NEIGHBORHOOD NEWS merous hills and bluffs. In the 1960’s, the Sheridan Terrace public housing project, built on the hill overlooking the Suitland Parkway, was constructed and touted as “urban dwellings with a suburban appeal.” However, water drainage problems caused the units to slowly deteriorate. By the early 1990’s less than 50 families remained; the last resident moved out in 1993. According to local lore, President Clinton realized foreign dignitaries flying into Andrews Air Force Base would likely take the same route to downtown Washington, passing by Sheridan Terrace. Clinton did not want the site to mar the foreign leaders’ impressions of the nation’s capital and therefore, in 1997 the entire development was demolished.
HOPE VI
Looking down Sheridan Road towards Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue as Sheridan Station comes to life.
Sheridan Station Readies for Fall Opening article & photos by John Muller
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n the early months of his second term, President Bill Clinton’s motorcade, returning to the White House from Andrews Air Force Base, barreled down Suitland Parkway, riding past the abandoned Sheridan Terrace public housing development. The sprawling 11 acre site with 183 units in multiple buildings sat vacant. It had become the domain of drug dealers who sold to squatters scattered throughout the graffiti strewn buildings; in the parking lot were burnt out cars with outof-state license plates. Topographically defined by its rolling landscape that reaches in from the Anacostia River, the neighborhood bearing the river’s name has nu20 ★ EAST OF THE RIVER MAGAZINE
Looking down Sheridan Road towards Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue as Sheridan Station comes to life.
| JULY 2011
For more than a decade the site sat as nothing more than a large pile of dirt until William C. Smith, wellknown throughout East Washington, joined with Jackson Investment Co. and Union Temple Community Development Corporation to compete for HOPE VI funds being administered through the DC Housing Authority to redevelop the former Sheridan Terrace. HOPE VI, a program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is a federal initiative that provides funds to develop sites of former public housing projects into mixed-income communities. An earlier phase of the program funded the redevelopment of the former Arthur Capper Carrollsburg Dwellings off M Street SE prior to the construction of the Nationals Stadium in 2006. Sheridan Terrace was the seventh such project in DC. Chicago is the only other city with a greater presence of Hope VI projects. The ideology of HOPE VI focuses on defensible space, a concept of environmental design aimed at reducing crime and increasing neighborhood safety through the deliberate use of architectural design and new urbanism, a design concept promoting walkable neighborhoods made of mixed housing options that are connected to hubs of public transportation. After three rounds of competition,