LISTEN TO ANTHONY HARVEY:
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Anthony Harvey in front of the First Church of Christ Scientist at the corner of Euclid and Champlain St, NW in Adams Morgan, where a new 150-room, $100 million luxury boutique hotel will be built.
For years, WPFW 89.3 FM has been housed in the City Paper building in the multi-cultural Adams Morgan community in northwest D.C. The station, however, is not likely to be there much longer. The City Paper building is being leveled in order to make way for a $100 million, 150-room luxury boutique hotel to be run by Marriott.
“City Paper and WPFW and City Bikes are among the establishments that have given Adams Morgan its cache as a fascinating multicultural community. And to just see them lost… I’m astounded that there’s not been more community concern for that,” said Anthony Harvey, Associate Editor of TheInTowner newspaper.
Harvey has been closely following this deal for several years and has watched it grow from a smaller scale condo development with $21 million in tax breaks, to a much larger scale hotel with $61 million in public subsidies, according to the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.
Brian Friedman, the project’s developer, sees nothing wrong with asking for $61 million in public subsidy for his luxury hotel at a time when the District faces tremendous budget shortfalls. Friedman told the Washington Business Journal that his project is “like any other hotel built in this city… There’s always a subsidy.”
Harvey responded, “Well I don’t think there’s always a subsidy. And if there is, it means that they all should be further examined… The idea that [the luxury hotel deal is] only doable with D.C. tax incentives or abatements, well I think that’s a dubious argument.”