Kathy Remus shelled out more than $1 million to live in a new building
with views of the Washington Monument, Washington National Cathedral
and -- wait . . .
What's that next door?
A gas station?
Ah, but no ordinary gas station. Not with a 5,000-square-foot garden
sprouting lush and verdant from atop its roof. It's a dash of Eden in
the middle of the city -- if you forget about the $3.75 a gallon gas
running beneath it.
The condo developer planted the garden partly as an environmentally
friendly gesture. But his main purpose was to shield his buyers, some
spending upward of $3 million, from having to gaze down upon -- horror
of horrors! -- a weathered metal roof.
Any metropolis worth its bustle is a chaotic mix of beauty and grit.
Soaring skyscrapers, handsome facades and broad boulevards are
essential to a city's character. Yet so are the less-refined urban
accouterments -- fire escapes and clothes lines, manhole covers,
antennas and, yes, eminently forgettable rooftops.
To green the concrete jungle, it could be argued, is to dull the urban edge.
Or put another way, what's wrong with a little ugly?
Not a thing, says Anthony Lanier,
president of EastBanc, the developer who planted the garden next to 22
West, which his publicity team billed as "uber-luxury, eco-chic" living
at 22nd and M streets NW.
His intention, he says, has nothing to do with making the rooftop as
serene as a suburban lawn. Indeed, he's a fan of urban vistas, even the
more unsightly views. He just wants to make them "more fun." And easier
on the eyes.
Imagine a water tower painted yellow or green, he says. "Or you could put a neon band around it that shows Mickey Mouse chasing his girlfriend. Why not?"
When he decided to build next to the gas station, he was determined
to embrace what could otherwise be unfortunate geography. As part of an
agreement with Exxon, he remodeled the station to make it match his glass-and-zinc design.
At one point, he considered calling the condo X-On West. And he toyed
with naming the building's restaurant High Octane, allowing Exxon's
amber-hued gasoline to loop through transparent tubes above the bar.
"I come up with these things every day," he says.
But his sales team nixed the idea. "People told me I was crazy."
Greening the unsightly is not new for Lanier. Another condo he
built, at 3303 Water St. NW, had the misfortune of overlooking a Pepco
substation. Ouch!
Now the substation's roof is home to a 6,500-square-foot meadow. Birds,
bees and squirrels have been spotted, although no deer, says Lanier --
"not yet."
"In real estate you're always faced with, let's call it, 'issues,' "
he says. "Your job is to make the issues go away. A nice thing is to
have something grow over it."
Eco-chic is all the rage in real estate circles. Every other day, it
seems, developers across the country tout their glass designs and
vegetated rooftops as vital in the fight against global warming. Yet
the wave also stirs a bit of murmuring among urban aficionados, who see
beauty in tar, steel and concrete, and prefer their cities a tad
unruly.
"The view of those trying to greenify everything
seems to be that unless you have X amount of green, then your soul is
going to be destroyed," says Francis Morrone, a New York-based
architectural historian.
"When you see a city's infrastructure, the jumble of buildings and
crowded sidewalks, to a real urbanite those things are beautiful," he
says. "Just in the same way that the Sierra Club guy finds trails in the Adirondacks beautiful."
Joel Kotkin, an urban historian based in Los Angeles, ponders the
notion of a gas station garden and he detects a broader, less-appealing
narrative: the revival of cities as suburban-style playpens for the
wealthy.
"It's almost like you have the emergence of the designer city," he
grouses over the phone. "What made cities different was that they
weren't places that were controlled. This desire to control everything
is overwhelming. Now cities are like Disneyland for adults."
The greenery above the Exxon station, a $1 million mix of ornamental
grass, perennials and shrubs, is growing tall enough so that tufts are
visible from the sidewalk. The garden has become something of a
conversation piece. Max Hirshfeld, a photographer, stood across the
street the other morning and wondered if someone -- not him, of course
-- could grow marijuana up there. (Answer: no roof access.)
Remus, a real estate broker, can see the garden from her sixth-floor
apartment, for which she paid nearly $1.5 million. Her friends, she
says, were a bit baffled by her choice, given that her profession
abides by the credo "Location! Location! Location!"
Whatever. She's living downtown, has a rooftop pool and can walk to
a gazillion restaurants. A gas station isn't going to rain on her
parade, she says, not even when she's paying "$1,000 a square foot to
live next door."
"It's better than looking at a heat pump," she says.
Anne Williams and her husband spent nearly $2 million for their
apartment, but it's on the other side of the building, so the gas
station is conveniently out of sight. Still, she can see it from the
building's roof, where she eats dinner or cools off in the pool. She's
not pleased with the view of the garden these days.
Brown. Far too brown.
"You're not supposed to be living in a prairie," she says.
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