Local
Soccer stadium would displace D.C. Center, gay nightclub
Mayor Gray, D.C. United to announce Reeves Center land swap
Managing partner of D.C. United, Jason Levien, and Mayor Vincent C. Gray, sign a public-private partnership to build a new soccer stadium in the city’s Southwest district on Thursday, July 25, 2013, at the future construction site. (Washington Blade photo by Damien Salas)
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A preliminary $300 million deal proposed by Mayor Vincent Gray that reportedly calls for turning over the city’s Reeves Center municipal building to a developer in exchange for land to build a new soccer stadium would lead to the displacement of the LGBT Community Center, which is set to move into the Reeves Center in September.
The potentially controversial deal, which must be approved by the City Council, would also result in the displacement of the popular gay nightclub Ziegfeld’s/Secrets, which is located close to where the D.C. United soccer stadium would be built in the Buzzard Point section of Southwest Washington.
Although the stadium itself would not be built on the site where Ziegfeld’s/Secrets is located, the deal reportedly calls for building a hotel and shops and restaurants adjacent to the stadium, and those structures would displace the gay club.
If approved, the soccer stadium deal would force Ziegfeld’s/Secrets to search for a new location six years after it was displaced from its original home on the site of the Washington Nationals stadium.
Gray and officials with the D.C. United Soccer team were scheduled to announce the deal at a news conference at 11 a.m. Thursday at a location set to be disclosed early Thursday morning.
The Washington Post reported details of the deal on Thursday night that it obtained from City Administrator Allen Lew, who negotiated the agreement for the mayor, according to the Post.
“In the most high-profile swap, the Frank D. Reeves Municipal Center, located at 14th and U streets, N.W., would transfer to D.C.-based developer Akridge in exchange for about two acres of Buzzard Point, nearly a quarter of the land needed for the stadium, and cash to make up an expected difference in the value of the two properties,” the Post reported.
News of the reported deal comes shortly after the D.C. Center for the LGBT Community signed a 15-year lease with the city to rent space in the Reeves Center. An unrelated development project is forcing the Center to leave its current space on U Street, N.W. less than a block from the Reeves Center.
When unconfirmed reports surfaced earlier this year that the Reeves Center was under consideration for a land swap to facilitate the building of a new soccer stadium, Gray told LGBT activists at a Pride Week town hall meeting sponsored by the Washington Blade that he was not aware of any such plans.
D.C. Center officials said the cost of renovations needed to get the Reeves Center space ready for occupancy would exceed $50,000. Its lease for space in the building, which is considered to be in a highly desirable area, requires that the Center rather than the city pay for renovation work.
Center Executive Director David Mariner said the lease provides for protections against the breaking of the lease before its 15-year term expires. But it could not immediately be determined if those protections would compensate the center for the money it paid for the renovation and for moving expenses should it be forced to find a new home.
Sources familiar with the land swap deal have said the Akridge development company was not expected to displace the Reeves Center’s occupants immediately should it gain possession of the building. However, Akridge President Mathew J. Klein told the Post the company would push for a mixed-use project on the site of the Reeves Center that would include new housing should it obtain the building. This suggests the company would seek to demolish the Reeves Center building and build a new structure.
City Administrator Lew told the Post the city is already making plans to move city agencies that now occupy the Reeves Center to a city office building in Anacostia.
The Ziegfeld’s/Secrets building is owned by Denver, Colo., businessman Marty Chernoff, who operated the D.C. gay nightclub Tracks before it closed to make way for a new office building in Southeast D.C. Chernoff couldn’t immediately be reached to determine if he has been approached to sell his building to developers linked to the soccer stadium deal.
In the case of the baseball stadium, the city declared eminent domain to seize property from private owners on the site the city selected to build the stadium. The eminent domain statute requires the city to pay fair market price for the property it takes.
Cameroon
Gay Cameroonian immigrant will be freed from ICE detention — for now
Ludovic Mbock’s homeland criminalizes homosexuality
By ANTONIO PLANAS | An immigration judge on Friday issued a $4,000 bond for a Cameroonian immigrant and regional gaming champion held in federal immigration detention for the past three weeks.
The ruling will allow Ludovic Mbock, of Oxon Hill, to return to Maryland from a Georgia facility this weekend, his family and attorney said.
“Realistically, by tomorrow. Hopefully, by today,” said Mbock’s attorney, Edward Neufville. “We are one step closer to getting Ludovic justice.”
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
District of Columbia
Bowser appoints first nonbinary person to Cabinet-level position
Peter Stephan named Office of Disability Rights interim director
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bower has named longtime disability rights advocate Peter L. Stephan, who identifies as nonbinary, as interim director of the D.C. Office of Disability Rights.
The local transgender and nonbinary advocacy group Our Trans Capital and the LGBTQ group Capital Stonewall Democrats issued a joint statement calling Stephan’s appointment an historic development as the first-ever appointment of a nonbinary person to a Cabinet-level D.C. government position.
“This milestone appointment recognizes Stephan’s extensive expertise in disability rights advocacy and marks a historic advancement for transgender and nonbinary representation in District government leadership,” the statement says.
The statement notes that Stephan, an attorney, held the position of general counsel at the Office of Disability Rights immediately prior to the mayor’s decision to name him interim director.
The mayor’s office didn’t immediately respond to a question from the Washington Blade asking if Bowser plans to name Stephan as the permanent director of the Office of Disability Rights. John Fanning, a spokesperson for D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large), said the office’s director position requires confirmation by the Council.
Stephan couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
“At a time when trans and nonbinary people ae under attack across the country, D.C. continues to lead by example,” said Stevie McCarty, president of Capital Stonewall Democrats. “This appointment reflects what we have always believed that our community is always strongest when every voice is represented in government,” he said.
“This is a historic step forward,” said Vida Rengel, founder of Our Trans Capital. “Interim Director Stephan’s career and accomplishments are a shining example of the positive impact that trans and nonbinary public servants can have on our communities,” according to Rangel.
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats set to celebrate 50th anniversary
Mayor Bowser expected to attend March 20 event
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, members of the D.C. Council, and local and national Democratic Party officials are expected to join more than 150 LGBTQ advocates and supporters on March 20 for the 50th anniversary celebration of the city’s Capital Stonewall Democrats.
A statement released by the organization says the event is scheduled to be held at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery building at 702 8th St., N.W. in D.C.
“The evening will honor the people who built Capital Stonewall Democrats across five decades – activists who fought for rights when the odds were against them, public servants who opened doors and refused to let them close, and a new generation of leaders ready to carry the work forward,” the statement says.
Founded in 1976 as the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the organization’s members voted in 2021 to change its name to the Capital Stonewall Democrats.
Among those planning to attend the anniversary event is longtime D.C. gay Democratic activist Paul Kuntzler, 84, who is one of the two co-founders of the then-Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. Kuntzler told the Washington Blade that he and co-founder Richard Maulsby were joined by about a dozen others in the living room of his Southwest D.C. home at the group’s founding meeting in January 1976.
He said that among the reasons for forming a local LGBTQ Democratic group at the time was to arrange for a then “gay” presence at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, at which Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for U.S. president and later won election as president.
Maulsby, who served as the Stein Club president for its first three years and who now lives in Sarasota, Fla., said he would not be attending the March 20 anniversary event, but he fully supports the organization’s continuing work as an LGBTQ organization associated with the Democratic Party.
Steven McCarty, Capital Stonewall Democrats’ current president, said in the statement that the anniversary celebration will highlight the organization’s work since the time of its founding.
“Capital Stonewall Democrats has been fighting for LGBTQ+ political power in this city for 50 years, electing people, training organizers, holding this community together through some really hard moments,” he said. “And right now, with everything going on, that work has never mattered more. This gala is the first moment of our next chapter, and I want the community to be a part of it.”
The statement says among the special guests attending the event will be Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta, who became the first openly gay LGBTQ person of color to win election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2018.
Other guests of honor, according to the statement, include Mayor Bowser; D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5, the Council’s only gay member; D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large); Earl Fowlkes, founder of the International Federation of Black Prides; Vita Rangel, a transgender woman who serves as Deputy Director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments; Heidi Ellis, director of the D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition; Rayceen Pendarvis, longtime D.C. LGBTQ civic activist; and Phillip Pannell, longtime D.C. LGBTQ Democratic activist and Ward 8 civic activist.
Information about ticket availability for the Capital Stonewall Democrats anniversary gala can be accessed here: capitalstonewalldemocrats.com/50th
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