City officials will consider a new board of directors to oversee some of the District’s largest development projects after an administration report called for a major overhaul of agencies that guide the city’s economic development. Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Victor Hoskins likened the potential group to Baltimore’s nonprofit East Baltimore Development Inc., which eight years ago was established to oversee an 88-acre redevelopment of East Baltimore in conjunction with Johns Hopkins University.
“We’re talking to [city] council about it,” Hoskins told The Washington Examiner, noting nothing official has been decided. “We’re talking to people in the private sector, to local leaders about it, we’re trying to get as much input as possible but something should come out soon.”
The board’s members theoretically would include city officials, executives from private companies and nonprofits and community figures, and would be served by a five- or six-member management team. EBDI is a nonprofit financed through private and public funds. However, a D.C. version’s potential funding structure has not been addressed.
The board would oversee only specific projects, such as the redevelopment of St. Elizabeths Hospital, Hoskins said. The transition report released by Mayor Vincent Gray’s administration earlier this year called for a quasi-governmental entity that would oversee all major city projects.
Hoskins agreed with observers that establishing a separate governing body for major development projects — especially ones that have decades-long timelines — would make those projects less susceptible to political tides. However, he said, politicians are also more accountable to their community.
“And I don’t think you want to take that out. I think you want that,” he said. “That’s why you design [the board] specifically for a location and you give it a charge and a mission that relates to the community. You want that responsiveness.”
However, the East Baltimore organization isn’t without its critics. An investigation by the Daily Record newspaper revealed questionable spending practices and painted a picture of minimal progress 10 years after the project was conceived, prompting the Baltimore City Council to call a series of public hearings with the nonprofit’s officials.
But Hoskins, who in his former role as the Maryland secretary of Housing and Community Development was involved with the East Baltimore nonprofit, said people often expect to see many project phases happening at once, which is unrealistic. The development boom in the mid-2000s also raised people’s expectations for projects now, he said.
“I can understand that because that’s what they experienced,” he said. “But the reality is that may not ever happen again in our lifetime.”
