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Howard Center Gets Facelift and New Housing Opportunities for Students

THE AFRO — Plans are underway to give the Howard Center a much needed makeover, adding available housing to students,

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By George Kevin Jordan, AFRO Staff Writer

Plans are underway to give the Howard Center a much needed makeover, adding available housing to students, university officials announced.

Currently the space, located at 2225 Georgia Avenue N.W. is vacant save existing tenants like Starbucks and Barnes & Noble. The proposed plan would transform floors three through nine into 176 below market rate, micro, one bedroom and two bedroom apartments, prioritizing the units for students, faculty, staff and associates, according to a statement from the university.

Howard Center located at 2225 Georgia Avenue N.W. will undergo renovations, with plans to be complete by Summer of this year. (Courtesy Photo)

“I am committed to improving our student experience at every level,” Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick said in a statement. “While we have renovated much of our housing stock over the past couple of years, the Howard Center project provides an improved foundation for our core graduate and professional programs which are key components of my growth strategy.”

“Also, included in the program are community spaces where residents can engage with faculty and alumni, which further deepens the linkage between generational University stakeholders. This project is a unique opportunity for Howard University to drive the re-imagination of the Georgia Avenue Corridor,” the statement said.

“It is a small, but significant initial step in furthering the DUKE Plan which envisions the immediate environment as part of the ‘Howard Town Center Area.’  This and our previously announced Bond Bread Factory and WRECO Garage redevelopment initiative will further enhance the local community experience while encouraging economic growth, job creation and development.”

The university is leasing the space to Provident Group – Howard Center, Inc., a 501(c)(3) for a period of 41 years.

The Howard Center is a  90,157 square foot building with nine floors. It is a major step in creating housing opportunities for the growing graduate school and professional Howard University students.

The plan has received support among business leaders and developers in the District. The plan’s team consists of many leaders including: Bank Of America/ Merill Lynch, Preston Hollow Capital, Provident Resources Group, Alvarez & Marsal, Corvias Campus Living and the District of Columbia.

“We were excited to learn of Dr. Frederick’s vision for the University,” said Ramiro Albarran, head of Originations at Preston Hollow Capital, said in a statement.  “Preston Hollow Capital brings creative solutions with its investments nationally.  We were proud to include Howard University in the $1 + billion  of investments that we made in 2018.  Howard University is an iconic national institution and we are thrilled to bring our expertise in structuring and capital allocation to support this project, the associated innovative program as well as the mission overall.”

The plan will also add amenities like a fitness center, laundry facilities, social lounges and gaming rooms to the space. The retail spaces will remain in place.

Developers hope to complete the renovations by Summer 2019.

The plan is part of a long term strategy for growth for the University which has recovered from a brief bad credit rating just after the financial crisis. Over the past two years the University has seen a boost in financial performance with a gain from operations of almost $12 million, according to the university website, while expenses decreased by 8% compared to 2015.

Howard University is ranked a Tier I national university by US News and and World Report (USNWR). Founded in 1867, Howard University is a private, research university that is comprised of 13 schools and colleges. Students pursue studies in more than 120 areas leading to undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees. Howard also produces more on-campus African-American Ph.D. recipients than any other university in the United States.

For more information on Howard University and the renovations visit www.howard.edu.

This article originally appeared in The Afro

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Activism

LIVE! — TOWN HALL ON RACISM AND ITS IMPACT — THURS. 11.14.24 5PM PST

Join us for a LIVE Virtual Town Hall on the Impact of Racism hosted by Post News Group Journalist Carla Thomas and featuring Oakland, CA NAACP President Cynthia Adams & other Special Guests.
Thursday, November 14, 2024, 5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PST

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Join us for a LIVE Virtual Town Hall on the Impact of Racism hosted by Post News Group Journalist Carla Thomas and featuring Oakland, CA NAACP President Cynthia Adams & other Special Guests.
Thursday, November 14, 2024
5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PST

Discussion Topics:
• Since the pandemic, what battles have the NAACP fought nationally, and how have they impacted us locally?
• What trends are you seeing concerning Racism? Is it more covert or overt?
• What are the top 5 issues resulting from racism in our communities?
• How do racial and other types of discrimination impact local communities?
• What are the most effective ways our community can combat racism and hate?

Your questions and comments will be shared LIVE with the moderators and viewers during the broadcast.

STREAMED LIVE!
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/PostNewsGroup
YOUTUBE: youtube.com/blackpressusatv
X: twitter.com/blackpressusa

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Art

Brown University Professor and Media Artist Tony Cokes Among MacArthur Awardees

When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees.

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Tony Cokes. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Tony Cokes. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Special to The Post

When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees. The report below is excerpted from the MacArthur Fellows web site.

Tony Cokes

Tony Cokes, 68, is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. Cokes’s signature style is deceptively simple: changing frames of text against backgrounds of solid bright colors or images, accompanied by musical soundtracks.

Cokes was born in Richmond, Va., and received a BA in creative writing and photography from Goddard College in 1979 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1985. He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.

According to Wikipedia, Cokes and Renee Cox, and Fo Wilson, created the Negro Art Collective (NAC) in 1995 to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.[5]

His work has been exhibited at national and international venues, including Haus Der Kunst and Kunstverein (Munich); Dia Bridgehampton (New York); Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester; MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome); and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), among others.

Like a DJ, he samples and recombines textual, musical, and visual fragments. His source materials include found film footage, pop music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. The unexpected juxtapositions in his works highlight the ways in which dominant narratives emerging from our oversaturated media environments reinforce existing power structures.

In his early video piece Black Celebration (A Rebellion Against the Commodity) (1988), Cokes reconsiders the uprisings that took place in Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Boston in the 1960s.

He combines documentary footage of the upheavals with samples of texts by the cultural theorist Guy Debord, the artist Barbara Kruger, and the musicians Morrisey and Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode).

Music from industrial rock band Skinny Puppy accompanies the imagery. In this new context, the scenes of unrest take on new possibilities of meaning: the so-called race riots are recast as the frustrated responses of communities that endure poverty perpetuated by structural racism. In his later and ongoing “Evil” series, Cokes responds to the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”

 Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009–11) features snippets of text from a 2005 article on advanced torture techniques. The text flashes on screens to the rhythm of songs that were used by U.S. troops as a form of torture.

The soundtrack includes Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time,” songs known to have been played to detainees at deafening decibel levels and on repeated loops. The dissonance between the instantly recognizable, frivolous music and horrifying accounts of torture underscores the ideological tensions within contemporary pop culture.

 

More recently, in a 2020 work entitled HS LST WRDS, Cokes uses his pared-down aesthetic to examine the current discourse on police violence against Black and Brown individuals. The piece is constructed around the final words of Elijah McClain, who was killed in the custody of Colorado police. Cokes transcribes McClain’s last utterances without vowels and sets them against a monochromatic ground. As in many of Cokes’s works, the text is more than language conveying information and becomes a visualization of terrifying breathlessness. Through his unique melding of artistic practice and media analysis, Cokes shows the discordant ways media color our understanding and demonstrates the artist’s power to bring clarity and nuance to how we see events, people, and histories.

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California Black Media

On Your November Ballot: Prop 2 Seeks to Modernize Public Education Facilities

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities. If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

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State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond (Courtesy Photo)
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond (Courtesy Photo)

By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities.

If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

Supporters argue that the money is critical for making safety improvements in schools, as well as modernizing science labs, performing arts spaces and kindergarten classrooms. School districts in lower-income areas have no other way to pay for these improvements.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, 38% of students attend schools that don’t meet the state’s minimum safety standards. The research shows that schools with sub-standard facilities tend to have students with lower attendance rates, lower morale and lower overall academic performance.

California Black Media spoke with a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) spokesperson on why she believes it should be a YES vote on Prop 2.

“Measure US, Los Angeles Unified’s Local Public Schools Safety and Upgrades Measure on the November ballot would provide $9 billion to upgrade Los Angeles public schools for safety and 21st century student learning and college and career preparedness. The average annual cost to property owners is estimated at 2.5 cents per $100 of assessed (not market) property value. The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education adopted a Resolution on October 22 to support Los Angeles Unified’s Measure US, and State Propositions 2 and 4,” the spokesperson said.

Opponents argue that the state should include school repairs in its regular budget instead of putting the burden on taxpayers. Opponents also argue that the proposition would not directly impact students. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is on record as one of the organizations opposing the proposition.

“Proposition 2 is $10 billion of bonds, new state debt, to pay for school facilities. It is almost certain to result in higher property tax bills, because school districts must provide a ‘local match’ of funds in order to receive money from the Prop. 2 state bonds. That will lead to districts issuing new local school bonds, which are paid for by adding new charges to property tax bills,” said Jarvis.

Opponents also have voiced concerns about what they view as an inequitable distribution of funds. They believe that lower-income school districts should receive a greater share of the state’s sliding scale for matching funds.

“Enrollment is declining in both K-12 district schools and community colleges and the declines are projected to continue. But Proposition 2 commits California to pay an estimated $18 billion, including interest, for school buildings that may not even be necessary. Vote no on proposition 2.”

A “yes” vote gives approval to the state to issue $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.

A “no” vote will prohibit the state from issuing $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.

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