A surprise announcement from Mayor Adrian Fenty at Janney Elementary on March 16th temporarily closed the battle between the Tenleytown community and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development over the mixed-use redevelopment of the Tenley-Friendship Library. The District has split with developer LCOR Inc., which had earlier been awarded rights to construct the library at the site, along with 174 rental apartments, by the Fenty administration this past July. Off-the-record D.C. government sources maintained that the change of direction at the Janney site had little to do the contentious war of words between the Tenleytown community’s reps on the DC City Council and ODMPED, but that instead, LCOR was forced to the sidelines due an inability to secure financing in the troubled credit market. For the time being, the District is leaving the door to mixed-use development open for the near future.
The library over the metro station will now top out at a simple two stories and measure in at 22,000 square feet without the previously planned residential units on top. Mayor Fenty pledged to open the new library by the end of 2010, and renovations to Janney, once scheduled to begin in 2014, “could begin as soon as December.”