Will the 11th Street Bridge Park Community Land Trust Soon Make Its First Purchase?

• March 11th 2019

by Nena Perry-Brown

Three years after the idea of a community land trust was floated by the group behind the 11th Street Bridge Park, the trust could be close to making its first land buys.

While the city's first elevated park (map) remains in the pre-construction phase, Building Bridges Across the River (BBAR) remains at work on its Equitable Development Plan (EDP), an initiative to mitigate any displacement the bridge park could foster. 

Land trusts are a means to communally control real estate in order to create and maintain affordable housing into perpetuity. The Douglass Community Land Trust (DCLT) is BBAR's version of the concept, and although the trust has raised several million dollars for property acquisition, the approach is still being fine-tuned.  

Rather than concentrate on the one-mile radius around the park's landing in Anacostia, the DCLT is exploring all of Ward 8 for opportunities to purchase land or housing units. A recent report from the Urban Institute states that the land trust has a letter of intent to purchase the land beneath a 65-unit building at 13th and Savannah Streets SE (map) in Congress Heights from the National Housing Trust. DCLT has also partnered with a developer to apply for three contiguous city-owned vacant parcels in the same neighborhood, and continues to partner with developers to bid on other city-owned parcels.

The Bridge Park is expected to be completed in 2023.

All renderings courtesy of OMA+OLIN.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/will-the-11th-street-bridge-park-community-land-trust-soon-make-its-first-p/15106.