Earlier this week, George Washington University professor Christopher P. Leinberger included Adams Morgan on a list of D.C. area neighborhoods “lagging behind” others in a list for the Washington Post. And the Adams Morgan Partnership BID isn’t happy about it.

“Wrong, wrong and wrong,” BID executive director Kristen Barden in a letter to the Post, asking the paper to correct or retract Leinberger’s claims. According to Barden, Leinberger ignored developments in the neighborhood like the completed Adams Morgan Streetscape project and an upcoming hotel (located where Washington City Paper‘s offices are now). She also claimed that the figures Leinberger provided for per-square foot rents in the area were too low.

“The businesses are still recovering from the Streetscape, so any negative press like that really hurts,” Barden says. She questioned the source of Leinberger’s real estate numbers, real estate data service CoStar, saying that the numbers becoming less accurate when they move out of downtown commercial districts.

For his part, Leinberger’s sticking by the rent numbers. While he concedes that the streetscape construction could have temporarily depressed rents, he insists that Adams Morgan is set to miss out on the boom in walkable communities that he foresees.

“If it just keeps on being Party Central, it’s not going to be good for the property owners, and it’s not going to be good for the properties around them,” he says.

Adams Morgan faces other issues, according to Leinberger, including an overrreliance on night life that has soured its residents on relationships with businesses.

“[Neighbors] get tired of having people throw up on their front step,” he says.

Photo by Flickr user Krossbow used under a Creative Commons license.