On July 19, 2022, Ronald Mason, Jr., president of the University of the District of Columbia, held a community meeting at UDC-CC Bertie Backus Campus, located at 5171 South Dakota Avenue NE. The meeting took place before President Mason publicly announced that he planned to step down as president of UDC in 2023. In any case, he said he wanted to get out to the campus because he does not get out this way often enough, so he was interested in meeting nearby residents in an informal setting. An elderly neighbor mentioned that she would like to see the university offer programs free to seniors at the Backus campus. She said that 10 to 20 years ago, seniors could take all kinds of classes at the Van Ness campus free of charge.
President Mason shared just a few details about a planned expansion of the Backus campus. UDC no longer occupies a campus on North Capitol Street for its community college programs. The Backus campus will house most or all of the community college programs. Most of the workforce development programs have been moved from Backus to UDC’s Congress Heights campus. The first three focus areas for the community college will be teacher training, nursing, and technology. To accommodate the community college programs at Backus, a new wing will be built on the grounds of the existing parking lot on the Galloway Street NE side of the campus. The new wing will be about 60,000 square feet spread over 3 floors. The main Backus building will also undergo renovation (about 100,000 square feet). Some surface parking will remain. Design will take about one year and construction about 1.5 years.
In the interim, neighbors should start seeing a few small improvements to the campus. A neighbor and I worked on getting some money in the budget to spruce things up just a bit because this campus is a really great civic asset in the neighborhood.
- Window repair/replacement, removal of mesh window covers, and installation of new window blinds
- Painting of rails and exterior doors
- Replacement of fence
- Repair of masonry, concrete, and steps
- New signage
(Also, this post discusses the renovations taking place at the Bertie Backus Food Hub).
My understanding is that UDC will have more community meetings in the coming months to provide more information about the Backus campus expansion.
Next Stop...Riggs Park 
Thanks for this update! Really great news for the neighborhood!
Thank you. This is very good news! Any updates to the exterior facing Hamilton Street are welcome. This has been an eyesore for years.
Hi Lauren, yes I just provided the general scope of work without all the details. The fence on the Hamilton Street side will be replaced with a black wrought iron fence. The fence along the alley will be replaced with a black chain link fence. Iron is expensive :-). They’ll paint, repair chips, do some tuckpointing, power wash, etc. It’s a long list of stuff, but not endless. It wasn’t a huge amount in the budget for these small improvements, but it’s a start. A new person took over capital planning/facilities a couple of years ago (looking at my old emails I see he started July 2020). He’s been really great about listening over the past couple of years and not being too annoyed by our periodic nudges. It’s just taken a minute to get everything together. I think they are genuinely interested in being a good neighbor. I have a list of things that I think would be helpful to make this campus an integral part of the surrounding community.