Monthly Archives: June 2010

Last night representatives of the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development met with a small group of Georgetown residents to discuss the proposed surplussing of the Hurt Home at 3050 R St. (the group was small because the DMPED didn’t do a particularly good job advertising the meeting. Although, GM will point out he did two separate posts on the meeting.)

As predicted by GM, this meeting essentially was a check-the-box procedure required by the recently effective Public Land Surplus Standards Amendment Act of 2009. In short: the DMPED office decided to surplus the Hurt Home last year, an RFP was issued, and only one party, the Argos Group, came forward with a bid.  The process to dispose of the property to Argos was moving forward until this new law kicked in.

This new law is an attempt to decouple the decision to surplus a property from the process to actually dispose of the property. Thus, in the future properties will be identified for surplussing, the DMPED office will, among other steps, hold a public meeting to see if the public has any ideas for a public use for the building, and then recommend to the Council that it identify the property as surplus. Then, theoretically, DMPED would move forward with the RFP process and the ultimate disposition of the property will be determined. Before the law became effective, the surplus and disposition processes were joint.

Unfortunately, for this project (and other high profile projects like the West End Library and the Hine School in Eastern Market) the disposition has for all intents and purposes been determined already.  Namely, the building will be sold to Argos Group to be converted into condos. In fact, Argos’s Best and Final Offer proposal has already been accepted by DMPED. Continue reading →