Northwest Opportunity Partners CDC
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 22, 2022
Contact: Gail Sonnemann, 202-286-0845, gsonnemann@gmail.com
At a Woodley Park Community Association open meeting March 17, Wardman owner Carmel Partners repeated its intent to develop a complex with 92% market rate, “going rate”, units or 828 of the total 900 planned rental units. In response to numerous questions and comments from the community about the need for more affordable housing at the site, the company repeated its intentions to provide the bare minimum required for this project through inclusionary zoning at 8%: an estimated 72 units.
Meg Maguire, Chair of the NW Opportunity Partners Community Development Corporation (NWOP), reminded the group that in late January, NWOP proposed to Carmel that they donate the Wardman annex building fronting on Calvert St. to the Douglass Community Land Trust to create at least 100 units of affordable housing. “People who work in Ward 3 should be able to live in Ward 3,” she said. “The annex building is a sturdy structure that begs to be sustainably reused and converted into homes for families who work here but can’t afford to live here.”
“Mayor Bowser set a goal for Ward 3 of 1990 new units of affordable housing by 2025,” she noted. “At the rate we are going, we will never even approach this goal. Developers are providing the bare minimum on three unusually large sites – City Ridge, Wardman hotel, and Mazza Gallery. Total yield: a paltry 163 units of affordable housing.”
“We call on Carmel to go beyond the minimum and show what good corporate citizenship looks like with the Wardman annex hotel-to-housing conversion.”
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