How Southwest’s Waterside Mall, Waterfront Station, and the Wharf connect with displacement fears for Greenleaf public housing residents

This is the fourth article in our series exploring Greenleaf Gardens, a public housing community in Southwest that’s slated for redevelopment.

In the previous article, we discussed how Greenleaf Gardens was constructed in 1957 through a concept called urban renewal. While the plan was to transform the so-called “slums” of Southwest into a more desirable neighborhood, urban renewal quickly became an example of poor neighborhood planning. Moreover, the development in Southwest resulted in the displacement of over 23,000 people — most of whom were Black.

We’re now taking a look at the 21st century evolution of the area surrounding Greenleaf Gardens, as leaders attempt to fix problems that urban renewal caused and accomplish some of the concept’s earlier goals. Meanwhile, current residents of Greenleaf Gardens must also contend with new issues emerging as gentrification sweeps Southwest and threatens to make them the next DC community displaced in the name of illusory progress.

A redeveloped Waterside Mall seeks to undo urban renewal’s mistakes

A century ago, 4th Street SW (then 4 ½ Street) was a vibrant commercial corridor, offering a central location where Southwest residents could patronize small businesses despite segregation delineating one side of the street from the other.

The Redevelopment Land Agency, which initiated urban renewal, proposed the construction of Waterside Mall. Looming over the 4th and M Street SW intersection, the bulky, modernist office/retail shopping center completed in the early 1970s created a physical barrier dividing the neighborhood, making it unwalkable and unwelcoming.

In 2001, then-mayor Anthony Williams announced that the massive, obsolete structure (and its Safeway grocery store) would be razed and replaced with over 1 million square feet each of residences and office space along a revitalized 4th Street corridor, creating a more approachable community called Waterfront Station — just outside of the Waterfront-SEU Metro station that had been constructed 10 years prior.

Demolition happened under subsequent mayor Adrian Fenty in 2007, jumpstarting a construction boom in Southwest that continues to this day. Only two of the four Waterfront Station parcels have been developed since then, anchored by a new office building housing city government agencies and a new Safeway.

Over 1,600 new residential units were delivered between South Capitol and 6th Streets SW since Waterfront Station was established. Of those, more than half were built within two blocks of Greenleaf Gardens. Another 1,850 have been approved in that same area (including another 1,000 for the remaining Waterfront Station parcels off the 4th and M Street intersection).

The redevelopment of the Wharf finishes what urban renewal started

Despite being part of the urban renewal area, little changed along the Southwest waterfront until the 21st century. Less than a half-mile away from Greenleaf Gardens, the Wharf is under construction along 27 acres of waterfront property between Maine Avenue and the Washington Channel.

The massive development was put in motion a year before the Waterside Mall came down and required hundreds of millions in public funds to get accomplished.

The first phase of the Wharf began delivering in 2017, dwarfing the original Wharf that includes Maine Avenue Fish Market — the oldest surviving market of its kind in the country. As described by its development team, “The Wharf reestablished Washington, DC, as a waterfront city and destination.”

By the time the new Wharf development is complete in 2023, it will have delivered almost 1,100 units along with over a million square feet of offices, retail, and hotel rooms. It has also facilitated a huge jump in housing prices in the area: the first condos there pre-sold at over $1,000 per square foot — prices typically associated with neighborhoods like Georgetown.

Although these condo prices are outliers, Southwest has gotten less affordable across the board; for example, between the second quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2019, the median price of homes sold in Southwest’s 20024 zip code had shot up from $230,000 to $417,750, a 55% increase including inflation. Citywide, sold prices went up by 33% over the same time.

Southwest is being hit hard by gentrification and displacement

Recent research shows that DC has experienced the most intense gentrification of any U.S. city since 2000. Southwest has stood out as an example of this: in the census tract containing the parts of Greenleaf Gardens north of M Street, the population doubled from 2000 to 2016, but the share of low-income households dropped from nearly 39% to 20% and over 160 rental units were lost. Black households were the only racial group in that area to see their population decline.

Throughout this period of transition, community members have been contemplating how to withstand change in their neighborhood, placing priority on how to keep it affordable and preserve its open spaces. These priorities were documented in the 2015 Southwest Neighborhood Plan, which established the vision that “Southwest will remain an exemplary model of equity and inclusion — a welcoming and engaged community that celebrates and retains a mix of races, ages and income levels and enhances well-being for all amidst neighborhood growth and change.”

The neighborhood plan also cited redevelopment of Greenleaf Gardens as inevitable, placing priority on protecting its residents and including them in the community input involved in the plan’s creation. One of the plan’s goals was to “support the responsible redevelopment of the Greenleaf complex to benefit existing Greenleaf residents and realize a well-designed development and mixed-income community.”

As the current wave of development in Southwest steamrolls forward, a number of questions remain. How will the city guarantee not to replicate the same levels of displacement caused by urban renewal 60 years ago, or even the more recent changes caused by gentrification? And how can existing Greenleaf Gardens residents expect that they will “benefit” from redevelopment of their homes?