NAACP Moving Headquarters to DC
By Keith Loria June 30, 2020 8:58 am
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Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has signed a letter of intent to transfer its national headquarters from Baltimore to the District.
The NAACP will move from its current home at Wells Fargo Tower in downtown Baltimore to the redevelopment of the Frank D. Reeves Center of Municipal Affairs at 2000 14th Street NW, according to a prepared statement.
“The Reeves Center stands in an iconic and culturally significant area of the U Street corridor with deep connections to the NAACP,” Mayor Bowser said in the prepared statement. “As we continue fighting for change and working to build a more fair and just nation, we look forward to welcoming this iconic civil rights organization to Washington, D.C.”
The organization also has a bureau at 1156 15th Street NW.
“Washington, D.C., sits at the epicenter of change,” Derrick Johnson, NAACP’s president and CEO, said in prepared remarks. “This exceptional opportunity to bring our national headquarters to D.C. will allow us to be even more proactive in serving the Black community, and confronting the serious challenges facing the nation.”
Jarvis Commercial Real Estate is representing the NAACP in the deal.
The 2.2-acre Reeves Center mixed-use redevelopment will include office space, affordable housing and amenities indicative of the site’s historic and cultural significance, per the prepared statement.
A passion project of former Mayor Marion Barry, the Reeves Center opened in 1986 and was designed to bring government services closer to a struggling neighborhood and to revitalize a corner still recovering from the 1968 race riots. It was named after lawyer and activist Frank D. Reeves, who, while working for the NAACP, helped shaped the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, according to the prepared remarks.
The redevelopment project is still in its early stages, with an expected delivery several years away.
Update: This story originally misattributed source material. This has been corrected. We apologize for the error.
