Former Member Of Activist Group Sues To Find Out What Happened To $2M From Line Hotel Suit

Two years after winning a $2M settlement from the developers of The Line Hotel in Adams Morgan, an anti-gentrification activist group is facing a lawsuit from one of its former members over how that money is being spent.

Teresa Lopez has filed a suit in D.C. Superior Court to get the Forget-Me-Not fund, set up with a $2M settlement from the Sydell Group, to disclose its spending, the Washington Post reports. Lopez, who lives around the corner from the hotel, was on the board of the Forget-Me-Not fund, but claims she was excluded from decisions and disclosures about how the money was spent.

“I want them to tell the community how much is in the fund,” Lopez, who resigned from the board in April, told the Post. “I want them to explain what they are planning to do with the money. I want . . . an accounting of what happened to the money.”

The group's attorney, who negotiated the settlement, said Lopez had not been kept in the dark over the funds, of which $300K has been publicly disclosed as going to help tenants purchase their apartment building and propping up local small businesses. The Post reports that $35K in funding was improperly removed from the fund by a local business to cover back rent.

Activist Chris Otten, who had worked with the neighborhood to oppose The Line, was also named as a defendant in the suit, and told the Post the lawsuit was "frivolous." Otten has been at the center of a number of lawsuits and appeals intended to slow or block development all over the city, so far preventing thousands of housing units from being constructed after they had received city approvals.

Otten has worked most prominently in Union Market, where he has also won settlements from developers whose projects were appealed.