Make No Little Plans; Part III — Early Attempts to Develop the Air Rights
The winter break brought some rest for those of us in the academy but little for the women and men working on the Capitol Crossing project. Most of the work on 200 Massachusetts Avenue has become invisible to passersby since the glass curtain wall is virtually complete and the majority of work is occurring inside the building. Wall- and floor-tiles are being installed, marble counters are being set, and water faucets and spigots are being installed in the bathrooms. Stairwells have been closed in, doors are being hung and equipped with hardware, and elevator doors and some cabs are in place. Lasa marble floors and walls are being set in the ground floor lobbies while ceiling tiles, ductwork, and other mechanical, plumbing, and electrical fixtures give the building an appearance of incipient completion.
Utilities on the roof and in the East Concourse soon will be pumping air, water, and electricity through those fixtures, providing comfort to the tenants who will soon occupy the building. Higher up the building, a skylight now sits in the roof and the glassed-in roof terrace awaits the planting of a LEEDS approved roof garden when the warm season begins.
Buildings seem to take forever to go up. Once the exterior is completed, we begin to think the completion is near. But then the slow process of completing the mechanical, plumbing, and electrical systems, outfitting the interiors, and commissioning the building begins. We wait, wondering what could possibly be taking so long. And then, somewhat surprisingly, substantial completion is announced. Substantial completion is a term of art in the building trades that is usually defined by the terms of the contract. Generally speaking, it means the moment in the life of a building when regulatory inspections have been completed and an owner can take possession and make use of the building while minor work continues. Today I can announce that substantial completion of 200 Massachusetts Avenue is actually drawing near. Equipment is currently being tested, final inspections are taking place, and building engineers are being trained to operate the building’s mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems. The anticipated date for the issuance of a Certificate of Occupancy and the substantial completion of 200 Massachusetts Avenue has been set for mid- to late-March, 2018, a mere six weeks away. Sometime in May, punch lists will be completed, last minute corrections will be made, trims and finishes will be polished, and the doors will open to the tenants of a virtually completed building. Tenant buildouts will begin soon thereafter and the first tenants will move in later this year.
The more visible work is occurring at the north tower of 250 Massachusetts Avenue and in the garage under what will become the building’s south tower. Excavations under what will be the Center Block and South Block buildings of Capitol Crossing are continuing. The cold spell we experienced during our winter break slowed the progress on the first two jobs. You may recall, concrete is a dynamic substance that requires a certain amount of heat to set properly. (See Construction Notes Concrete Redux, dated January 27, 2016.) If you were around the site in late December and early January, you would have seen columns wrapped with insulation to help maintain the proper temperature for the concrete to cure. The temperature dipped so low, however, that the concrete plants were unable to mix the concrete to temperatures that could be maintained until the mixture reached the site. Thus, the concrete plants shut down. Despite the cold weather, 250 Massachusetts Avenue is now rising quickly. The subsequent warm weather helped speed the concrete pours. Concrete columns and floors have now been poured up to the seventh level in the north tower and will begin to be poured on the eighth floor later this week. Reshores (the temporary supports below newly poured floors) are now being removed from the second and third floors. Concrete pours in the south tower garage are coming along. They have now reached the top parking level. Looking ahead, BBC expects to start erecting its glass curtain wall around May 1 and complete construction in 2019.
Touring the site is always exciting for me and if you recall from the last two years, the BBC construction group and I sponsor a tour to the highest bidder at the Equal Justice Foundation’s public interest auction. This year’s auction is on February 15th — little more than a week away. Doors open at 7 and there will be many fantastic items to bid on in addition to the Capitol Crossing tour. And of course, all proceeds help support the students’ public interest legal work. So come on out and be generous. Tickets can be purchased at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2018-live-auction-tickets-41594068980
I have often commented in these Notes that the Capitol Crossing project is an engineering marvel. But Property Group Partners was not the first group to imagine what many people believed to be the unimaginable — a four-block deck over an active highway supporting more than 2 million square feet of habitable space. The I-395 Center Leg Freeway was the result of America’s love affair with the automobile and our desire for fast and convenient travel from the emerging suburbs into the cities and into the countryside. President Eisenhower’s U.S. Interstate Highway System, considered by many to be the greatest public works project in modern history, created the Center Leg Freeway as part of an overall plan that would have bisected Washington in ways no urban planner would consider today. You can read more about the Interstate system at http://mentalfloss.com/article/67990/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-us-interstate-system and https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/programadmin/interstate.cfm
Although some of the highways actually built in the metropolitan area were elevated like the Southeast-Southwest Freeway and some were at ground level like I-295 running through Anacostia and into Maryland, the Center Leg was submerged below grade level, anticipating advances in engineering and the existence of some deep-pocketed developers who could bridge the expanse of the block-wide, three block-long ditch. You can read more about the Center Leg Freeway in Construction Notes, Why Is That Ditch There Anyway? dated June 11, 2014. http://www.law.georgetown.edu/campus-services/facilities/construction-info/index.cfm and at http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-95-center-leg-todays-i-395-3rd_18.html
Although the portion of the highway under the current “Air Rights” development was built between 1966 and 1973, the first serious attempt to develop the space above the Center Leg across from the Law Center didn’t occur until 1988. An earlier concept proposed in 1965 contemplated the creation of two new federal buildings over the parts of the sunken highway nearer to the Southeast Freeway. One would be built to the north of the Mall and one would be built to the south of the Mall. A new Capitol reflecting pool would be built between them. The Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building, erected in the Brutalist style in 1975, still stands between Constitution Avenue and C Streets at 2nd Street NW. The other, the old H.E.W. Building now called the Hubert Humphrey Building, was designed by Marcel Breuer also in the Brutalist style. It was completed on the south end of the tunnel at Independence and 2nd Street, SW in 1977. Sadly, two wonderful and historic buildings were demolished for the Center Leg project. The home of Senator Stephen Douglas of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, built at 201 I Street NW, was demolished in late 1965. Douglas built the house called Mount Julep (named for Douglas’ partiality to whiskey) and two other homes in 1857. During the Civil War, it was used as a Union hospital. After the war, Generals Grant and Sherman became residents in what was then called Douglas Row. Sherman soon became a prominent resident of Washington and addressed a class of Georgetown Law students in 1873. Mount Julep had been designated a landmark by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Fine Arts Commission.
The Standard Oil Building, commonly called the Esso Building, was built in 1932 and razed in 1968. It stood on the northeast corner of Constitution Avenue and 3rd Street. The Esso Building was called the largest and grandest service station in the world. The building stood three hundred feet long and six stories high and was clad in limestone. Given today’s gas station architecture, it is difficult to comprehend the grandeur of this dignified neoclassical structure. America’s post-war love affair with the automobile carried over to the architecture of automobile showrooms and service stations. Early automobile service station design often included elements of Colonial, Georgian, Gothic, or other architectural motifs. None, however, surpassed the dignity of this building or its volume of business. Attendants pumped gas on the first floor and serviced cars in the basement and on the first, sixth, and top floors. Cars were transported between floors by elevators. The second floor housed the Esso Tour office while three other floors housed the offices of the Ford Motor Company, the General Electric Credit Corporation, Prudential Insurance Company, and the Territory of Alaska until it became a state. Of course, not only heroic buildings were destroyed for the highway. An entire residential neighborhood between 2nd and 3rd Streets was also destroyed, scattering the Italian-American parishioners of Holy Rosary Church and the other residents of the area.
The first Center Leg development project in our neighborhood was proposed by T. Conrad Monts. Mr. Monts was a native New Yorker who moved to the District of Columbia in the mid-1970s and formed a real estate development company called Travenca Development Corporation. Mr. Monts’ early projects produced low- to moderate-income housing that generally received praise but gave no hint of what was to come. He was considered a quiet developer who stayed mostly out of the limelight — until 1987. In that year, the FBI began looking into corruption in the District of Columbia and they soon began looking at Mr. Monts. In May, investigators arrived at his offices with a search warrant looking for evidence of bribery and fraud in connection with an investigation of two of his real estate deals. One of them was a proposal to build a deck over I-395 and construct a $200 million hotel and office complex on top. The original idea for the Air Rights development came from a group of Saudi businessmen who had put up $100,000 in seed money and contacted Mr. Monts after they were told by City officials that they needed a minority partner. The Saudis ultimately pulled out of the deal but Mr. Monts persevered, perhaps with the assistance of a man named John Clyburn. Mr. Clyburn was a friend of then Mayor Marion Barry. Mr. Clyburn and some D.C. officials were indicted although charges against him were ultimately dismissed. Mr. Monts was never charged with any crimes although he continued to be mentioned in the news about governmental shenanigans regarding contracts.
Prior to the investigation, in late 1985 or early 1986, Mr. Monts had presented an unsolicited proposal to the city on behalf of his group asking the District to either sell or lease him the Air Rights over I-395 so that they could build a $200 million hotel and office complex between E Street and Massachusetts Avenue. Members of the City Council and community activists opposed the project for several reasons. First, the project would require moving the city’s main financial computer facility which was located in a bunker along the west wall of the freeway. The cost of relocation was estimated at $12 million and the opposition felt this was an unreasonable burden for the District. Several Council members objected to the sole source nature of the proposed agreement. They believed that a bidding competition should be held instead. There were also critics who opposed Mr. Monts himself. His reputation had been tainted by the FBI investigation and the rumors and innuendo about shady business practices and corruption that seemed to constantly swirl about him. For example, in May of 1989, the Justice Department filed suit against Mr. Monts, this time alleging he had produced “nothing of value” for the more than $700,000 he had received in contract payments from the federal government. In a 1984 contract, Mr. Monts had promised that his company, TDC Management, would set up partnerships between minority firms and investors to help them obtain bonding and qualify for federal contracts. In the years following, he filed eight reports that the government alleged falsely claimed TDC was making progress. Yet, once again, the case against him was dismissed for lack of evidence. Despite the rumors, suits, investigations, and general bad press, nothing could ever be proven. Moreover, none of these concerns were strong enough to defeat Mr. Monts’ proposal, and in 1988 the City granted him the exclusive right to develop the property. On December 28, 1990, a final lease for the property was signed.
With Mayor Barry’s support, Mr. Monts submitted plans to the Zoning Commission calling for three office buildings, a 300 room hotel, and 266 apartments to be built over the Center Leg Freeway. Criticism from City Council members and community activists continued, Georgetown Law Center among them. Council members continued to believe that moving the computer center would be disruptive and expensive. Others thought the City’s appraisal, $45 million for the Air Rights, was too low. Objections to the lack of a bidding process came from almost everyone. Georgetown Law, one of the first organizations to develop property in the East End after the highway was built, objected to the size, footprint, and design of the project and its potential to interfere with students’ academic activities. Yet City officials continued to defend the proposal and the design.
The plan submitted to the Zoning Commission was ambitious; but the engineering difficulties made the design objectionable to many people, especially Georgetown Law officials. A close look at the drawings to the left below and at the beginning of this Construction Note show that while there is a line of trees along the 2nd Street side of the building, the parking decks would come up to the property line. The building sited directly across from Georgetown’s McDonough Hall would extend several feet into the 2nd Street right-of-way. And, although it is difficult to see from some of the other drawings presented in this Note, the drawing to the right above shows that Mr. Monts intended to build the parking garage on top of the highway. Essentially then, except where blocked by the trees, and at the F and G Street rights of way, Georgetown students, staff, and faculty would be looking at a fifteen-foot-high wall in front of McDonough Hall and the Williams Library. The same would be true of the yet to be built Gewirz Student Center.
The Zoning Commission was supposed to issue a ruling in January of 1990, but they put off a decision and asked Mr. Monts to come back in a month with modifications to his plan that would alter the size of the project and minimize the traffic concerns that the Commissioners had raised. Georgetown, realizing the inevitable, withdrew its objections after negotiating an agreement that lessened some of the shortcomings of the design. Nonetheless, the wall remained. The Zoning Commission approved his plan in June, 1991. In 1992, Mr. Monts submitted alterations that were approved by the Zoning Commission but by 1995, construction still hadn’t begun. In 1995, he filed a request to extend the validity of the order. The Zoning Commission granted a two year extension, but by 1999, thirteen years after the project was proposed, nine years after it was first approved by the Zoning Commission, and two years after the two-year extension should have expired thus killing the project, the zoning order foundered in limbo. The I-395 ditch remained — a scar on the neighborhood and an insult to Pierre L’Enfant’s magnificent urban plan.
Mr. Monts seemed to either court trouble or it found him. It seemed to hound his every footstep. The recession in the 1990s brought almost all D.C. office construction to a halt. Mr. Monts also suffered some health problems in the 1990s which slowed him down as well. Financing was difficult to obtain and objections to the plan lingered quietly, periodically erupting anew as the District’s economic climate began to revive while the Air Rights Project continued to stagnate. Mr. Monts’ troubles with the City exploded after 1995. At that time, the City’s finances were still in dire shape. The once beautiful District Building (renamed the John A. Wilson Building) located at 13th and Pennsylvania Avenue, was crumbling and the District was without the funds needed to restore it. The Wilson Building is a classic Beaux Arts structure designed by architects from the Philadelphia firm of Cope and Stewardson and built between 1904 and 1908. The base of the building is constructed with grey granite from Maine, while the upper stories are white marble from New York. The entrance is decorated with an eagle with outstretched wings surrounded by sculptures representing Justice and Law. The top floor of the building uses alternating heroic male and female figures representing sculpture, painting, architecture, music, commerce, engineering, agriculture, and statesmanship. But in 1995, this landmarked building was falling apart inside and out and had become a health and safety hazard. It was in such bad shape that former Mayor Sharon Pratt Dixon actually moved her offices out of the building. Conrad Monts offered the District an unsolicited proposal to renovate the building to its former glory at his expense if the City vacated several floors and allowed him to lease those floors to recoup $51 million of his renovation costs. The Mayor — by then again Marion Barry — favored the plan. But some Council members, citing the same arguments made against Mr. Monts’ proposals for the Center Leg Air Rights project, opposed it. Nonetheless, the City Council agreed to vacate as much as 66% of the building for twenty years and permit Mr. Monts to lease that portion of the building.
The Council moved out and the renovations began; but so did the problems. Five months into the project, Mr. Monts had still failed to submit his first monthly financial report. Moreover, it appeared unlikely that he could meet his promised completion date of July 1998. By December of 1998, the renovation was still incomplete and the disagreements between the District and Mr. Monts had multiplied. Council members were angry because they still could not return to the Wilson Building; but they were even more upset to learn Mr. Monts had leased more than the two-thirds of the building originally agreed to. The Council summoned him to a meeting on December 21, 1998, but Mr. Monts declined to attend. Early the next year, the Council sued him for breach of contract and attempted to compel his attendance at a hearing with a subpoena. He ignored it. It wasn’t until the District of Columbia Superior Court issued an order requiring Mr. Monts to honor the subpoena that the City Council finally secured his attendance. He appeared at the February, 1999, meeting, but refused to answer the Council’s questions about his lease agreement with the Federal General Services Administration (GSA).
By late February, the Council was looking for ways to get out of the deal entirely, whatever the cost. The City was prepared to pay back the entire $52 million loan that Mr. Monts had obtained to finance the project, but he claimed it would take at least $75 million for the city to honor the contract. As the dispute over this price continued, the City tried to convince the federal government to tear up its GSA lease with Mr. Monts so the Council could occupy the entire building. It took every member of the Council writing to President Clinton in September 1999, and the intervention of the District’s Congressional Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, to secure the GSA’s acquiescence to assign its lease to the District. The agreement was signed in July, 2000.
Despite the acrimony surrounding the deal, Mr. Monts’ renovations of the Wilson Building, designed by noted D.C. architect Shalom Baranes, were well-received. The beauty of the building was restored and its functionality enhanced. State of the art mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems were installed and concealed within the historic fabric of the building. In addition, new facilities were constructed behind a glass curtain wall within an existing light court. The Wilson Building had regained its stature. It remains on the National Register of Historic Places.
The agreement between the City and GSA was not received well by Mr. Monts, who had been seeking millions of dollars in historic preservation tax credits which he could not claim if the District occupied the entire building. By this time, the new Mayor, Anthony Williams, had raised the city’s offer to $75 million to get Mr. Monts to walk away from the deal. Instead, Mr. Monts counter-sued, claiming his partnership now stood to lose $20 million without the tax credits provided from his original plan. In August 2000, tensions reached an all-time high when District officials, trying to prepare the Wilson Building for the Council’s return, were barred entry by Mr. Monts’ employees. This standoff continued for a week and ended only when Mr. Monts’ lawyers agreed to grant the Council access while negotiations continued. The dispute was finally settled in March, 2001, with Mr. Monts receiving $15.7 million plus the cost of the contract to relinquish all rights to the building.
Meanwhile, the Center Leg Air Rights project continued to languish. In 1997, Mr. Monts filed another letter requesting a modification to the zoning order which the Commission considered as a request for an additional extension. He asked for permission to expand and revise the project to stretch his authority to build all the way to I Street, NW, and to increase the number of hotel rooms while decreasing the number of apartments. Georgetown led the opposition to the request and was joined by the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, a group called Downtown Housing Now, and the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission. Moreover, City Council members, at odds with Mr. Monts over the Wilson Building, wanted no more to do with him on any project. The Commission held three hearings on the request in 1998 and another two in 1999. The last was adjourned because there were too many unresolved issues, forcing the Commission to request that Mr. Monts provide specific information regarding several issues. Hearings were continued into the summer of 1999, but they never occurred.
Seeking to end all of its relationships with Mr. Monts, the Council filed another suit against him in July of 2000, this time to evict him from the I-395 project and to require him to pay $4 million in lost rent on the property. The Council was tired of waiting for Mr. Monts to start construction and wanted to move forward on the site with another developer. Mr. Monts responded to the suit with a countersuit seeking $15 million for what he had spent on the project plus another $50 million in compensatory damages. He also claimed the eviction was motivated by the personal hostility of Council members after the Wilson Building dispute. The suit led to a 2004 jury verdict in the District of Columbia Superior Court awarding Mr. Monts $8.4 million in damages. Both sides appealed to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and continued negotiations.
In 2002, Georgetown and its lawyers discovered a way to force a resolution of the Air Rights issues before the Zoning Commission. Mr. Monts had successfully sought continuances of his zoning hearing but no final order had been issued. Realizing Mr. Monts’ political weakness as well as his inability to secure financing for the Center Leg project, Georgetown asked the Commission to demand that Mr. Monts submit his final modification plans. Mr. Monts filed a letter requesting that the Commission confirm that its original orders were still valid and active pending his litigation with the District over control of the property. Georgetown opposed the request, arguing Mr. Monts had not communicated with the Zoning Commission between 1999 and 2002 and had failed to comply with the Commission‘s request for information, especially with regard to the portions of the plan extending to I Street. It further asserted the Commission had never extended Mr. Monts’ zoning order beyond the original two-year extension in 1995. Finally, Georgetown alleged that the facts the Commission relied on twelve years earlier were outdated and could no longer support the original order.
Hearings were again held in 2003. The Advisory Neighborhood Commission and the Second Baptist and Mount Carmel Baptist Churches joined Georgetown in opposition. Mr. Monts, in response, withdrew his request for modifications but asked that his original plan be extended. He did so claiming that financial hardship had delayed construction and that clouds on his title to the property remained because of the litigation with the District. He also denied that there were any substantial changes in the conditions between 1990 and 2003. In July of 2003, the District of Columbia Office of Planning joined the opposition claiming that substantial changes in the material circumstances supporting the original zoning order had occurred. On July 31, 2003, the Commission voted unanimously to deny the request for the extension, thus ending Mr. Monts’ ability to develop the Air Rights.
Ultimately, the cross appeals stemming from the decisions of the Superior Court were never argued. In 2006, the parties reached a settlement out of court. The District would pay Mr. Monts the value of the settlement plus interest, once again paying him to walk away from a project. For nearly two decades, he controlled the Air Rights above the Center Leg Freeway without developing a single square foot of the property. Mr. Monts had little time to savor the resolution of his problems with the District. He died in 2009, following many years of poor health.
Humankind’s quest for immortality takes many forms. It is sought after in conquest or political intrigue; in art, literature, and architecture; perhaps even in the simple grave-markers and statues that dot churchyards and other sacred and secular spaces. They signal our attempts to avoid the sometimes frightening concept of “the absence.” But our quest for immortality is often tinged with hubris and Conrad Monts was no exception. Mr. Monts grew wealthy through his schemes but he was never able to capture the City’s heart. Perhaps like Icarus, he began as a quiet man but became overwhelmed by his plans and creations and soared too close to the sun. I also think of his quest for greatness in his lifetime and beyond like that of the powerful ruler in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 19th century poem, Ozymandias. The poem tells of a traveler stumbling upon an ancient ruin with crumbling granite telling of a king who had built great cities and grand monuments to himself. But all he sees are broken statues and scarred pedestals. Shelley closes the poem with these lines.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Ozymandias thought he had escaped “the absence” and secured his immortality; but time and events proved otherwise. Mr. Monts also strove mightily to achieve greatness, and perhaps immortality, to avoid the absence. But his twenty-year reign over the Center Leg Freeway created nothing. All he left us at his death was the same scarred landscape of the Center Leg Freeway, a scar that would last for almost two more decades.
SOURCES
Meghan Strong, L’18 provided much of the research and some of the content for this Note. Carole Prietto and the staff of Georgetown’s Williams Library Archive staff also provided research assistance.
Michael Abramowitz, Despite Opposition, Administration Favors Complex Over I-395, Washington Post, January 11, 1990
Michael Abramowitz, Plan for Complex Over I-395 is Criticized, Washington Post, January 18, 1990
Shalom Baranes Associates, Portfolio, John A. Wilson Building, https://www.sbaranes.com/portfolio/all/grid/project/john-a-wilson-building
Sewell Chan, D.C. Officials Blocked From City Hall, Washington Post, August 18, 2000
Sewell Chan, D.C. Agreement Gives Access to Wilson Building, Washington Post, August 20, 2000
Sewell Chan, D.C. Suit Filed Over Wilson Building, Washington Post, October 10, 2000
DeLeuw, Cather Associates and Harry Weese & Associates, LTD District of Columbia Interstate System, 1971, appearing in Scott M. Kozel, Roads to the Future, http://www.roadstothefuture.com/DC_Area_Map.html
James M. Goode, Capital Losses, A Cultural History of Washington’s Destroyed Buildings, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. 2003.
Government of the District of Columbia, Zoning Commission Order №664-C, Case №98–02M/94–17C/91–19M/89–19C, (Washington Development Group — Modification), July 31, 2003
Sharon LaFraniere, D.C. Developer Probed in Alleged Bribery Bid, Washington Post, January 16, 1988
Sharon LaFraniere, Clyburn Allegedly Rejects Plea Bargain, Washington Post, March 1, 1988
Sharon LaFraniere, D.C. Probes and Players in Limbo One Year Later, Washington Post, May 22, 1988
Eric Lipton and Michael H. Cottman, Despite Wilson Building Dispute, Monts Pushes Another Project With the City, Washington Post, March 25, 199
Vernon Loeb, Crumbling City Hall Set for a Face Lift, Washington Post, May 28, 1987
John Mintz, Probe Sweeps Up Quiet Developer, Washington Post, May 27, 1997
Ovid, Metamorphoses Book VIII (A. S. Kline’s Version) 188–235, http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph8.htm
Howard Schneider, Rehab Plan Offered for Landmark, Washington Post, June 21, 1995
Howard Schneider, D.C. Council to Vote on Proposal to Polish a Tarnished Landmark, Washington Post, July 11, 1995
Howard Schneider, D.C. Council Agrees to Try District Building Renovation Plan, Washington Post, July 12, 1995
Howard Schneider, Proposal to Renovate District Building is Outlined, Washington Post, October 4, 1995
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias, The Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias
Washington Post, U.S. Alleges Fraud By D.C. Contractor, May 27, 1989
Washington Post, Developer Misses Hearing on Status of Wilson Building, Washington Post, December 22, 1998
Widerman and Malek, Civil Law, Civilly Relevant. Lawfully Entertaining. http://legalteamusa.net/civillaw/2012/11/21/substantial-completion-when-exactly-does-it-occur/
Vanessa Williams, Mayor Urged to End Deal on Wilson Building, Washington Post, February 3, 1999
Vanessa Williams, Council Mulls Ways to Regain Building, Washington Post, February 4, 1999
Vanessa Williams, Fight for the Future of the Wilson Building, Washington Post, February 11, 1999
Douglas Andrew Willinger, A Trip Within The Beltway, I-95 Center Leg (today’s I-395 3rd Street Tunnel), http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-95-center-leg-todays-i-395-3rd_18.html
Wikipedia, John A. Wilson Building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Wilson_Building
