A further thought about arson and commercial property management

BP station on Florida Avenue NE, photo by Elise Bernard.

Although I don't have photos to illustrate it, I've come to the conclusion that bad property management can be a deliberate strategy to assist commercial enterprises in the assemblage of contiguous properties for "bigger and better" projects.

BP Connect model concept design--www.britishpanoramics.com.

I could never prove this but the BP station issue (formerly Amoco) at 3rd and H Streets NE is a perfect illustration of this. For years the gas station was a scourge on the neighborhood--people begged for money, loitered, robbed the station, committed gun crimes there, even killing people at times, etc.

It should be no surprise then that most of the businesses on the north and south side of the 300 block of H Street failed to thrive during that time--except for the liquor store!

University Legal Services moved because of frequent burglaries, the "Your Pizza Home" carryout closed (years before it had been a High's corner store), and the corner store at the SW corner of 4th and H Street never succeeded. Stores on that block were implicated as drug fronts and closed down, etc. The area was seedy and unsafe, noisy, and a bastion of the car at the expense of the pedestrian.

Had the gas station been run differently things could have been much different.

Instead all the businesses on the north side of the 300 block of H Street closed, with the exception of the gas station (and all but three buildings on the south side of the 300 block became vacant).

Eventually, fire damaged the extant, but vacant and disinvested but historically eligible for designation buildings on the north side of H Street. The buildings were condemned, and the property owners agreed to sell their land to BP.

The buildings were torn down, and BP proposed to build a new 50,000 square feet "BP Connect" gas station "complex."

Coincidence? Luck? Or strategy?

BP's image often doesn't jibe with their business practices on the ground. www.blimp.co.uk

BP station on Pennsylvania Ave. SE