WASHINGTON -- The air reeks of truck exhaust, the streets glint with smashed beer bottles and the landscape is pocked with boarded-up rowhouses, tinsel-strewn car lots and motels known for cheap encounters.
This is New York Avenue N.E., a gateway to the capital of the most powerful country in the world, though you would hardly know it from the view. The street, carrying more than 100,000 vehicles a day, cuts through some of the city's most neglected neighborhoods and lays bare some of Washington's worst urban woes.
But lately, on a street that has been beset by troubles and false hopes for years, optimism is taking root. Several developers are renovating warehouses in the area, such high-tech companies as Qwest Communications International Inc. are moving in and the federal government is considering a sprawling new headquarters for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms there.
Of course, this gateway is unlikely to get a Hollywood makeover anytime soon; no monuments and Parisian-style traffic circles are in its immediate future. But the district government is turning fresh attention to the thoroughfare as the local economy rebounds and developers seek alternatives to the crowded downtown.
Revitalization of the New York Avenue corridor -- the industrial trip east of downtown also known as U.S. 50 -- is one of the city's top three priorities for the next year, said Douglas Patton, deputy mayor for economic development and a veteran of more than 30 years of city politics.
"Frankly, this is the most serious talk I've ever heard about New York Avenue," said Patton, who recently joined the administration of reform-minded Mayor Anthony A. Williams. "Everybody said, 'Geez, we ought to do something about New York Avenue.' Now we are."
Many Washington veterans remain skeptical, having heard plenty of promises about this street before. Lacking money and political allies, advocates for the avenue have failed in past sporadic attempts to revitalize this strip.
"My sense is that when it comes to New York Avenue, people just aren't on board yet," said Joseph Bender, an urban planner who worked for the city from 1979 to 1994. "The stakeholders need to decide what they are going to do and how much they're going to invest in it."
History of dead-ends
Previous governmental campaigns for the avenue have run into dead-ends. A city-funded economic redevelopment plan in the 1980s went nowhere. Neither did the proposed 1993 New York Avenue Development Corp., which would have used federal money to spur private investment in redevelopment.
A $1.4 billion street redesign drafted in 1996 -- a sort of pure ideal of the avenue, featuring widened boulevards with green parks and cinematic vistas of the city -- has not been enacted.
Even the street's biggest optimists say it will not look thoroughly remodeled and glorious soon. "I'll be 6 feet under by then," Patton said.
Still, the signs are more promising than in years: A New York Avenue subway stop is all but approved, which would bring foot traffic. And several developers are renovating buildings that were abandoned after blue-collar industries went bust.
Several technological firms are considering the corridor: MCI WorldCom Inc. is nearing a deal to put some operations there, as is the digital start-up XM Satellite Radio.
Where this leaves the street's sparse residential development remains to be seen, though the mayor took a ceremonial ride in a bulldozer this spring to raze one rowhouse to make way for a park and office space. He promised more demolition.
Along the avenue, a few longtime residents are still proudly hanging on, planting vegetable gardens and putting lace curtains in their windows. But those homes are alongside abandoned rowhouses whose doors the city has replaced with concrete blocks to keep trespassers out. The number of residents of New York Avenue has dropped more than 10 percent over the past five years.
"It's breaking my heart," said Anna Caporaletti, 73, who was born on the avenue and never left. She lives on a block with four other families, 14 abandoned houses and her barking Rottweiler, Hootie. Her daughter keeps her clear of the windows on nights when there is gunfire.
The avenue -- though always a heavily traveled industrial corridor -- was graced with lush front yards when Caporaletti was a child, before the city widened the street in the 1960s. Caporaletti lives down the street from a church dating to the 1850s, one of the oldest in the city, and several other New York Avenue historical landmarks.
"Just today, I was reminiscing about how beautiful it was," Caporaletti said. "I wouldn't know how to live anywhere else."
The avenue shows its battle scars. Traffic snarls with fist-clenching regularity: A construction project near the Maryland line clogs the road. Neighborhoods along the strip report among the city's highest jobless rates, though crime dropped by 7 percent over the past year, compared with the year before, mirroring a citywide trend.
Still, the corridor is far from homey. Cashiers are shielded by bulletproof and no-loitering rules. Fast-food joints are the thriving retail shops.
"I would just like to see a decent eating establishment," said George Boyd, who heads the advisory neighborhood commission. "We have the highest rates of cancer and heart disease in the whole city. Why do you think that is? All this greasy food."
Many people believe the avenue's future rests on bringing in businesses whose products do not come with ketchup. One enthusiastic reformer is Marc Weiss, a consultant who gets honked when he drives the avenue because he is always stopping -- or briefly driving in reverse, as he did one day last week -- for a better look at the high-tech business potential.
"When I see New York Avenue in my mind's eye, my blood starts pumping," said Weiss, who envisions a technological renaissance blooming there within two years.
Debut of 'NoMa'?
Weiss, who was contracted by the city to draft a plan to revive the corridor, has dubbed the neighborhood "NoMa." That's short for "North of Massachusetts Avenue" -- a nickname he hopes will help lend the funky industrial spaces a cachet like that of Manhattan's trendy SoHo district.
The avenue's old buildings and side streets could be easily adapted to high-tech use, Weiss said. The buildings, he said, feature sturdy floors for computer equipment and proximity to railroad lines -- where fiber-optic cable can be run at lower cost.
Yet he knows the district has been slow to embrace change. When he began working for the city in 1997, Weiss requested a study to count all the citywide economic improvement studies that had been commissioned. He stopped when the result grew to more than 100 pages.
Times may be changing. Downtown development is thriving along with the economy, and builders are seeking new spaces.
Still, luring marquee businesses is difficult, even with rents at half the downtown rate. "I don't see a Fortune 500 company relocating to the area any time soon," said Douglas Cooper, another developer.
New York Avenue's troubles date back decades: Most residents remember them starting with the riots in 1968, after which residents fled many middle-class communities along the avenue for the suburbs. Blue-collar jobs in the CSX rail yards, and in the commercial warehouses, had begun to disappear as well.
Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., with its downtown business district and prestigious address, monopolized redevelopment money in the 1970s and 1980s. That street received a total makeover, with new government buildings, majestic landscaping and new retail shops.
By the 1990s, large-scale projects ran into trouble as the city plunged into debt. New York Avenue, never photogenic to begin with, could not get noticed.
"I was in the city planning office in 1996, and I couldn't find a thing about New York Avenue," said Ron M. Linton, who has lobbied for the avenue for 15 years. "It completely fell off the city's radar."
For the past two years, since a federally appointed control board took over its finances, the city has boasted budget surpluses. And Congress last year designated New York Avenue -- and no other city gateway -- a high-priority for future transportation money.
Those who had long made New York Avenue a crusade felt hope. This, they said, was the street's defining time.
"Washington has to decide if it wants to be a half-city, if it will allow New York Avenue to deteriorate and die," Linton said. "It's a terribly important moment for this street."
Linton, head of the New York Avenue Task Force, a nonprofit citizens organization, still keeps by his desk the panel's $1.4 billion fantasy vision for the street. In the pastel rendering, the strip is graced by majestic traffic circles, grand boulevards and an oversized monument testifying to the city's oversized power.
"I used to make these presentations about our hopes for New York Avenue," Linton said, eyeing a 6-foot-wide poster of his dream street, "and I'd hear people chuckling."
But now, Linton says, the city powerful are finally ready to start claiming a stake in the avenue.
"There's an emotional commitment. I think this is the beginning."