In Ivy City, Redevelopment Moves Forward While Pollution Concerns Remain

For decades, the historic Black neighborhood of Ivy City in Northeast Washington, DC, has been treated as an industrial sacrifice zone, leaving its residents to battle severe environmental pollution alongside intense redevelopment pressures. As new investment pours into the area, grassroots resistance led by local organizers is fighting to ensure that community healing and environmental justice take priority over corporate gentrification.

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By Kaitlyn Sullivan

Fresh paint and spackle can do wonders for damaged walls, but they do little for a cracked foundation. For decades, residents of Ivy City have seen redevelopment follow this same deceptive pattern: new buildings rise like a coat of paint, masking the deep-seated pollution and housing pressures that have never been addressed.

In this northeastern Washington, DC neighborhood, residents have long battled pollution concerns and redevelopment pressures that threaten to price them out. This small area exemplifies who gets to shape neighborhoods during transitional periods and who bears the costs when investment arrives before justice.  

“It’s organized residents against organized money,” said Bob Bingaman, an organizer with local non-profit Empower DC who has worked with Ivy City residents on environmental justice and redevelopment issues.

Ivy City’s Contradiction

In 1873, Ivy City was designed as a suburban development for African Americans by real estate developer Frederick Jones. Business, entertainment, and employment flowed into the now predominantly Black, prosperous neighborhood.  

However, by the early 20th century, what had been built as a residential Black community was encroached upon by rail yards, warehouses, and industrial facilities that brought noise, pollution, and heavy infrastructure. These additions surrounded Ivy City, isolating residents from the rest of DC.

The fight against industrial encroachment, alongside civic organizations formed in response to discrimination and segregation in the mid-20th century, helped lay the foundation for modern Ivy City.

In an interview with Earth.Org, Bingaman rarely used the word “neighborhood” to describe Ivy City, instead referring to it as a “community”. And he is not alone; for many residents, Ivy City is more than just a zip code. 

Today, the neighborhood remains “sandwiched between major arteries, a train track, and industrial uses,” according to Alex Freedman, a Senior Community Planner at the DC Office of Planning.

Freedman helped develop the Small Area Plan in late 2024 for Ivy City – a city planning document meant to guide future land use, transportation, housing and development decisions. The document could shape whether redevelopment addresses existing environmental harms or simply builds around them.

Ivy City’s contradiction is not confined to its history. As new development arrives and housing prices climb, many of the neighborhood’s older environmental burdens remain unresolved. At the center of that debate is a small chemical plant that has become a flashpoint for residents and organizers.

What NEP Symbolizes

The National Engineering Products Incorporated (NEP) facility has become one of the clearest symbols of Ivy City’s unresolved contradictions. The plant manufactures adhesive sealants and electrical insulating compounds used by the US Navy, products designed to fireproof electrical systems and secure ship engines. It also happens to share a wall with a mother of three.

“[A] plastic assembly plant and a residential community seem an odd thing to have next to each other,” said Greg Casten, the current owner of the facility. However, this is more than a simple inconsistency or fluke. Residents have spent years describing odors, health fears, and the feeling that industrial priorities continue to outweigh community wellbeing. 

“Some of the chemicals they use are odorless and colorless. They are in our community, they cause cancer, they cause leukemia, they cause birth defects,” said Sabrina Rhodes, an organizer and leader at Empower DC, a grassroots, non-profit community organization that fights for racial, economic, and environmental justice in the US capital.

The dispute escalated into formal litigation in 2025, when neighboring residents filed suit alleging toxic exposure. Public testing had previously detected elevated formaldehyde near the site, adding urgency to longstanding complaints. That same year, Casten acquired the facility after the prior owner struggled to sell it. “Just give it to me and I’ll figure out what to do with it,” he said, recalling the purchase.

Casten, who owns “20 different operating companies in Ivy City,” presents himself as a longtime investor in the neighborhood. 

Recalling a failed bid for the historic, long-vacant Crummell School site, he explained his plan to install a 300-unit apartment complex, which he pitched to the city. An alternative plan was presented by residents and Empower DC, which called for a community recreational space. 

“The kids really need a playground within walking distance…where they can play and their parents can look out…and see that they are safe. Let them turn it into something constructive for kids, but keep them off the street. And there are seniors in this neighborhood, also. And they need places to go so they can do their arts and crafts,” Jackie Council said in a pamphlet distributed during Empower DC environmental justice tours of the neighborhood. Council is a Crummell School alumna and Ivy City oral history participant cited by Empower DC. 

The disputes over the NEP and Crummell School sites were not only about one facility or parcel of land. They were about who gets to define what investment and development should look like in Ivy City and who that development aims to serve. This manifests in a tension between repairing old harms and simply building around them.

Empower DC Resistance

For Ivy City residents, these battles have demanded organized resistance. Few groups have played a more integral role than Empower DC.

“It’s part of our job to educate the community about the threats in the community and then mobilize public support around those threats,” said Bingaman.  

A major responsibility of the organization involves leading environmental justice walking tours through Ivy City, which attract dozens of residents, advocates, officials and visitors from across the DMV, a shorthand term for Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia. On these tours, Empower DC organizers and Ivy City residents guide participants to key sites, including Crummell School and the NEP facility, while explaining how pollution, land-use decisions and redevelopment pressures have shaped daily life in the neighborhood.

One of the primary objectives of the organization is to uplift the voices of the community. They do this by hosting open-access community forums and events. Casten even referenced attending one of these during his interview with Earth.Org.

“We talked to over 100 residents in Ivy City…we went door to door and talked to them,” said Bingaman, explaining how Empower DC aimed to represent the true sentiments and experiences of the community in their health survey. 

The group also focuses on protecting the community from displacement and ending housing insecurity. Freedman noted that just days prior to his conversation with Earth.Org, he had been in Ivy City and “every block had like a dozen for sale signs.” 

Despite opposition from well-financed developers like Casten, Empower DC says it helped secure city approval and millions in public funding to transform the long-vacant Crummell School site into a community center and park after a years-long campaign. Casten said he once lost $2 million on a previous Ivy City venture before later reinvesting in the neighborhood, illustrating the scale of capital often facing community organizers. 

But the resources and power that developers hold in this city have never discouraged Empower DC. In fact, Ms. Rhodes told Earth.Org that she has personally gone up against attorneys Holland & Knight, one of Washington’s largest law firms, which often represents corporate interests in land-use and environmental disputes. 

Rhodes and her colleagues’ work shows that organized residents can effectively shape planning and redevelopment decisions, even when facing far better-funded opposition.

A Global Issue

The case of Ivy City is far from isolated. Around the world, neighborhoods once treated as industrial sacrifice zones are now attracting new investment before older environmental harms are fully addressed. These transitions often coincide with pollution concerns, rising housing costs and the displacement of what are mostly low-income communities and communities of color.

In Chicago, researchers found that some environmental clean-ups and redevelopment efforts coincided with displacement pressures and demographic turnover, a phenomenon often described as environmental gentrification. Even in older cities such as London, studies suggest the geography of past industrial pollution still shapes inequality today. 

Across these cities, residents have also organized to demand clean-ups, affordable housing protections, and a greater voice in redevelopment decisions.

The struggle unfolding in Ivy City is playing out in cities worldwide, where redevelopment often arrives before repair. Ivy City stands out because residents and organizers have made it impossible to ignore who benefits from change and who it leaves behind.

Featured image: Kaitlyn Sullivan.

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About the author: Kaitlyn Sullivan is an undergraduate student at Georgetown University, pursuing a degree in Government with concentrations in Environment and Sustainability as well as Journalism. She is from Chicago but currently lives in Washington, DC, working for an Illinois congresswoman. Kaitlyn is interested in the intersection between social justice and government and hopes to use her degree in journalism to uplift the voices of communities most impacted by inequality and high-level policy decisions.