Keeping up with Washington City Paper Housing Complex reporter Lydia DePillis is a full-time job!
See her latest Housing Complex post on the futures of the Langston and JF Cook Schools. I have copied in the first few paragraphs. Click on the article link to read the entire post.
Might the Langston and JF Cook Scool properties get surplussed by the DC government?
As has been reported here on the BACA blog — the hearing is slated for January 12, 2012.
Langston and J.F. Cook Schools Up For Grabs Again
Posted by Lydia DePillis on Dec. 21, 2011 at 3:16 pm
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2011/12/21/langston-and-j-f-cook-schools-up-for-grabs-again
Here`s a tough question for some of the District`s increasingly deteriorated properties: Does anyone actually have what it takes to restore them?
Take the Langston School, at 45 P Street NW, which became a homeless shelter in 1997 but has been vacant for years. The District put out a request for offers from charter schools in 2008, but received no responses. In October, the Historic Preservation Review Board named it a D.C. landmark, meaning that it has to be restored rather than knocked down—at substantial cost, considering the depth of disrepair.
Then there`s the J.F. Cook School, with which regular Housing Complex readers will be familiar. The city also put this one out to bid in 2008, and selected a team of Youthbuild Public Charter School and the Latin American Youth Center, which brought substantial funding to the table in the form of grants, loans, and tax credits. But the neighborhood rejected their proposal for housing at-risk youth on the upper floors, and the project died.
Now, the city is starting the process over again, with a hearing on January 12th to ask whether the two buildings should be “surplused” ~ deemed unnecessary for further District use. After that, the Department of General Services will invite more offers, choose their favorite, and as the D.C. Council to “dispose“ the properties to whomever wins out.
Bates Area Civic Association 