Why reversion clauses need to be included in city land disposition agreements

In the old days, if you knew someone and you had a nonprofit, you could get city buildings pretty easily. At least two community development corporations (PIC, AEDC) got formerly city-owned properties and sold them without doing any improvements. Georgetown University got an old elementary school building on Prospect Street NW, presumably for educational use. Today the building is high end condominiums. Etc.

Dave McKenna, the sports writer for the Washington City Paper, has a similar story to tell in "Art Monk and Charles Mann Sell Former City Property for Millions, Bail On Anacostia Job Training Center." From the article:

A decade ago, Art Monk and Charles Mann came to a neighborhood meeting in Anacostia and said they were going to open a job training center in one of the city’s neediest neighborhoods.

They never followed through on that pledge.

The former Redskins raised millions of dollars, both in federal grants and private donations, after saying they would locate the center at the old Carver Theatre building.

The DC Government gave control of the property, at 2405 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, to the Good Samaritan Foundation, a non-profit group fronted by Monk and Mann, in the belief that it would house the job training operation.

After initially leasing the historic theater site to the foundation, the city sold it outright to Monk and Mann’s group in 2004 for $255,235.

For years before and after the sale, the old theater lot sat vacant, despite all the do-gooder dollars thrown at it. ...

The Howard Road Academy, a public charter school, now houses its middle school campus in the Carver Theatre building. The school newsletter says it opened for classes there last week, with 130 students.

And, according to the school’s business office, Howard Road Academy now owns the building.

Earl Murray, president of the Howard Road Academy’s board of trustees, says the school paid “just under $3 million” to the Good Samaritan Foundation this summer to buy the site.

Where's the money? The $2.7 million "profit" on the building (of course renovation costs should be subtracted) plus the monies given to the job training program...

Also see:

- Same old, same old #1,000,243 (2008)
- Falling up -- Accountability and DC Community Development Corporations (2005)
- The Agony of Defeat (2005)
- The good, the bad, and the ugly: the way "business" gets done by government in DC (2009)
- Community Benefits Agreements (revised, 2009)