Secret saga of Harrison Square
City’s quiet quest to buy 50 properties for stadium project
It wasn’t an easy task for Greg Leatherman and Bill Martin: track down 32 different owners of 50 properties and negotiate to buy their homes, businesses or empty lots.
They had little leverage – telling the owners only that a significant public investment was under consideration, and they needed their land.
That investment was later revealed to be Harrison Square, the city’s $160 million public-private downtown development proposal, the centerpiece of which is a $30 million baseball stadium for the Wizards.
Leatherman, the city’s deputy director of community development, orchestrated the effort. Martin, president of the real estate firm Martin Goldstine Knapke, executed the deals.
Martin knocked on doors and diligently hunted down landlords and absentee owners, approaching them as representing Three Rivers Development Co. LLC, which he also owns.
All the while, Leatherman and Martin lived in fear the media or public would uncover their dealings and send prices soaring – hindering negotiations and further burdening taxpayers.
Neither happened, and now options are secured on all but three properties, leaving Three Rivers Development to begin closing on the city’s behalf. Whether or not Harrison Square becomes reality, the city will own the properties.
If this were an episode of The A-Team, one of the owners, an old widow who happened to be the favorite teacher of B.A, would have said no and kept saying no until she, her beautiful daughter -- for whom Face would develop a crush, and her cute-as-a-button grandson -- with whom Murdock would bond, are threatened with bodily harm by some vaguely threatening henchman. The team would have gone to Fort Wayne, discovered what was happening, and stopped the development right in its tracks. At the end, Face would be shot down by the daughter and for payment.
I love it when a plan comes together.
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