Lerner's Suffering? Too freakin' bad!

"At [Nationals owner Theodore N. Lerner]'s 10-story office building at 20 M St., the lobby doors are sometimes locked much of the afternoon. The only tenant is a bank."

My former office is located directly across the street from the building referenced in the Washington Post article and blocked my view of Arlington Cemetery when if was completed. It also blocked my view of the Catholic Church one door further down and made it more challenging for me, and others, to determine when the church ladies were selling fried fish.

When we moved in almost eight years ago, M Street S.E. was a Hell-hole. It is no exaggeration to say that there were crack houses beside and behind our office building. My company made the move to M Street S.E. so as to be close to our primary customer the U.S. Navy which had relocated from the relative affluence of Crystal City to the living Hell of Southeast.

Being an early adopter and taking residence in the first Class A office building in Southeast my company was able to negotiate very favorable lease rates on an entire floor. A couple of years ago I was discussing the matter of renegotiating the lease for the floor and was told that the company would, most likely, be relocating further away as the lease rates (then quoted) were going to quadruple in price. I don't know if the lease had been renegotiated, and if not this would be a good time to start.

The issue with the Post article seems to imply that the the economic downturn is the sole reason for the empty office buildings. I do not agree.

Like the residential speculators who suffered from the housing bubble, there is an office space bubble in the process of bursting. The big difference between the two is that the residential victims had no clue of what was going on. One would expect that savvy businessmen such as the Lerner brothers would know better and would not have set themselves up for failure. It is not just that they overbuilt, they overbuilt in Southeast and area only recently more famous for its murders and drug deals than its stadium.

A walk around the ballpark will reveal a whole lot of nothing. The stadium is lovely - one of the most customer friendly that I have ever visited. The area around the stadium is another matter. There are areas which the city was to have developed - and they have not. There are areas where the Lerner's were to have developed - and they have not. There are areas where other wealthy individuals/corporations were to have developed - and they have not. The promise that was the new stadium is a hollow promise at best.

What is obviously missing is the sense of community around the stadium as all of the local flavor has been bulldozed and bought-out in favor or corporate or city initiatives. The sterility of the area outside the stadium is obvious and overpowering: it is not the sort of place where pre-game or post-game strolls are taken. The area around the stadium is a place from which to evacuate.

Don't get me wrong: the closing of the liquor stores (drug sales in the parking lot) and the police impound (prostitution in an impounded travel trailer) lot was a good idea. But the bulldozing of the many small mom-and-pop restaurants and the one bed-and-breakfast deprived the area of any sense of community, and was a monumental mistake that has made the success and failure of the stadium area solely dependent upon the whims of the Lerner's and politics of City Hall.

Bottom Line: I deeply lament the could-of, would-have and should-have of the area around the stadium and I blame the Lerner's exclusively for the mismanagement. If they are losing money now: too bad. It was their moves to economically dominate the area which caused the problem in the first place.