Oral History with Mike Jacobs

Mr. Jacobs arrived in CP in 1972 UR had already started by the time he was elected to the city council The contract with Weiner divided up LL and was mostly his by contract Weiner stalled on building after the infrastructure had be in place CP council wanted $5,700 per house from Weiner Weiner tried to void the contract several times The senior center was built first, then the high rise and the thirdly the town houses East side could not be used for housing because of the flood plain WMATA and CP disagreed on where to put a station CP voted in 1976 to reject a metro station Mr. Jacobs then breaks down how the metro line was built through Lakeland, using soil from lake Artemisia (expanding the lake) to raise the metro tracks, Dervy Lomax is mentioned. The final development of UR was the community center The funding for the community center came from the fact that a sentence was piggybacked on a bill in congress to forgive CP's debt to the federal government Student housing qualified LL for urban renewal, in that student salaries lowered the average income to qualify for urban renewal funds Lakeland residents were given right of first refusal, which was uncommon in UR across the country Each tract of land had height restrictions that Mr. Weiner was developing on LL civic association met quarterly and councilmen regularly attended UM was guilty of persuading UR by association Leonard Smith was a community watchdog of UR CP officials viewed the tunnel as an improvement UM architecture department may have had early input in UR but none when he arrived The purpose of the high rise housing was to take pressure off of rented single family housing in CP, this did happen as they intended Mr. Weiner stalled because he was waiting for a better economic climate This interview was recorded over the telephone.