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jackie_peiser_reports

@jackie_peiser_reports

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Business, development and real estate reporter at @citycast_dc
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“In what appears to be a first for D.C., the region’s largest charitable foundation is courting donors for a $2 million fund to support and shape the transition of presumptive mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George. The pool would in part steer philanthropic money toward training the next administration’s appointees. It would also provide financial resources to nonprofits whose leaders leave to join Lewis George’s cabinet, according to a document reviewed by City Cast DC.
The document — identified as a “concept note” — began circulating earlier this month to leaders in the philanthropic community for feedback. It proposes a a limited-time fund to support the mayor’s transition and pay for at least three possible priorities: “a governing institute for new leadership,” “nonprofit leadership transition support,” and “home rule defense capacity.”
The Greater Washington Community Foundation, which distributes grants and funds to regional nonprofits, will house the initiative — known as the People First D.C. Fund. The Community Foundation is billing the fundraising effort as an opportunity for donors to have “a short but real opportunity to help the incoming administration start strong and to make sure DC’s nonprofit and community infrastructure, the organizations closest to residents, has a seat at the table from day one.””
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In what appears to be a first for D.C., the region’s largest charitable foundation is courting donors for a $2 million fund to support and shape the transition of presumptive mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George. The pool would in part steer philanthropic money toward training the next administration’s appointees. It would also provide financial resources to nonprofits whose leaders leave to join Lewis George's cabinet, according to a document reviewed by City Cast DC.

The document — identified as a “concept note” — began circulating earlier this month to leaders in the philanthropic community for feedback. It proposes a limited-time fund the incumbent mayor could dip into while transitioning to office to pay for at least three possible priorities: “a governing institute for new leadership,” "nonprofit leadership transition support,” and “home rule defense capacity.”

The Greater Washington Community Foundation, which distributes grants and funds to regional nonprofits, will house the initiative — known as the People First D.C. Fund. The Community Foundation is billing the fundraising effort as an opportunity for donors to have “a short but real opportunity to help the incoming administration start strong and to make sure DC's nonprofit and community infrastructure, the organizations closest to residents, has a seat at the table from day one.”

The document contemplates not just funding the transition operation but also meeting with the mayor-elect and having biweekly contact with the transition team.

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Photo courtesy of Getty Images. by @jackie_peiser_reports

At-large D.C. Councilmember Robert White said he will resign Monday, capping a week of chaos that saw his quest to be D.C.’s next delegate jeopardized by a 1970 law that bars paid elected public officials from being elected to the role.

White’s campaign issued a short two-paragraph release Thursday that announced he would deliver remarks outside the Wilson Building on Monday at 5 p.m.

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Photo courtesy of Getty Images. by @jackie_peiser_reports

If it were 2019, Josh Feldman would have pitched his clients’ property on U Street to developers building multifamily apartments. The half-acre lot at the corner of 15th and U streets NW, home to a gas station for several decades, was already zoned for a high-rise, mixed-use apartment development.

But in 2026, as investors and developers flee D.C. to markets with more job growth and more business-friendly legislatures, Feldman knew the most efficient way to sell the property was to bring it to gas station operators. And he was right — Petroleum Marketing Group bought it for $7 million, saddling the neighborhood with a concrete slab in lieu of new apartments.

It’s a trend playing out across the city: Developments even in some of the hottest D.C. neighborhoods are being abandoned, sold, scaled down or deferred as investment money dries up. Permits to build housing last year were the lowest they’d been in 15 years, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Groundbreakings across all sectors plunged 27% year over year, according to the Washington D.C. Economic Partnership’s annual development report.

In 2011, D.C. was rated No. 1 in the Urban Land Institute’s “markets to watch,” which rates cities for investment and development prospects. This year, it was ranked 49th.

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Photo courtesy of Getty Images. by @jackie_peiser_reports

As the master plan for the new RFK Stadium campus moves forward for review by the D.C. Council, a key issue remains a bone of contention: transportation. Councilmember Charles Allen has not let up on his disagreement with WMATA over whether another Metro station is crucial to maximize public transit to and from Commanders games.

“ I strongly believe that anybody who tells you this is a transit-first stadium — just do not buy what they are selling,” Allen said Wednesday at a roundtable about the master plan.

Transit improvements are more urgent to flesh out at the outset of planning, due to the scale of construction needed, versus simpler parts of the plan like park design and recreation facilities. In addition to the Washington Commanders’ goal to have a completed stadium by 2030, the only other developments that are anchored to that timeline are the two parking garages.

Allen, who chairs the council’s transportation committee, has been outspoken with his frustrations that WMATA will not budge on a second Metro station. He argued Wednesday that if it is not made a priority now, transit concerns like a new Metro station could get lost in the list of priorities as construction moves full steam ahead to meet the deadline.

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Reporting by @jackie_peiser_reports
Photo courtesy of the Office of Planning by @jackie_peiser_reports

It’s been about 19 months since the federal government unleashed sweeping layoffs, and D.C. is still experiencing the aftershock, according to two reports released Thursday. The unemployment rate remains stubbornly high and nearly half of D.C. residents said they are struggling because of their job status and housing affordability.

The State of Business report from the D.C. Policy Center for the D.C. Chamber of Commerce and Voices of the Community report (or VoicesDMV) from Gallup and the Greater Washington Community Foundation reveal just how deeply these cuts, and the residual impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, have impacted the local economy and its workforce.

“The defining characteristic of D.C. is it has a lot of super educated, skilled workers moving into the District,” said Yesim Sayin, the executive director of D.C. Policy Center. But that’s starting to slow, and it “will have generational effects.”

The reports are a sobering reminder of what economists, industry insiders and policy makers have been warning: addressing employment is a crucial cog in keeping the economy moving. The data shows the fallout from job losses is bleeding into other areas of the economy — consumer sentiment, commercial real estate, consumer spending, income and housing have all shown weakness.

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Reporting by @jackie_peiser_reports
Photo courtesy of Getty Images. by @jackie_peiser_reports

Mayor Muriel Bowser and the city's planning office submitted the final draft for the RFK stadium campus to the D.C. Council on Thursday, moving the 180-acre mixed use development one step closer to reality.

The plan promises to bring the area surrounding the Washington Commanders stadium up to 6,500 new apartments, over 1,200 hotel rooms, approximately 287,000 square feet of retail and roughly 76 acres of park and open space. The D.C. Council will hold a roundtable to discuss the report on Sept. 30th and will vote in the following weeks to adopt the land use plan.

“We’re excited to be at this point and excited for … the council to realize the aspirations that we’ve been hearing about for months,” Anita Cozart, director of the office of planning, said in an exclusive interview with City Cast DC.

City officials say the 65,000-seat stadium and its surrounding campus will have a sweeping economic impact on the city. According to the report, it will create 2,000 permanent jobs, 30,000 temporary construction jobs, generate $4 billion in tax revenue over 30 years and provide more than 1,600 affordable housing units.

The master plan incorporates feedback from the over 3,100 responses submitted during the mandated 45-day public comment period. The final draft includes updates to public transit and traffic routes, building design, height guidelines, parking structures and green space.

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Reporting by @jackie_peiser_reports
Renderings Courtesy of D.C. Office of Planning. by @jackie_peiser_reports

A swanky new residential development atop the hill on Connecticut Avenue could usher in an amenity residents of Dupont Circle have been begging for: a new grocery store.

The Geneva, a $750 million office to residential conversion, boasts a 26,000-square-foot retail space on its ground floor, and sources told City Cast DC that the building's developers have talked to grocery store chains about filling the space.

A grocery store at the corner of Connecticut and Florida avenues would mark the first major market on the neighborhood’s main drag and within the bounds of the Dupont Circle Business Improvement District (BID).

The development opens a unique retail opportunity for the neighborhood, which is constrained by older buildings that don’t have the typical amount of retail space needed for major grocery chains, said Bill McLeod, executive director of the Dupont Circle BID.

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Reporting by @jackie_peiser_reports
Photo courtesy of Getty Images. by @jackie_peiser_reports

Two D.C. apartment landlords will pay a combined $9.3 million to settle a lawsuit accusing them of illegally using a pricing software to collude with other firms and drive up rents across the city, the D.C. attorney general’s office announced Monday.

JBG Smith, a Bethesda-based real estate investment trust that owns over 4,500 units in D.C., agreed to pay $8.1 million, marking the largest financial settlement in the case to date. Mid-America Apartments (MAA), a Tennessee-based real estate investment trust with 269 units, will pay $1.2 million.

The landlords are the latest to settle in the attorney general’s case that accused 14 local firms of using pricing software from RealPage to inflate rents for about 58,000 multifamily housing units across the District, according to the complaint. The attorney general alleged that RealPage used confidential data to assess the supply and demand for units in specific neighborhoods and then drive up rents. The software caused “District renters to pay millions of dollars they would not have.”

At the time of the lawsuit, RealPage software contributed to pricing 30% of multifamily units in D.C. That percentage grows to 60% when just accounting for large multifamily buildings. The D.C. neighborhoods most affected by the alleged collusion were Navy Yard, NoMa, Dupont Circle, Forest Hills, Logan Circle, Observatory Circle, Adams Morgan, Southwest Waterfront and Shaw, according to the complaint.

JBG owned several buildings at the time of the lawsuit, but the complaint specifically noted The Batley in Union Market and West Half in Navy Yard. MAA owned Post Massachusetts Avenue near Logan Circle.

Reporting by @jackie_peiser_reports

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Photos courtesy of Wikimedia and Getty Images. by @jackie_peiser_reports

Before the pandemic, workers with offices near the 1400 block of K St. NW had a half dozen options for lunch between 14th Street and Vermont Avenue.

Now, there are two.

It’s a story that could be told about any number of blocks in downtown D.C. Streets once brimming with bakeries, dry cleaners, restaurants and cocktail bars, are now dulled by paper-covered windows.

Last year, a quarter of retail space was vacant in the Downtown Business Improvement District (BID), which stretches from 16th Street NW to Louisiana Avenue, and Massachusetts Avenue to Constitution. For the past two years, it’s the highest it’s been since the pandemic — more than double the 10.3% rate from 2019, according to the BID’s State of Downtown report. While vacancies can range from neighborhood to neighborhood, downtown’s numbers far exceed the region's retail vacancy rate in major shopping corridors, which at the end of 2025 was about 13%, according to Dochter & Alexander, a retail real estate advisory firm.

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Reporting by @jackie_peiser_reports
Photos courtesy of Getty Images by @jackie_peiser_reports

U.S. District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes declined Thursday to intervene in the government's removal of trees at East Potomac Park, siding with the Department of the Interior’s argument that its current work is lawful.

The National Park Service has removed 150 trees from the park as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Michael Keith Robertson, a lawyer representing the Trump administration. Robertson argued that crews were selective about which trees they cut down: 77 were invasive trees and 73 were dead, dying or hazardous. The only species currently being removed are mulberry trees and trees of heaven, officials said.

Reyes said the government’s current work was consistent with what she had previously allowed: removing invasive, dead, dying or hazardous trees rather than implementing the broader renovation plan. She said she had no reason to disbelieve the government’s assurances that it would provide notice before taking any irreversible steps toward that larger project.

The hearing is the latest attempt by the D.C. Preservation League to halt any construction on East Potomac Park that would contribute to President Donald Trump’s aspirations to build a pricey, championship-style golf course facility. It comes about a week after activists raised alarms about the National Park Service cutting down dozens of trees throughout the golf course. City Cast DC visited the course and witnessed tree-removal trucks on the greens, as well as a heap of tree trunks near the 14th hole.

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Photo courtesy of Getty Images. by @jackie_peiser_reports

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