WASHINGTON: The mystery surrounding a Pakistan Embassy building in the US capital got more complicated on Sunday when a notice about its blighted condition disappeared days after it was pasted on the front door.

Since the local government offices in Washington remain closed on Sunday, no one was available to clarify when they pasted the notice and why they removed it.

When Dawn contacted officials at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, they said that “since we never saw the notice, we cannot say when or why it was removed”.

A photo of the “Blighted Property” notice, taken on Friday, said the Building Enforcement Unit of the Department of Buildings (BOD), Washington, “has inspected your property and deemed it to be blighted”.

Notice disappears days after it was pasted on building’s front door in Washington

It asked the owners of the property, Pakistan Embassy, to “complete and submit a blighted building response form, within 30 days” or “your property will be designated as blighted and reclassified accordingly”. The notice also warned that “unauthorised removal” of this red notice could lead to a fine of $500.

Media reports published earlier this week claimed that the Washington DC government had downgraded the property classification of this embassy-owned building on the city’s historic R-Street NW.

Click to see more

The building has been up for sale for the past few months and received offers much below the prevalent price in this neighbourhood.

The reports warned that the declassification will further reduce the market value of the building while increasing taxes on its assessed value.

The building, which used to be a chancery in the past, was put up for auction late last year. The bidding process was later cancelled by Pakistani authorities, under pressure from the Pakistani American community.

Several community members claimed that they were willing to offer much more than the highest bid of $6.8 million for the property located in the heart of the city. Earlier media reports, however, put the pre-auction evaluation of the building, on ‘as is’ basis, at $4.5m. The building has been unoccupied for over a decade. The building’s diplomatic status was also revoked in 2018, making it liable to pay taxes to the local government.

In 2008, a Washington Post report on blighted properties in Washington listed a “paint-peeled columns and boarded-up windows” of a building owned by the United Arab Emirates, and “the hip-high grass and missing front door knob of a building owned by the Pakistani government.”

In December 2017, the US State Department responded to a plea for action from a local government official, Eleanor Holmes Norton, saying that it was ready to “aggressively engage” foreign countries with derelict properties in the nation’s capital.

In another letter to the local government, a State Department official said buildings owned by several countries, including Pakistan and Argentina, have lost diplomatic protections. A 2018 report in the Washingtonian magazine noted that “a 1906 Beaux Arts beauty, the onetime embassy of Pakistan has been vacant for about a decade — and it shows.

A demolition notice hangs to the left of the front door. Some windows are broken, while others are covered with cobwebs“. The report noted Pakistan has moved its embassy to “expansive new digs” near the Van Ness Metro.

An earlier Associated Press report noted that this “large building at the corner of 22nd and R street in downtown Washington, sticks out like a wart in the otherwise upscale neighbourhood”.

The building’s “plywood covers the windows, sleeping bags and empty bottles litter the shuttered doorways and head-high weeds sprout through the asphalt of the empty fenced-off parking lot,” the report added.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2023