This was originally posted to the Adams Morgan Listserv on July 13, 2018, as message #48920, groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/AdamsMorgan/conversations/messages/48920
I had been optimistic that with the 2014 election of CM Nadeau. My hope had been that a Ward 1 free from many of the entanglements of pay-to-play Ward 1 would now be to chart a development path away from the Graham-Donatelli Neighborhood Model toward a more Equitable and Inclusive Community Development Model. Alas it seems, the gravity of Graham-Donatelli maybe too strong.
The Graham-Donatelli model is designed to leverage government subsidies and political connections to generate income, wealth and profits for a tiny few primarily through real estate deals. Deals which are designed exploit the historic and entrenched economic inequities often found between our city’s Black and White residents and other stakeholders. In other words the Graham-Donatelli model tends to exploit the economic vestiges of what used to be described as institutional bias or racism.
For good examples of the working of the Graham-Donatelli model review Highland Park on 14th St. or the Sanford/Citypartners deal in Congress Heights among others. So features of the Graham-Donatelli Model:
1. Usually a real estate development deal based on a so-called public-private partnership where the public subsidies a private real estate deal in exchange the deal producing a public good out of it’s profits. For those old enough to remember like the Reagan era Trickle Down Theory.
2. While initially, at least on paper, the “public good” included things like investing in job creation, equitable access to quality public spaces and parks, improved schools, true community policing, quality affordable housing, increase home-ownership rates, improved neighborhood amenities and etc.. One method to achieve this was to increase the city’s tax based by sustaining and increasing the number of middle and higher income families.
Under Graham-Donatelli the above would evolve to redefine the “public good” as increasing the number of high income earners living in the city. The original items used to defined the public good would be demoted as irrelevant except that they contribute to attracting high income residents or visitors to the city.
3. As well, under Graham-Donatelli the concept of neighborhood/community was revised to be redefined based on there proximity to transit. With a quality neighborhood/community being one that can cram as many income people as possible as close to transit as possible.
4. Given the shift in the meaning of neighborhood/community residents, small business owners, civic organizations were no longer qualified to envision, define and build their neighborhoods/communities as they were not experts in Transit Oriented Development (TOD). Those qualified to do so were professional planners (usually out of Harvard U), developers, banks and other financiers. In this scenario participatory politics and civic engagement is seen as an obstacle to achieving the public good which under Graham-Donatelli to cram the greatest number of units possible as close to transit as possible at the greatest profit possible. As such the roll of government shifted to achieve this new public good.
5. In practical terms in DC achieving this new “public good” would come to mean the displacement of low, moderate and even middle income families of color, especially Black families and their institutions from DC neighborhoods to make room for high income earners. Although we think of displacement in physical term it also means in social, cultural, economic, educational and even spiritual terms, For the most part, achieving this displacement has been taken on by our government as their roll in these public-private partnerships.
This is how today our government fines it’s as the arbiter of institutional bias and racism in the name of the public good. This was the issue underlining the debate which occurred in March over the amendments to the City’s 2006 Comp Plan by the Mayor. The 2006 Comp Plan his build into it some minor “checks” against institutional bias and racism embedded in it’s language and design. In a few lawsuits brought by citizens for various reasons, the Court of Appeals have in a series of ruling has said that the city via the zoning commission has error-ed in approving development projects which potentially go to far in exacerbating institutional bias and racism in the way in which TOD is being introduced into more and more neighborhoods. The amendment submitted were design to tweak the Comp Plan to negate these “checks” in the court’s eyes.
During the Comp Plan debate, two main arguments arose regarding these “checks”. One side argues via the Trickle Down Theory that the best way to achieve the public good is to weaken many of the “checks” in the Comp Plan, the more housing units built close the transit the greater the public good. The other side tends to argue that development should honor the current “checks” and in fact the current checks to need to be strengthen this is the path to the public good and there is little Trickle Down of Value to the public good.
This is where Ward 1, Graham-Donatelli and CM Nadeau come in. Ward 1 is one of those places where this debate as played out in reality as the home of the Graham-Donatelli model. In other words if we want to understand the issues around development, TOD and institutional bias and racism, study the story and results of development in Ward 1 over the last 15- 20 years or go.Why Ward 1, in the early 2000s Ward 1 was a demographic socio-economic microcosmic of the city at large. Understand Ward 1 and the evidence it provides and better understand the debate.
If we look at CM Nadeau’s policies toward development over the last year, she believes that Ward 1 is evidence that Graham-Donatelli, TOD and the Trickle Down Theory works, just needs a few tweaks here and there. I and some others believed that the evidence in Ward 1 suggests that Graham-Donatelli is fundamentally flawed (I believe corrupt). That the Comp Plan and policies overall need to shift significantly toward an equitable development model.
Therefore, I extend an open invitation to CM Nadeau, her fellow Council Members, folk from the Executive branch, and those on both sides of the Comp Plan to sit down with me and others take a close look at the evidence and walk the Ward 1 story and see what enlightenment it can provide, before voting on the Comp Plan or approving additional public land dispositions, supporting/approving PUDs and etc. As like, CM Nadeau many believe the Graham-Donatelli model works in and in fact is the Public Good. I say not so fast.
William
I don’t know it all, but I know Graham-Donatelli is not a model in the public good.