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Caitlin Franz • March 26, 2015

The local parents accused of leaving their two young children in a car while they attended a wine tasting on a January night have accepted a plea deal. Christophe Lucas, 41, and Jennie Chang, 45, pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree cruelty to children in D.C. Superior Court on March 19. The couple admitted to leaving their children, who are both under the age of three, in the car while they attended a wine tasting at the Ris restaurant in January. Temperatures hovered in the low 30s that night. Prosecutors said the children were wearing coats but not hats or gloves. One child was also not wearing socks or shoes.

The plea deal allows for the charges to be dismissed in nine months if the couple maintains good behavior and attends a parenting class. Lucas and Chang have already completed the court-mandated parenting course.

The children, who were in the custody of Child Protective Services following the incident, have been released back into the custody of the parents.

Lucas and Chang were originally charged with two counts each of second-degree cruelty to children. These charges could have put the parents in jail for up to six months.

The couple did not make a statement in court. Their lawyer Danny Onorato did release a statement to WTOP. It is included in full below.

“Jennie Chang and Christophe Lucas are caring, dedicated parents who had an unfortunate lapse of judgment a month ago. Ms. Chang and Mr. Lucas were monitoring and watching their children from about 50 feet away, and the parents are adamant that the children were not in any danger. They realize that their actions were wrong and they are eager to place this matter behind them. They’re pleased that the matter is now resolved and they can focus on raising their children. As you know, this case will be dismissed in December.”

Robert Devaney •

The Georgetown Business Association met up March 18 at the newly arrived Orange Anchor restaurant at Washington Harbour on the Georgetown waterfront.

GBA President Charles Camp welcomed members and guests to the seafood eatery – which was opened by Reese Gardner – founder of Wooden Nickel Bar Company (Copperwood Tavern, Irish Whiskey Public House and Second State) and caters to landlubbers and boaters alike.

The purpose of the GBA, Camp stressed, is to promote and help Georgetown businesses succeed. The group heard a quick presentation of a local mobile app, Spotluck, headed by Cherian Thomas and Brad Sayler. The app will soon launch its Georgetown hub to help the community discover — and decide — where to eat locally. Also, GBA members now can join the City Tavern Club at a discount.

Robert Devaney •

The once legendary Watergate Hotel – part of the equally legendary Watergate complex on the Potomac River, next to Georgetown – marked a ceremonial topping off of the hotel’s grand ballroom during its $125-million renovation March 19.

“Once it was the grandest luxury hotel,” said Jacques Cohen, principal of Euro Capital Properties, which is developing and owns the Watergate Hotel. The group intends to bring back the hotel’s mystique — with luxe appointments as well as a 12th floor rooftop.

The grand ballroom, the “hotel’s crown jewel,” said Rakel Cohen, the director of design and development of Euro Capital Properties,” will be called the Moretti Ballroom after the hotel’s designer Luigi Moretti, the Italian architect who created the complex’s contemporary and ground-breaking style in 1961. The hotel opened in 1965.

The Watergate complex on 2600 Virginia Ave. NW gained worldwide fame because of a burglary there of the offices of the Democratic National Committee and the ensuing investigation that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

The Cohens were joined by Mayor Muriel Bowser, Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans and Foggy Bottom advisory neighborhood commissioner William Kennedy Smith, M.D., costume designer Janie Bryant and hotel managing director Johnny So. Then, the headliners planted small Saliva seedlings in a potting table to indicate the rebirth of the hotel, which has been closed for seven years.

The Watergate Hotel will re-open summer 2015 with retro styling and luxuries that will include 340 guest rooms, whisky bar, fine dining and casual restaurants, grand ballroom, rooftop lounge, fitness center and spa.

Georgetowner •

Just a few yards separate the remembered from the forgotten: the distance might as well be miles. The politics of race don’t stop when the heart does.

Gentrification of the dead is alive and well in Georgetown. Stand in just the right spots among the sloped and manicured lawns, towering monuments and gleaming headstones of Oak Hill Cemetery and you can see past a rusted chain-link fence to a massive pile of tumbled and crumbling concrete markers.

Buried somewhere beneath the weeds at the three-acre Mt. Zion & Female Union Band Society Cemetery is Clement Morgan, the first African American to graduate from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He isn’t the only one whose grave is lost to time. Also somewhere in Mt. Zion Cemetery are the unmarked remains of hundreds of slaves and freemen, whose stories of injustice died a second death when the ravages of time, inattention and disrespect turned their final resting place into a dog park and a sometime garbage dump.

Reverence for the dead of color at Mt. Zion has long been a distant second to the demands of money and development. Now that landmark status guarantees that the land can never be sold, the present state of this appalling wasteland remains an unseemly reminder of Georgetown’s failure to honor those who were an integral part of the community, but who lived and died as third-class members of a society that thought little of them when alive and nothing of them after death.

The old burial ground is located near the corner of 27th Street and Q Street NW in a muddy alley behind a row of apartment buildings. A walk through the debris-littered space generally means stepping through deep soil or mud while pushing past dumpsters or maneuvering around parked cars. The two adjoining cemeteries – one black and one white – provide a stark reminder that the earthly barriers of color and class persist even after the surly bonds of earth are severed.

Despite the daunting challenges that await any effort to reverse the ravages of time and neglect, there are murmurs of hope, accompanied by a newfound desire to address with honesty the failures of conscience that ruled Georgetown’s racist past and honor those who endured lives in the shadows.

On many lists of historic places in the District, the cemetery is recognized as an important part of the collective history of Georgetown. But its future is still unclear.

The owner of the land, Mt. Zion Church, is seeking outside resources to restore the site. Dr. Thornell Page, leader of the congregation’s preservation committee and charged by the church to find a possible future path, said his church “has entered into an agreement with the Historic Preservation Office about two months ago. They’ve agreed to match $5,000 to the Mt. Zion Church’s $5,000.” Clearly understanding that the anticipated $10,000 is just a drop in the bucket, Dr. Page is hoping that it may be enough to publicize the present state of things and bring in resources to help kick-start what will be a major – and ultimately very expensive – restoration. The actual cost to restore the site is thought to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

While trying to look past the obvious hurdles ahead, Dr. Page is realistic about the future. It is an emotional issue for him, knowing that the goal of honoring the dead while educating the living will be a costly and taxing endeavor requiring the efforts of many. “It takes people who are interested in preservation and culture … to energize the community,” he said. Though it is probably the strongest push in decades, this is not the first time that hopes have been raised. On several occasions, the slope of decay at Mt. Zion has been halted, only to have progress quickly dashed by changes of heart and fashion.

Over the last several decades, there have been many false starts at restoration. Those failures of the past are vivid to Dr. Page, but he chalks them up as lessons learned. He believes that there now appears to be real momentum for change.

When it first opened in 1809, the cemetery offered two distinct classes of burial that mirrored the social segregation of the time. Whites and free blacks paid $15 for a prime lot, while slave-owning members of the church paid $3 for internment of their human property anywhere there was room. From its very beginnings, the cemetery was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Hidden over the slope of a hill is a small pre-burial storage vault that was frequently pressed into service as a place for runaway slaves to hide on their way north to freedom.

Mt. Zion was a busy place with dozens interred there yearly, but things changed dramatically for the worse when, in 1849, the racially restricted Oak Hill Cemetery was established. White families, seeking the opportunity of burial in the grand, new and all-white Oak Hill Cemetery, worked quickly to have their dead dug up and taken out of Mt. Zion – along with the funds for their perpetual care. The result of the mass exodus of the well-to-do was a patchwork of half-filled holes and a shortfall in dollars for upkeep.

For many years, the church tried to maintain the property, but waning interest on the part of congregants and the flight of heirs to more affordable places outside the city created a vacuum of attention, allowing the burial ground to fall into disrepair. Mt. Zion Cemetery became an eyesore and real-estate developers saw an opportunity to build high-rise apartments and townhouses. Heirs to some of those buried, seeing a profit to be made, petitioned the U.S. District Court for permission to disinter the remains, rebury them elsewhere and sell the land. The Court agreed in 1964 and appointed trustees to sell the land.

The sale was killed when an heir to someone buried at the site, along with the Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation – promising to improve the cemetery and citing its historical significance – won their fight to have the cemetery designated a protected historical landmark and included in the National Register of Historic Places. In light of the new historical designations and the promise of restoration, U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Gasch reversed the order allowing disinterment, stating that such action by the heirs and developers “cannot but offend the sensitivities of civilized people.” “Equally important,” said the judge, “is the fact that not only would such a degradation be perpetrated against the dead, but in this instance the violation of their graves involves the destruction of a monument to evolving free black culture in the District of Columbia.”

Unfortunately, plans by the group to rehabilitate the cemetery were never fully carried out. The site quickly fell further into a state of disrepair. Headstones, made of cheap concrete and rebar, not the exquisite carved granite and marble like those in Oak Hill, were broken or stolen for neighborhood garden projects, weeds grew unchecked and the sign marking the place disappeared. It became difficult to even find the cemetery among the vegetation.

Today, most of the remaining headstones are haphazardly placed into mounds at the edges of the cemetery. The largest group of these stones is located just above an alley behind a row of apartment buildings, feet away from trash dumpsters. While some names are still visible, many of the grave markers are unidentified, as are the exact locations of the remains of an estimated 4,000 slaves, whites, freed blacks and their descendants. A search for a way to honor them is now underway by the church and interested community members. Diagrams prepared in the past give a general location for some graves, but to locate the majority will require specialized skill and equipment.

The tool of choice for this sort of task is ground-penetrating radar, a non-intrusive, subsurface imaging device about the size of a baby carriage. A GPR unit is pulled over the ground to develop a visual profile of what lies below the surface. For cemeteries with missing or destroyed burial records, a GPR survey can produce a composite sitemap of an area indicating grave locations and their depth.

Facing a similar situation, the nonprofit association overseeing Congressional Cemetery in Southeast brought in Robert Perry, an expert at both GPR and the identification of lost graves, to determine the location of unmarked graves, headstones and burial vaults.

Perry sees the condition at Mt. Zion as somewhat typical of African American burial sites across the country. “Black cemeteries tend to be neglected,” he said, adding that graves from the early 1800s do not often have caskets. Single graves are sometime found to contain three, four or five bodies. Perry cites an average cost of $1,650 per day to scan an average of 200 grave spots.

In speaking of his work at Congressional Cemetery, he noted that the local community found closure from knowing that loved ones – or just fellow human beings – are in an appropriate final resting place. “Lots of people stand around and watch what I do,” Perry said. “You’d be surprised how emotional they get.”

Finding the locations of the remains is only the first challenge. Repairing the headstones, cleaning the grounds and placing the correct marker with the correct remains is thought by many in the community as the first steps in helping descendants connect to the lives of their forebears.

While those restorative efforts will be difficult, they are achievable. The larger challenge comes after all is put in good order. Will there be the collective will to learn from the mistakes of the past and begin to set them right?

Gary Tischler •

In the District of Columbia, as elsewhere, time has flown in 2015, driven by snow, wind and frigid air.

It’s been a busy time for new Mayor Muriel Bowser, who seems to have made a whirlwind of her own in the two months since her inauguration.

On March 31, at the Lincoln Theatre, she is scheduled to give her first State of the District address, which “will lay out where we stand on creating a fresh start, highlight our commitment of engagement and integrity and establish how we will create a pathway to the middle class,” according to her newsletter.

Not coincidentally, March 31 marks the end of the month designated as Women’s History Month. Under Bowser, the District can celebrate with particular elan and glee, since we sport a leadership team glistening with women at the helm.

You can start with the mayor, only the second female mayor the District of Columbia has ever had, and continue on to long-serving House Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier, D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and several members of the District Council.

If you follow the mayor on her newsletter, you get a picture these days of a leader, a mover and a doer, a hands-on type who is tackling problems and making her presence felt, always buoyed by an energetic personality. She is nothing if not out there in the community much of the time.

The State of the District address might tell us how the various strands of action and vision she’s been pulling on will come together.

She seems already to have a knack –out of constant necessity – for handling what has been a series of weather-related mini-crises involving school closings, deployment of snow-clearing equipment and a steady stream of inconveniences for District residents. After a halting start, her responses have improved storm by storm, dip by dip.

She’ll likely face a bit of an infrastructure problem given the massive numbers of potholes resulting from the extended winter.
Early on, Bowser seemed hesitant responding to the fire and fatality at the L’Enfant Metro Station, but other incidents, and the general public response, indicated that perhaps a major look at how Metro operates was in order – a policy she’s pursuing.
She responded to a looming budget deficit of nearly $250 million by holding a series of public town meetings eliciting citizen responses to possible cuts and priorities.

She appeared strong – even willing to go to jail – concerning the District’s marijuana law after Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) put D.C. residents on edge by appearing to threaten to incarcerate elected officials for implementing the law.

She chose to appoint Gregory Dean, the former chief of the Seattle Fire Department, as the next head of the District’s Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department, choosing not to pick interim chief Eugene Jones.

She also decided, in conjunction with Chancellor Kaya Henderson, to launch “Empowering Males of Color,” an initiative to “advance achievement and opportunity and reduce racial disparities for boys and men of color across Washington, D.C.”
She just went on the annual Wall Street visit last week with D.C.’s Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey DeWitt, District Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and Council member Jack Evans, presenting the District’s strong financial picture to the money guys.

She’s been busy.

Georgetowner • March 23, 2015

Meet the Artists Reception

March 20th, 2015 at 05:00 PM | Free | pdubroof@iona.org | Tel: 202- 895-9407 | Event Website

Join us in celebrating our Artist in Residence Helga Thomson (print maker) and Special Guest Artist Norma Schwartz (sculptor) and their vibrant works on display at the Gallery. Featuring live music and delicious refreshments. You will have the opportunity to chat with the artists and enjoy their poignant works on display.

Address

The Gallery at Iona; 4125 Albemarle Street NW

Thos. Moser Grand Opening

March 21st, 2015 at 10:00 AM | dcshowroom@thosmoser.com | Tel: 202-793-2606 | Event Website

Come by & receive a copy of our new commemorative catalog. Tom will be in the showroom to sign it between 10am-2pm. Master craftsman Warren Shaw will be demonstrating how our iconic Thos. Moser Continuous Arm Chair is made. We also invite you to enter to win a spot in our Customer-in-Residence program. With the guidance of a master craftsman, the winner will spend a week in our Maine workshop making a Thos. Moser Continuous Arm Chair while staying at a historic Inn.

Event from 10:00 am – 6:00 pm

Address

Thos. Moser Washington, DC Showroom; 1028 33rd Street, NW

Exhibition Opening: Scaling Washington: Photographs by Colin Winterbottom

March 21st, 2015 at 10:00 AM | Tel: 202-272-2448 | Event Website](http://www.nbm.org/exhibitions-collections/exhibitions/scaling-washington.html)

Opens March 21, runs through January 3, 2016.
This exhibition features breathtaking, one-of-a-kind imagery captured from the dizzying scaffolds at the Washington Monument and the Washington National Cathedral. The architectural sensibility of fine art photographer Colin Winterbottom transformed the recent, earthquake-driven repairs at both landmarks into an opportunity to redefine how we perceive and understand these two fragile and enduring national symbols.?

Address

National Building Museum; 401 F Street NW

The 6th Annual Move Me Festival

March 21st, 2015 at 01:00 PM | free | jessica@bmdc.org | Tel: 703-910-5175 | [Event Website](http://www.bmdc.org/outreach/move-me-festival)

The Move Me Festival, hosted by Bowen McCauley Dance, is a FREE, family-friendly celebration of the arts and culture, promoting healthy lifestyles through movement and the arts. The event features twenty performances on two stages and fifteen interactive activity sessions by local arts partners, including offerings in dance fitness, acapella, physical theater, storytelling, arts and crafts, theatre games, and world dance styles, as well as two food trucks.

Address

Kenmore Middle School; 200 South Carlin Springs Road; Arlington VA, 22204

Cupcakes of Georgetown-Cherry Blossom

March 21st, 2015 at 01:00 PM | $25 | education@dumbartonhouse.org | Tel: 2023372288 | [Event Website](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cupcakes-of-georgetown-walking-tours-tickets-15929706180)

Join us for a delightful walking tour of Georgetown- with history and cupcakes! The tour will begin at Dumbarton House and make stops at Baked & Wired, Sprinkles, and Georgetown Cupcake to pick up pre-ordered cupcakes (we skip the long lines!) Enjoy your treats as you learn about the historic Georgetown neighborhood. Ticket price includes 3 cupcakes per registrant, one from each shop. This month we will celebrate the Cherry Blossom Festival by tasting each bakery’s Cherry blossom treat.

Address

2715 Q Street, NW

Illusions of Georgetown’s Grand Opening

March 21st, 2015 at 04:00 PM | Event Website](http://www.punchbowl.com/parties/b08b760ecbc101bafb71/view)

Illusions of Shirlington wants to invite everyone to the Grand Opening of Illusions of Georgetown! Saturday.March 21st 2015!
Click the link for more details & to RSVP!

Address

1629 Wisconsin Ave. NW

Passport to Europe

March 21st, 2015 at 04:30 PM | $20-$30 | info@blacknightevents.com | Tel: (202) 681-9560 | Event Website](http://blacknightevents.electrostub.com/event.cfm?id=143726&cart)

Taking you to Europe at this event you will find yourself immersed into Fashion, Music, Culture and Art of Europe. Come into refresh your senses with a “PASSPORT TO EUROPE” at The Manor on March 21st, 2015

The Show:

MC: Miss DE World 2015 Taylor DeMario

6:30pm VIP Reception: The Passport Toast.

Mix & Mingle w/designers & artist.

Exclusive Art Exhibit by Amelia ST

7:30pm General

Performance: Zahra & Jason Barnes

Fashion Presentation

Live Visuals by Masrae snd+vsn

Music: Dj Cesar Sanchez

Address

The Manor DC; 1327 Connecticut Ave NW

Sanctuary Music by Candlelight

March 21st, 2015 at 08:00 PM | $35-$30 | office@dumbartonconcerts.org | Tel: 202-965-2000 | Event Website](http://www.dumbartonconcerts.org/)

The hushed, candlelit beauty of Dumbarton United Methodist Church’s sanctuary is the perfect setting to discover the other-worldly beauty of The Tiffany Consort. This five-voice ensemble, with cello, sings sacred works of J.S. Bach, Allegri, Tallis, and the world premiere of a new work by conductor and composer Nicholas White. Allegri’s “Miserere mei” will soar through the sanctuary. Join us for this evening of magnificent choral music.

Address

Dumbarton Concerts; 3133 Dumbarton St. NW

Opera on Tap DC Metro

March 22nd, 2015 at 04:00 PM | $5 | kristina@operaontap.org | Tel: 8434377251 | [Event Website](http://www.operaontap.org/dcmetro/)

Opera on Tap DC Metro returns to The Pinch for an afternoon of opera and musical theatre. Join us for a pint or two and yummy eats (Pretzel Crusted Fried Pickles anyone?…) and revel with some of DC’s most exciting opera singers!

Sunday, March 22nd from 4-6pm (doors open at 3:30pm)

$5 cash cover charge at door

Artists: David E. Chavez, Wesley Gentle, Annie Gill, Becky Henry, Melissa Mino, Kristina Riegle, Carla Rountree, Molly Pinson Simoneau, Gregory Stuart, and Dane Suarez
Address

The Pinch – 3548 14th St. NW, Washington DC 20010

Murder Mystery at 868 Estate

March 22nd, 2015 at 06:30 PM | $65 | Tel: 540-668-7008 | [Event Website](http://868estatevineyards.com/)

Disco is “King” once more in this interactive, leisure suit murder mystery in the Tasting Room at 868 Estate Vineyards. Sleuth out the answers and enjoy a delicious dinner served at intermission. Theater performance provided by Stage Coach Theater Company.

Address

14001 Harpers Ferry Rd., Purcellville, Va.

Empty Bowls

March 24th, 2015 at 06:00 PM | $25 | rpotts-dupre@some.or | Tel: 202.797.8806, ext. 1131 | [Event Website](http://some.org/empty-bowls/)

Guests select and take home a beautiful handmade bowl crafted by local artists, and enjoy a supper of soup, bread and dessert donated by local restaurants. The proceeds from the event help SOME continue to provide more than 1,000 meals each day to hungry and homeless District residents. Our partner, The Corcoran School of Art, enlists faculty, students and alumni to produce 500 of the 1,000 bowls needed for the events.

Address

March 25th: The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament; 3630 Quesada Street, NW

March 25th: St. Ann Roman Catholic Church; 5300 North 10th Street; Arlington, VA

The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense

March 24th, 2015 at 07:00 PM | megan.mcnitt@dc.gov | Tel: (202) 727-0232

Susan Lowell will teach participants new strategies for dealing with difficult conversations.

Address

Georgetown Neighborhood Library; 3260 R St., NW

Georgetowner •

Executive Director Martin Wollesen came to the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in Sept. 2013 from the University of California, San Diego. From 8 to 9:3 a.m. at the March 12 Cultural Leadership Breakfast, he will share his plans and goals for The Clarice: the six-venue centerpiece of the University of Maryland’s College of Arts and Humanities in College Park.

$15 for George Town Club members

$20 for non-members

To RSVP email richard@georgetowner.com or call 202 338 4833

Peter Murray •

As if anyone needed another reminder about how expensive housing is in the District of Columbia, apartment rental site Zumper mapped the cost of a month’s rent in a one-bedroom apartment in D.C. neighborhoods.

Subsequently, the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute released a report showing, among other things, that rent has increased in D.C. most for low- and middle-income renters and that the number of apartments in the area where monthly rent is below $800 has decreased from 58,000 in 2002 to 33,000 in 2013.

There are few surprises in the Zumper report. Georgetown is the most expensive place to live ($2,600), with Downtown-Penn Quarter-Chinatown ranking in a close second ($2,510). Arlington is more expensive than living in a lot of neighborhoods in D.C. but with a lot less urban character. Ditto on SW Ballpark – Navy Yard, where rent averages are $2,104, hundreds of dollars more than in LeDroit Park – Bloomingdale ($1,550), Capitol Hill ($1,795), Glover Park ($1,760), Petworth ($1,610), Mount Pleasant ($1,650) and a couple of other neighborhoods. The main point here is that it’s not worth living in big-ass, expensive apartment building in a neighborhood with no personality, when there are lower prices in a number of charming (though sometimes in-transition) areas in D.C.

Speaking of charming, in-transition neighborhoods: Zumper’s map shows that despite continued sketchiness and crime, H Street-NOMA and Columbia Heights have officially become expensive places to live with rents for a one-bedroom apartment averaging out at $2,100 per month.

Rents are actually down slightly in Columbia Heights though there is this story from DCist about a building owner increasing monthly rents by more than $900.

The map also reaffirms Logan Circle-Shaw as an incredibly popular, in-demand neighborhood akin to Dupont Circle. What sets the area apart from others with high rent price points like Foggy Bottom, Mount Vernon Square, Woodley Park and Downtown is that the neighborhood currently is not home to massive buildings with market rate — read “costly” — rents. As more of these complexes, including buildings around the Shaw metro station, adjacent to City Market at O and near Logan Circle come online, the median one-bedroom monthly rent will likely shoot up even further. (This seems to defy common sense with regard to supply and demand, but that’s D.C.’s rental market in certain neighborhoods for you.)

So, what does this all mean for you and finding affordable housing in Washington? As D.C.’s real estate market becomes increasingly like those in New York City and San Francisco, finding affordable housing will progressively become a more daunting task but it’s possible, if you’re a savvy shopper. Try living with people — as many as you can — if affordability is your top concern. One-bedrooms might be expensive in Columbia Heights but there are plenty of large, multi-bedroom houses with rents around $1,000 per person in the neighborhood.

Look outside the box in terms of neighborhoods. If you want to live in near Dupont Circle but can’t afford rent there, don’t mosey over defeated to Arlington, check out a group house in Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant or Bloomingdale. If those hoods are still too pricey, check out Petworth, Brookland, Trinidad, Eckington or Capitol Hill.

If real estate trends in D.C., New York and San Francisco illustrate anything, it’s that rundown, crime-ridden areas can quickly become hot, up-and-coming, appealing neighborhoods.