise, Cafe Saint-Ex chef Barton Seaver is briefing the staff on the evening specials. "The daily bruschetta will be fresh organic heirloom tomatoes with gorgonzola and balsamic," Seaver says, wearing chef's whites and a faded Boston Red Sox cap. "Our fish of the day is a grilled boneless trout fillet." "Is it Virginia trout?" a server asks, taking notes. "This is Pennsylvania trout," Seaver says. "Is it farm-raised rainbow trout?" The menu is more gourmet than the red-meat bistro fare that Mike Benson offered when he opened Saint-Ex two years ago. In the encroaching universe of cremini mushroom polenta, Benson tells his chef that taking the burger off the menu is non-negotiable. The burger stays. Benson opens another bar a few doors down from Saint-Ex called Bar Pilar. It's a more laid-back place with a big-screen TV where Benson increasingly goes to hang out and watch sports, away from Saint-Ex. All he ever wanted was a bar he could walk to from his house at 13th and T. Now he's on the run from his own creation. He worries that the rise of the condo canyons will squash the galleries and small businesses that have opened on 14th in recent years. "It's just a matter of time before Pottery Barn and the Container Store come in here if we're not careful," he says. Late this summer, after eight years of living in the neighborhood, Benson decides to move east toward North Capitol Street, to the land of scrappy corner markets and housing in transition. There is something alive about the neighborhood that invigorates him. Quietly, he begins visiting salvage shops to look for an old wooden bar. His wife goes on the hunt for vintage airplane seats. It's true: Benson is scheming to open a restaurant in his new badlands of North Capitol and Quincy streets NW. He wants to buy the old No. 12 firehouse. His new neighborhood reminds him of how 14th and T felt in 1998. "It still has the character," he says. So much character that Benson is robbed of his Vespa scooter, and when he confronts the young robbers, they pull a gun on him. * * * On a sunny Saturday afternoon, two employees from the West Group prop a tall ladder against the Church of the Rapture building. They have come to take down the church's signs. For years, the fire-and-brimstone message -- "NOW! IT IS TIME TO COME TO CHURCH AND TO GOD" -- has hovered over the corner, and now as the signs are coming down, people on the sidewalk stop to watch. Cars pull over. Brian Liu is sitting at a table across the street at Saint-Ex and comes trotting. The graphic artist thinks the signs should stay in the neighborhood. Andrea Evers is on her way to brunch and rolls down her window to ask if the signs are for sale. One of the men jokingly tells her to check eBay in a few days. Evers is persistent and drives away with the sign for fifty bucks. Liu pays $50 for the other one. Evers props her sign in the dining room of her Kalorama home, with plans to hang it in a third-floor gallery space. "Heaven or hell," she says of the sign's illustration of a cross and flames. "I love how they give you an option." When church members arrive the next morning, they are greeted by a huge banner hanging down from the building. "T Street Flats. A Style of Living That's All Your Own." * * * "Hey, write an address, we'll ride up to see you," a customer tells David Lee on his last week at Paradise. Lee is packing and preparing to move to the liquor store at First and Kennedy. His old customers tell him to be careful over there. Lee shrugs. "It's a risky business," he says. "I'm not here to be comfortable." Not that 14th and T is some kind of Disneyland. In August, a woman was stabbed to death 20 yards from Paradise. Lee knew 55-year-old Gloria Banks, whose blood was still puddled on the sidewalk when he arrived for work. Her daughter came into Paradise later, and Lee said how sorry he was. The sushi bar deal falls through, and the Paradise building is again up for grabs: anyone with $8,000 a month for rent and the fortitude to win the approval of the ANC, which questioned the sushi bar's true intent after noting that blueprints showed a small kitchen and a deejay booth. "Not my problem anymore," Lee says. The last days are full of hugs and handshakes. A longtime customer named Jerome stops in. Jerome doesn't drink. He just comes in to play Powerball before his spiritual group meeting Thursday nights. He doesn't know what he will do without Paradise. "They don't mess the numbers up, and it's orderly," he says. "David knows everybody. You come in here, and you ain't gonna get robbed. It's Northwest! "Love you, man," Jerome says to Lee. "Love you back," Lee says. Two high school students appear at the bulletproof glass. The girl wears a "Jesus is My Homeboy" T-shirt, and the boy carries a warm pan of jambalaya for an after-school function. They buy two sodas, and as they leave, the boy stops in the doorway and looks at the deco block glass. "I remember this glass from when I was growing up," he says. A woman with a platinum card stands at the scratched glass and asks Lee, "You think you'll be restocking the Blue Curacao?" "Thing is, we are moving," Lee says. "I'm sorry to hear that," she says. "It's too rich for my blood around here," he says. "I hear you." A man named Louis buys a bottle of water. For years, he was a Velicoff drunk, several pints a day. Now, he's been sober for two months. Lee studies him, wondering how he's pulled off such a feat. Then Jermaine the KFC manager comes in for cigarettes and tells Lee he's saving a potpie for him. On Paradise Liquor's last night of business last week, there is no climactic locking of the doors or turning out the lights for the last time. Just a slow night, so slow that Lee closes 40 minutes early. But first he steps outside onto the corner. The cracks in the sidewalk are filled with used matchsticks, cigarette butts, bobby pins and chips of glass. Down the block, men are huddled around a chess game. The cars are double-parked in front of Church of the Rapture for Thursday night prayer service. Cafe Saint-Ex radiates. Lee is bathed in the weary light of Paradise. "They are gonna miss me," he says. "They are gonna miss this store, period. Eventually, the people gonna go away, too." * * * In the church building stripped of its signs, worshipers still faithfully fill the rows of seats in the upstairs sanctuary: old women on canes with their zippered Bibles and tissue, and toddlers with braided hair and patent leather shoes. A gray-haired Metrobus driver arrives for Sunday school in a three-piece suit and sharp hat. When he stands at the microphone with his gospel quartet, the harmonies echo from another era on this corner. The search for a new church intensifies. Garrison wants the space to have a day care center and facility for seniors. The people don't seem to care where they go as long as they can stay together. "I don't know where the new building is," says Joy Mayo, who was christened in the church as a baby and now has a master's degree from Howard University. "I know who will lead us, though. Her name is Doctor Theresa. She's like God Superstar. She keeps it all so real. Some churches stay on top of the water. She goes deep." Garrison's arrival at church always causes a stir. Heads turn and people stand or clap. One Sunday, she appears at the door of the sanctuary in a silky animal-print cape. "I love y'all," she shouts, making her way through the crowd. She is wearing blue slippers and is surrounded by five attendants. While a woman in a feather hat, Sister Marcus, sings a high-pitched hymn, two attendants deliver a silver tray of bottled water to the pulpit, giving papal arrangement to the water glass and stack of napkins. Garrison makes her way up. "Good things are coming our way," she tells the church. "I'm waitin' to sign the paper. It's just that I got to sign the paper before I can talk about it. We'll get buses and go see what God has given us. My lawyer told me, she said, 'Doctor Theresa, you don't have to tell the people nothin' until you sign the dotted line.' " She pauses. "Can I take my time?" "Take your time," several people in the congregation shout. Garrison's husband has already told the congregation that they had found a possible new home for the church in Prince George's County. It is a big building on a big spread of land that cost $13 million. He spoke matter-of-factly and courteously. No one had any questions. His wife's delivery is different, splicing in Jesus, Lucifer and serpents. Her audience is rapt. "He suffered!" Garrison moans. "They knocked him. They threw stones on him. They looked at him like he was a nobody." By now she is weeping. The worn tambourine rests on the amplifier, and the "T Street Flats" banner casts a faint shadow over the pulpit. © 2005 The Washington Post Company

Comments

[urbano dela cruz]

I really enjoyed the WaPo articles. I pass that intersection a lot (14th and T) while aimlessly walking the neighborhood and had wondered when the Church of the Rapture -and the other old instutions in the area would fall to the developers. What bothers me is that there is no inclusionary zoning in the area. the ANC in shaw rejected inclusionary zoning -thinking that by rejecting it, they could stop the developments.

[Secret Rapture]

My inaugural address at the Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead, after I have raptured out billions!

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Your jaw will drop!

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[tiffany jewellery]

I spent more time in Baltimore last week and I learned not to say I’m from DC when I’m there – even though my plans are to live AND work there - Charm City residents seem mighty pissed at the surge of Washington commuters who are driving up their real estate values.