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At Long Last, a New Community in NoMa

The mayor called for a countdown, but Mary Dews-Hall couldn’t wait. “Five!” the assembled crowd shouted as Vince Gray held up five fingers with one hand and an oversize pair of scissors etched with the word “mayor” in the other. “Four!”—and then the red ribbon snapped as Dews-Hall, standing next to Gray, closed her own giant blades.

Dews-Hall has been waiting a while to cut the ceremonial ribbon on the new 2M apartment building in NoMa that finally opened today. The grandmother of 14 and great-grandmother of 29 lived at nearby Temple Courts before it was demolished six years ago as part of the New Communities Initiative, a program aimed at replacing troubled low-income housing with new mixed-income communities. That replacement took longer than anticipated, as the recession slowed development across the city and New Communities proved harder to pull off than city officials had expected. Now, with the opening of 2M at North Capitol and M streets NE, Dews-Hall has been able to return to her old neighborhood from a temporary home across the Anacostia River. It would be an understatement to describe her as happy with her long-awaited homecoming.

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In a sense, 2M is everything a New Communities project should be. Of the 314 units, 59 are replacement apartments for people displaced from Temple Courts, and an additional 34 are for residents earning less than 60 percent of area median income. Market-rate apartments start at $1,790 a month for studios and go as high as $2,995 for two-bedrooms, and the building has a swimming pool and private dog park, but nearly a third of the units are set aside for low-income tenants.

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