Highest and best use

I hate this term, frequently bandied about by developers and their representatives, because it usually means "the most profitable use" for the developer, and doesn't take into consideration a broader variety of "use value" issues.

Types of Use Values*

Daily Round: The place of residence is a focal point for the wider routine in which one's concrete daily needs are satisfied.

Informal Support Networks: Place of residence is the potential support of an information network of people who provide life-sustaining products and services.

Security and Trust: A neighborhood also provides a sense of physical and psychic security that comes with a familiar and dependable environment.

Identity: A neighborhood provides its residents with an important source of identity, both for themselves and for others. Neighborhoods offer a resident not only spatial demarcations but social demarcations as well.

Agglomeration Benefits: A shared interest in overlapping use values (identity, security, and so on) in a single area is a useful way to define neighborhood.

Ethnicity: Not infrequently, these benefits are encapsulated in a shared enthnicity... When this occurs, ethnicity serves as a summary characterization of all the overlapping benefits of neighborhood life.

(* From chapter four of Urban Fortunes: Toward a Political Economy of Place by Logan and Molotch)

Logan and Molotch don't cover, in a broad sense, quality of life as a result of quality of design in the built and physical environment and landscape, which is encapsulated in the first sentence of what this blog is about: "A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic."

But while I don't think that Franklin School should become a hotel, I certainly don't think its highest and best use is a homeless shelter. Frankly, I'd rather the School Board moved back in there, demonstrating the centrality and importance of public schooling by locating the system headquarters on a major square in the city. (Plus I don't like the idea of using Logan School in NE DC as a professional building, rather than as a school. Logan School is a historic building that should be used to educate schoolchildren, rather than the prison-like modern schools used for public education currently.)

(Next Tuesday there is a rally and march to protest the hotel proposal, involving Herb Miller, natch... See below for the email.)
Franklin School, Washington, DC.

Used for many years as the headquarters of the DC Public Schools Board of Education, the building was allowed to deteriorate and was for the most part, abandoned by the public school system. More than one decade ago, the building's facade was restored as part of the PUD development deal for the adjoining property, but the interior was not rehabilitated.

Just like the parochial business interests attempting to scuttle the redevelopment of a parking lot adjacent to Qwest Field in Seattle, because they run events like Boat Shows, who use the full parking lot a few times each month. Is a parking lot use, rather than housing and retail, the "highest and best use" there? (See the editorial "Livable Seattle: Welcome homes" and the article "A parking lot, or 950 homes," both from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.)
__________________
From the Committee to Save Franklin Shelter:

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT

Tuesday, July 11 at 8:30 a.m.
March and Rally with Franklin Shelter Residents

We Are Not Surplus People! Franklin is not Surplus Property!

March from: 13th & K Streets NW at 8:30 a.m.

To a 9 a.m. Rally
at the John A. Wilson Building:
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

( Located across from Freedom Plaza about 2 blocks from Metro Center on the red, orange, and blue lines )

Franklin Shelter Residents Have This to Say to Council Member Evans:

WE ARE WARD 2 RESIDENTS WHO DESERVE A VOICE!

THE FRANKLIN SCHOOL PROPERTY NEEDS TO BE RENOVATED TO BENEFIT ITS RESIDENTS, NOT TO SUBSIDIZE A WEALTHY DEVELOPER!

Jack Evans believes that the Franklin School property is too valuable to be used for an emergency shelter for the homeless. Indeed, the building is assessed at $10.3 million. Yet a 29 year lease has been signed with Western Development Corporation (WDC) to turn the shelter into a hip hotel at a rental rate of $9.76 per square foot: this is less than 25% of the average rate of $44.56 per square foot in this area of the city.

Why is Jack Evans willing to subsidize a wealthy developer but unwilling to invest in District residents who work, pay taxes, and vote?

Herb Miller, the developer and managing member of WDC, used to be Jack Evans’s neighbor. Since the council member doesn’t know us as well as he knows Herb Miller, he may not know that about two thirds of the 275 Franklin residents work. Many of us have worked as carpenters, plumbers, accountants, and electricians. We are now forced to accept temporary jobs where we are grossly under-compensated for our skills; many of us earn as little as $30-40 per day. We spend our wages inside the District, benefiting local businesses and contributing to the city’s tax base. We could contribute significantly more if given an opportunity to earn living wages and get out of the shelter system.

Efforts to revitalize the city have left us behind

If he met with us, the Council member would find that we are the ones who are under-utilized, not the run down building which houses us. He would recognize the value of supporting investment in us through redeveloping the property and providing services within the facility, including credit counseling and skills enhancement. Franklin Shelter could provide a model for the entire country to follow, instead of becoming the third shelter in four years to be shut down, forcing more residents to sleep in downtown streets and doorways.

The Council member has likely passed many of us on the street. We look like everyone else, coming to and from our jobs. If he met with us, he might recognize the value of investing in us instead of giving away city property to wealthy developers. The city council has never declared Franklin Shelter to be surplus property and has never approved the plan to turn it into a hotel, so the legality of the deal is in question. Herb Miller can find other properties from which to profit, but there is no alternative downtown location for shelter for 275 Franklin Shelter residents.

Call, email, fax, or write Council member Evans:
Tell him to support investment in Franklin Shelter!

Jack Evans
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 106
Washington, DC 20004
202.724.8058 phone
202.724.8023 fax

Index Keywords: urban-revitalization; contested-spaces; growth-machine