City Again Seeks Offers for Franklin

The city is seeking new ideas for the redevelopment of the historic Franklin School building at 13th and K streets NW, which shut down as a homeless shelter a year ago amid protests.

The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development in late September put out a request for proposals, seeking development teams experienced with “small to medium scale mixed-use, commercial, hotel, residential or retail use” projects, according to the solicitation.

Responses are due Jan. 19, and a site tour will be held during the first week of November, according to the Web site of the economic development office.

This is the second solicitation request for Franklin released in the past year. The city invited a first round of bids this summer, adhering to a D.C. law that gives charter schools the “right of first refusal” on former school buildings. Four schools responded to that solicitation, including the Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School, a Chinese immersion school currently based in Brookland.

Sean Madigan, spokesperson for the economic development office, said he could not comment on why the city rejected the schools “beyond saying our team vetted them and determined they were not viable as proposed.”

Charter school advocates have reacted to the move with dismay, saying they have seen this pattern before.

“The fact that the Mayor’s office has now indicated that it will now try to seek developers to purchase this historic public school building when so many D.C. public charter schools lack adequate buildings ... is a slap in the face to some of the District’s most vulnerable children,” wrote Barnaby Towns, a spokesperson for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, in an e-mail.

Towns added that the city “continues to find ways to offer [public buildings] to developers who turn these badly needed public assets into luxury condos, high-end restaurants and boutique hotels.”

The idea of converting Franklin into a hotel is not without precedent. In 2005, the site seemed poised to become a luxury hotel after then- Mayor Anthony Williams arranged a lease with a development team led by Herbert S. Miller. The city ultimately scrapped that idea after several D.C. Council members questioned the legality of the lease.

Cary Silverman, a neighborhood activist in Shaw who ran for a seat on the council last year, has floated the idea of using Franklin as the flagship building for the University of the District of Columbia’s new community college.

The concept “sounds like it resonates with some people out there. I don’t know that it’s been formally considered in the administration or by anyone in UDC,” Silverman said in an interview. But he said he would “love to see the idea take off and be taken seriously.”

The three-and-a-half-story Franklin School, built in 1869 by prominent Washington architect Adolf Cluss, has had many lives. The building housed the city’s first high school starting in 1880, and later, for 40 years, the administrative offices of the District’s public school system.

Most recently, the building functioned for six years as an overnight shelter for homeless men. It has sat vacant since last September, when Mayor Adrian Fenty closed the shelter.

Homeless advocates are still involved in multiple lawsuits over the shelter’s closure.

One is a federal lawsuit that looks at “residence discrimination involving the systematic displacement of the homeless” that started when Franklin shut down, according to attorney and activist Jane Zara.

The situation has become more dire as reports have emerged that the current Central Union Mission, at 14th and R streets NW, will be shutting its doors in November, she said.

“The growing shelter crisis involves international human-rights violations, especially in light of the fact that D.C. has declared itself the first human rights city in the U.S.,” said Zara.

Many of the men displaced from Franklin had to head to shelters more removed from downtown services, such as 801 East on the campus of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. “The guys were being asked to go to the poorer parts of town, and being denied services and employment opportunities they used to have downtown,” Zara said.

Fenty’s decision to close Franklin was in line with the city’s new approach to homelessness, an initiative called Housing First. While traditional approaches to homelessness have emphasized social services and temporary shelter, the Housing First model places immediate priority on permanent housing for the homeless.

Though many city officials and advocates have praised the goals of Housing First, which is modeled after a New York City program, criticisms abounded when Fenty closed the Franklin shelter. Some activists have claimed that the implementation of Housing First was overly hasty, and that the program is not sufficiently developed to match the needs of the District’s homeless population.

When the shelter closed, activists also warily predicted that the city would turn the building, with its prime location in the central business district, over to private developers rather than using it as a public facility.