{"id":57,"date":"2021-06-15T19:51:14","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T19:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dcfeedback.com\/whj\/?p=57"},"modified":"2021-06-16T08:50:48","modified_gmt":"2021-06-16T08:50:48","slug":"doomed-to-displacement-inside-the-congress-heights-metro-development-sham-that-left-a-crime-plagued-neighborhood-in-decay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dcfeedback.com\/whj\/2021\/06\/15\/doomed-to-displacement-inside-the-congress-heights-metro-development-sham-that-left-a-crime-plagued-neighborhood-in-decay\/","title":{"rendered":"Doomed To Displacement – Inside the Congress Heights Metro development sham that left a crime-plagued neighborhood in decay"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How public-private deals really get done in DC.<\/p>\n

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Doomed To Displacement<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Inside the Congress Heights Metro development sham that left a crime-plagued neighborhood in decay<\/i><\/p>\n

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By Jeffrey Anderson<\/p>\n

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The last place\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Chico Horton<\/b>wanted to be on June 28, 2019, was the law offices of Arnold & Porter, answering questions under oath about his role in his client\u2019s convoluted real estate transaction that had turned into a full-blown shit show.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The lawyer, lobbyist, developer, political appointee and charter member of Mayor\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Muriel Bowser\u2019s\u00a0<\/span><\/b>coterie had represented developer\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Geoffrey Griffis<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>in the acquisition of a cluster of blighted apartment buildings at Congress Heights Metro Station; Griffis planned to demolish and redevelop the site into a \u201ctransformational\u201d mixed-use project.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem was that a Superior Court judge had already placed the properties under receivership, and the tenants had first rights to redevelop them under the Tenant Opportunity To Purchase Act (\u201cTOPA\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite a court order giving him a 60-day reprieve from having to undertake costly repairs so he could negotiate \u201cexclusively\u201d with his tenants to sell them the properties,\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Aubrey Carter Nowell\u00a0<\/span><\/b>of the real estate management company Sanford Capital had surreptitiously transferred them to a company formed by Griffis, in December 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

Horton knew about the court order, according to emails filed in court pleadings and reviewed by\u00a0<\/span><\/span>District Dig<\/span><\/i>, when he facilitated an unusual transaction in which Griffis borrowed from the bank that held Nowell\u2019s mortgage notes in order to assume his debt and acquire the properties by special warranty deed, as if he were a lender threatening to foreclose.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So did executives at EagleBank, the community lender that had financed the transaction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As did a friend of Horton\u2019s, fellow Bowser insider and EagleBank board member\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Ben Soto<\/b>, the real estate\u00a0<\/span><\/span>attorney\u00a0<\/span><\/span>who did the closing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Horton and Soto were so involved with the deal they even loaned Griffis $200,000 each to assume Nowell\u2019s debt to EagleBank, according to emails, documents and sworn testimony filed in Superior Court.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a May 2018 lawsuit against companies controlled by Griffis and Nowell, the tenants described these machinations as a \u201cbrazen scheme\u201d to evade TOPA, and demanded the transfers be nullified.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A Superior Court judge said it was \u201cundisputed that avoiding TOPA was one of the defendants\u2019 goals.\u201d That by itself was not illegal or improper, the judge said, but taking all the facts into consideration, the tenants argued, Griffis and Nowell failed to qualify for an exemption they were claiming.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tenants, eventually displaced from their homes due to uninhabitable conditions, have fought what some see as a blood war to enforce their rights. Until\u00a0<\/span><\/span>recently<\/span><\/a>, they have been unable to partner with a developer to buy out Griffis and build new, affordable apartments that they can return to.<\/span><\/p>\n

The dispute has exacted a toll on just about everyone involved. …<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/districtdig.com\/2021\/06\/13\/doomed-to-displacement\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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— <\/p>\n

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DC for Reasonable Development
(202) 656-5874
www.dc4reason.org<\/a><\/div>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How public-private deals really get done in DC. \u00a0 Doomed To Displacement Inside the Congress Heights Metro development sham that left a crime-plagued neighborhood in decay \u00a0 By Jeffrey Anderson \u00a0 The last place\u00a0Chico Hortonwanted to be on June 28, 2019, was the law offices of Arnold & Porter, answering questions under oath about his …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dcfeedback.com\/whj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dcfeedback.com\/whj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dcfeedback.com\/whj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dcfeedback.com\/whj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dcfeedback.com\/whj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dcfeedback.com\/whj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dcfeedback.com\/whj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dcfeedback.com\/whj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dcfeedback.com\/whj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}