Local real estate developer Douglas Jemal announced at a Feb. 1 press conference that he is donating a 3,900-square-foot parcel of land known as the Secret Garden located behind three adjoining store-front buildings in Anacostia owned by the LGBTQ youth-run company Check It Enterprises to Check It.
Jemal’s announcement at the press conference, which was held on the site of the Secret Garden, ended a four-month standoff in which Check It and its supporters in the community rose up to oppose a request by Jemal’s company, the Douglas Development Corporation, that Check It remove the amenities it and its neighbors have built on the land and turn the property over to Douglas Development, which bought it in 2003 in a little noticed land deal.