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The paper trail for the Atlantic Towers doesn’t stretch too far* But according to the Washington Business Journal the project was slated to include 750 units plus retail, right next door to the 9:30 Club—-another extension of the U Street area’s glorious frontier.
This morning’s WBJ does not report good news for the next pioneers though: Broadway Management Co. was the developer handling the Atlantic Towers project, and as with many of their other developments in D.C., things are not swimming along.
Broadway’s the company behind Mount Vernon Triangle’s disastrous Dumont project, which failed to attract enough buyers, stalling completion of the building and eventually leading early purchasers to demand refunds on their security deposits, as the Washington Post detailed last January. Broadway also developed Senate Square on Eye Street NE; A judge recently appointed a receiver to that project after Broadway stopped repaying its bank loans in April, according to the Washington Business Journal.
Now, Broadway is again in default (to Wells Fargo Bank, this time). An auction date had been set for October of this year, but then “on Sept. 22 — three weeks before the first scheduled foreclosure auction — a consultant produced a report indicating the presence of environmental contaminants in soil and groundwater samples from the property,” according to the Washington Business Journal.
“The site’s industrial past may be one factor complicating a foreclosure sale. Lenders are often reluctant to take title to land burdened with environmental liabilities, according to legal experts,” the article explains. The property still has not sold.
Looks like the 9:30 club will be holding onto some grungy credibility for a while longer.
*Well, here’s a Zoning Commission transcript from 2006, there’s not much recent news that I can find on the project.