7-Eleven and an Advisory Neighborhood Commission squabble over the sale of chicken wings in the H Street Corridor.

The chicken bone saga is officially over. Oh thank heaven, but not for 7-Eleven, which is at the center of the tale.

The issue revolves around a 7-Eleven at 957 H Street NE in Washington, D.C., in a neighborhood struggling with gentrification. The controversy has been brewing since the store opened in August, when the community began expressing its concerns about the 7-Eleven’s 24-hour operation in the H Street Connection, including late night hours, added litter, loitering, sales of tobacco products, and sales of fast food items.

For the last four months, Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 6A and community residents have been trying to get 7-Eleven reclassified as a fast food establishment in an effort to subject the store to additional controls and ultimately keep trash off the streets.

Chicken wings—the discarded bones are a choking hazard for dogs and attract vermin according to ANC 6A—were the one point of contention that kept 7-Eleven and ANC 6A from reaching a voluntary agreement about operations.

7-Eleven tried to throw ANC 6A a bone by saying that it would switch to selling boneless wings as soon as they became available, but ANC 6A insisted that the community did not want boned chicken wings to be sold for any period of time.

And thus, the chicken bone narrative was born.

“It is unfortunate that the controversy has been characterized by chicken bones,” said Margaret Holwill, a resident of Capitol Hill for 35 years. “It’s a zoning issue.”

7-Eleven, chicken bones and zoning

At a hearing on Dec. 7, the Board of Zoning Adjustment (BZA) decided to reclassify the 7-Eleven, store #34488, in the H Street Connection as a grocery store not as a fast food establishment stating that the sale fast food was “clearly subordinate” to the convenience store’s identity as a grocer.

Despite admitting that 7-Eleven’s original C of O for a market was inaccurate, the BZA refused to hear testimony from local residents at the hearing. Only the method by which the zoning administrator, Matt LeGrant, arrived at his decision to grant 7-Eleven a certificate of occupancy could serve as evidence for the appeal. Without having asked to review the materials that LeGrant used to make his original decision, ANC 6A’s appeal—and its hopes to mitigate trash from grab-and-go offerings—was denied three to two by the BZA.

SCLinDC tweeted from the hearing:

“Ouch! Board took an ugly swipe at the case. ANC requests 60 day continuance. #HSt”

“Continuance denied. ANC proceeds with 7-11 case w/o ability to discuss ops since opening.”

After negotiations between ANC 6A, 7-Eleven franchisee Bob Martz and 7-Eleven Corporate broke down in mid-November, ANC 6A asked the BZA in an appeal filed on Nov. 19 to force 7-Eleven to reapply for a fast food establishment license citing that the store derives more than 15 percent of its sales from fast food items.

Fast food establishments are permitted only by special exception of the BZA according to Rule: 11-1320 of the H Street Northeast Neighborhood Commercial Overlay District, a plan that designates use and development requirements for lots fronting H Street NE.

Without a signed agreement not to sell boned chicken wings, ANC 6A chose to throw around its “great weight” and challenge 7-Eleven’s operations with zoning regulations.

“Whatever idea you have about a 7-Eleven, that’s not what this 7-Eleven is,” said ANC 6A02 commissioner and chair of the Economic Development and Zoning Committee Drew Ronneberg, who wrote and led the appeal.

Advisory Neighborhood Commissions consider a wide range of policies and programs affecting their neighborhoods and are the body of government with the closest official ties to the people in a neighborhood.

Margaret Chablis, a spokesperson for 7-Eleven said in an e-mail: “We maintain that we are not a quick-serve restaurant, but a convenience store. There are no tables and chairs in our establishment, and most of the space is devoted to convenience products.”

If the appeal to have 7-Eleven reclassified as a fast food establishment had been successful, 7-Eleven would have been given a grace period to either stop selling fast food items or appeal the BZA’s reclassification.

“7-Eleven is expanding into fast food and being reclassified would have hurt their business,” Ronneberg said. “But, there would have been less trash in the neighborhood.”

Ronneberg said on Dec. 9 at an ANC 6A public meeting that no further action will be taken by ANC 6A regarding 7-Eleven’s C of O or its operations.

TBD TV captures community opinions in a video: Northeast residents upset over trash, chicken bones.

“7-Eleven is going to be a part of the H Street Connection,” said Sharee Lawler, commissioner-elect for ANC 6A05 and an owner of the blog, The Hill is Home. “Now we just have to hope that they are going to be a good neighbor.”

The chicken or the bone?

Despite a national campaign to promote boneless wings, the 7-Eleven in the H Street Connection is not yet part of the movement.

To combat the sale of chicken wings, ANC 6A voted 5-0-0 to appeal the administrative decision of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) to grant 7-Eleven C of O #CO1002994 for a “market.” While ANC 6A agrees that one aspect of 7-Eleven’s operations is a grocery store, the commission believes it has a secondary operation as a fast food establishment.

The District of Columbia Business Resource Center defines a C of O as a document that certifies that the use of a building complies with zoning regulations and building codes.

“You can always run in and get what you need on the go,” Holwill said. “7-Eleven serves a purpose. If there are enough people that will patronize the store then it should be allowed to survive.”

In an effort to prove that the 7-Eleven was functioning as a fast food establishment, ANC 6A community members sat outside the store over a number of days at various times and recorded how many customers went into the store and how many of those customers came out with fast food, such as pizza slices, hot dogs and nachos. Their findings were the basis of the appeal.

“It contrasts starkly with two other new businesses within a block of it—Liberty Tree and the Atlas Room which are two fantastic, neighborhood-serving restaurants,” said Phil Toomajian, a resident of the H Street community in an e-mail. “7-Eleven has been frank that they are more interested in serving commuter traffic than local residents.”

A tweet from the Nov. 11, ANC 6A public meeting elucidates the controversy: “We’re back to the 7-11, fast food, trash. Nobody has mentioned chicken bones. Yet.”

“I believe that 7-Eleven is a good tenant for the space,” said Gary Rappaport, President and CEO of Rappaport Companies, the owner and developer of the H Street Connection. “Not only does 7-Eleven offer a service, they are professional operators and know what they are doing.”

The H Street Connection

Aside from the issue of chicken bones, many local residents argue that 7-Eleven doesn’t fit into the vision of H Street that was approved by the DC Zoning Commission on Nov. 8.

This vision includes “a high-end architecturally designed building that will help stimulate other growth in the corridor and serve as an anchor for future growth,” said Rappaport. High-density, mixed-use space will define the new H Street Connection and set an example for further redevelopment.

Rappaport likened the coming changes to the recent transformation of P Street NW.

Rappaport Companies owns 87,000 square feet of land on the south side of H Street between 8th Street and 10th Street NE where the existing H Street Connection is situated. The land offers a tremendous amount of frontage relative to depth, frontage that will likely include 7-Eleven.

“We will try to negotiate a lease with 7-Eleven over the next year that will allow them to move back into the space after construction,” said Rappaport.

Construction to replace the existing one-story strip mall will begin in 2014. The new H Street Connection will have 52,000 square feet of retail space below 384 residential units. The structure will be eight stories tall and fill two city blocks.

“We’ve gone through the ins and outs and ups and downs to ensure that the new H Street Connection is compatible with the community’s vision for H Street,” said Rappaport.

Well supported by transit the new H Street Connection will be the anchor of the Central Retail District or “The Shops” as outlined in the H Street NE Strategic Development Plan Summary.

“It will add to an already growing cadre of business along H Street’s eastern end, and will provide attractive new spaces for additional businesses to open and provide neighborhood-serving retail,” said Toomajian. “I believe it will be as important as any development along H Street in furthering its rebirth.”

H Street Main Street, a nonprofit created in 2002 to implement comprehensive revitalization in the H Street Corridor, said on its website that the redevelopment underway is “a powerful indicator of the desirability of H Street.”

“We’re all rooting for each other,” said Sandra Basanti, an owner and manager of Dangerously Delicious Pies on H Street. “We all want the street to do well and we all want each other to succeed.”

Idea-spawning algorithms are fast supplanting professional journalists for some types of online content.

A mathematical equation is professed to better predict human wants and needs than humans themselves can. Journalistic instinct and experience are losing out to raw data.

According to Demand Media, every mathematically generated idea produces 4.9 times the revenue of an idea thought up by professional editors.

A combination of science and art, in the words of Demand Media’s Executive Vice President Steven Kydd, virtual factories aim to produce content that can survive and even turn a profit in today’s market.

These content farms — Demand Media, AOL’s Seed and Yahoo’s Associated Content are the largest and most prolific — are the fastest growing sectors of the journalism industry alongside hyperlocal networks.

Likened to assembly lines, content farms churn out hundreds of stories per day on everything from how to wear a sweater to how to make gin at home.

Demand Media currently produces more than 4,000 articles per month, and hopes to reach 1,000,000 articles a month by early 2011 according to founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt.

At the current rate of growth, payout to freelancers, including writers, copyeditors, filmmakers, and fact-checkers, could reach $200 million, less than a third of what The New York Times pays its employees to create just 5,000 articles per month.

Robertson Barrett, chief strategy officer at Perfect Market, said in his article Lessons From the Content Farm: “As much as it taxes journalistic sensibilities, publishers need to embrace the fact that some articles have more value in terms of advertising than others.”

How It Works

To determine what stories need writing, Demand Media utilizes a two-part algorithm.

The first algorithm analyzes search terms, the ad market and competitors to ascertain what terms users are searching for, how much advertisers will pay to appear on pages that include those terms, and how many Web pages already include them.

Seed and Associated Content parse the same data and use a similar algorithm.

After terms are derived from the first algorithm, the second algorithm, called the Knowledge Engine, attempts to figure out what users want to know about those terms. Demand Media has discovered that “best” and “how to” bring in the highest ad rates, while “history of” is less lucrative.

A term and its lifetime value, or LTV, is born. Enter humans to nurture it to maturity.

After freelance “title proofers” finalize the headline of a story, it is placed on a password-protected section of Demand Media’s website called Demand Studios. Freelancers can then select stories to fill their assignment queue.

On the farm, freelance contributors are known as “content creators.”

Editors and fact-checkers follow behind content creators to fix only the most glaring errors. The business model, quick, dirty and cheap, does not allow for extensive revisions or rewrites.

“Stories read like first drafts, poorly organized and indifferently written,” said Jason Fry, a former Wall Street Journal Online reporter, in Dylan Stableford’s article Content ‘Farms’: Killing Journalism — While Making a Killing.

Professional writer Anne Gentle shared her experience in a post titled Workin’ on a Content Farm on her blog Just Write Click: “The guidelines were very clear — the About type required five sections with one-word section headers and the first section had to be titled Overview and contain about 75 words. The rest of the sections could contain more than 75 words but at least 50 words were necessary, and overall the article was targeted for 400-500 words.” She went on to say: “To my relief, the article I submitted by noon on a week day was approved by early morning the next week day.”

Content farms, much like real farms, are capable of producing economical, passable crops. The question becomes whether they can manufacture anything of significant or memorable value.

The Truth About the Future

Despite flipping the traditional journalism model on its head, the intention of content farms is not to replace journalism as it currently exists. Like citizen journalism, high-volume, low-cost content is another experimental business venture that may or may not find a permanent place among mainstream media.

In any market, where there is demand, supply that can yield a profit is sure to follow. Content farms have stepped in as the willing supplier.

The value of breaking news and investigative journalism is not comparable to the work coming out of content farms. Quality and relevance are not necessarily the same thing.

One is a database of human knowledge, with short-term, high-impact, mass audience value, and the other is a database of human needs with long-term, categorical value.

News is not based on algorithms or search term. It is not predictable or quantifiable and thus never will be created in the same fashion.

Content farms are not here to replace, but do have the potential to overpower quality work.

“The problem with content farms is that they swamp the Internet with mediocre content,” said Dan Gillmor, a professor of journalism at Arizona State University, in an article written by The Economist.

A recent survey conducted jointly by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 70 percent of Americans are overwhelmed by the amount of news and information available from different sources.

“To appreciate the impact Demand is poised to have on the Web, imagine a classroom where one kid raises his hand after every question and screams out the answer,” Daniel Roth said in an article he wrote for Wired.com. “He may not be smart or even right, but he makes it difficult to hear anybody else.”

Further Reading:

AOL’s Latest Dumb Business Plan
Are Content Farms “Demonic”?
The Content Farm Model: How Crap Succeeds
Journalists Worried About Content Farms Are Missing The Point: The Web Has Always Been Filled With Crap
Can So-Called “Content Farms” Maintain Quality and Reader Trust?