THE WASHINGTON POST.
SATURDAy, NOVEMbER 9, 2019eZ10
million. Starting in 2008, howev-
er, the area was hit hard by a rash
of foreclosures and many homes
lost their value, according to
Yvonne Lee, a real estate agent
with Re/Max Allegiance. Half the
loans on newly constructed
homes in Fairwood during the
housing boom in 2006 and 2007
ended up in foreclosure, accord-
ing to a 2015 Washington Post
article.
“But it’s bounced back over the
past 10 years,” Lee says. “Now it’s
the hottest real estate market in
P.G. County.”
In 2018, according to Lee, 75
homes in the neighborhood were
sold, at an average price of
$456,722. Fifteen homes are for
sale; the lowest-priced is a two-
bedroom, three-bathroom condo-
minium for $320,000. The high-
est-priced is the original Fairview
plantation house. Built circa 1790,
the five-bedroom federal and
Greek revival home on 10 acres is
listed for just under $1 million.
Fairwood’s home values are
one of the secrets of Maryland’s
real estate market, says Hammett.
“If you were to transfer our
homes to Silver Spring or Bethes-
da or Northern Virginia,” he adds,
“they would cost double or triple
and be a lot older.”
Just 15 miles from downtown
Washington and Annapolis, the
location is another draw, says Jes-
sica Slaughter, who has lived in
Fairwood’s Sanctuary To wn-
homes since 2010.
The retired Air Force health-
care administrator also likes how
quiet, safe and walkable it is. “I
can even walk to my beauty salon
to get my hair done,” Slaughter
says as she sits under a hair dryer
at Salon DK in the neighbor-
hood’s main shopping center on
Fairwood Parkway, which also
has a Safeway, restaurants, a nail
salon and a Gold’s Gym.
Brown says a lot of people want
a community where you can go
through the different ages and
stages of your life.
“People have asked me ‘This is
your first home, are you going to
buy another one?’ ” he says. “Not
unless I can take my neighbors
with me.”
Schools: Elementary schools
are Tulip Grove, Woodmore,
Glenn Dale, Whitehall and High
Bridge. Middle school is Benja-
min Ta sker. High schools are Du-
Val and Bowie.
Transit: The New Carrollton
Metro Station on the Orange Line
is about four miles from the cen-
ter of Fairwood. A Metrobus runs
from Fairwood Parkway and An-
napolis Road to the station.
[email protected]Where We Live Fairwood
BY DIANE BERNARDVisiting Fairwood in Prince
George’s County, you get a sense
of how aspirational this planned
neighborhood is. Trade Row leads
into Commodity Row — among
other streets named for symbols
of Wall Street prosperity. P ast “the
Choice” townhouses are elegant
single-family homes on streets
called Jordan’s Endeavor or
Wright’s Endeavor — illustrating
people striving to achieve.
Hugh Hammett, 76, a retired
vice president of external affairs
for the State University of New
York, moved to Fairwood five
years ago with his partner, Dan
Christopher, a development offi-
cer at the University of Maryland.
The location is ideal for Chris-
topher’s nine-mile commute,
Hammett says. But the couple
were also drawn to the neighbor-
hood for its well-educated neigh-
bors. Hammett, who serves as
secretary of the Fairwood Com-
munity Association, cites a demo-
graphic report the association
commissioned in 2018 that found
36 percent of the majority African
American community’s residents
have graduate degrees and 31 per-
cent have bachelor’s degrees.
“It’s a pleasure to live in a
neighborhood where there are all
kinds of people that are nice and
smarter than you,” Hammett s aid.
Driving down the tree-lined
streets past homes of stone and
brick, you see people walking on
the many trails through woods.
“The very first thing we noticed
was the neighbors,” s ays Jonathan
Brown, vice president of the Fair-
wood Community Association.
“They were walking around, very
happy, and joyful that we were
just thinking about living here.”
Brown, a program manager
with the Navy who has an MBA,
moved to Fairwood in 2016 from
Bladensburg, Md., with his wife, a
nuclear engineer, and teen
daughter. In just three years, they
have regulars at many activities
sponsored by the community as-
sociation, which is the heart of thePride of
place in
Prince
George’s
Diverse enclave ravaged
by ’ 08 foreclosure crisis
has bounced backneighborhood’s social life, Brown
says.
From an annual yard sale in the
fall and jazz concerts in the sum-
mer to Caribbean night parties at
the community pool and an Eas-
ter egg hunt for the children, the
social committee makes it a prior-
ity to bring people together, Ham-
mett says.
Established in 2005, the young
neighborhood has already out-
grown its community clubhouse.
“That gives you a good idea
how active we are,” Brown says.
The rambling subdivision had
a population of 5,762 people in
2017, of whom 77 percent were
African American, and a median
income of about $157,000, accord-
ing to the community’s demo-
graphic report. About a third of
the residents have a household
income of more than $200,000,
making it one of the most exclu-
sive majority African American
communities in Prince George’s
County — and the nation, Ham-
mett says.
Given its demographics, Fair-
wood has an unusual history. It
was carved out of an 18th-century
plantation called Fairview owned
by Maryland’s 34th governor,
Oden Bowie. It was one of the
largest slave plantations in Mary-
land, with 47 enslaved people.
The irony is not lost on Hammett.
“Wherever the old slave owners
are, I hope that they look up and
see the high-income, highly edu-
cated African American popula-
tion who lives here now,” he says.
The Bowie family transformed
the property from a tobacco plan-
tation into a cattle farm until the
1950s. Then Eugene Bowie Rob-erts Sr. turned the grounds into a
turf farm that supplied sod to the
Washington area, including the
lawns of the White House, the
Capitol and the Mall.
By the late 1990s, the turf farm
had fallen on hard times and the
family decided to sell part of it to
the Rouse Co., developer of Co-
lumbia, Md., and Harborplace in
Baltimore, to transform it into the
planned community it has be-
come.
Living there: Fairwood is
bound by Annapolis Road (Route
450) to the north, Collington
Road to the east, John Hanson
Highway (Route 50) to the south
and Enterprise Road to the west.
The neighborhood has around
1,900 condos, townhouses and
single-family homes.
Before the mortgage crisis,
houses sold for more than $1PHOtOs bY MICHAel RObInsOn CHAVeZ/tHe WAsHIngtOn POst
Madison Davis, 9, plays tennis with her father, Alfred, on a Fairwood court. What was once a slave
plantation is now a majority African American community with a median income of about $157,000.50301GEORGE’SPRINCE
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THE WASHINGTON POST
Th e Fairview plantation house, a five-bedroom federal and
Greek revival built circa 17 90, is listed for just under $1 million.
to see more photos of Fairwood,
go to washingtonpost.com/real-
estate.