Chris Donatelli, a politically connected real estate developer whose residential projects helped remake several D.C. neighborhoods in the early 2000s, died Monday at a hospital in Bethesda. He was 58.
His family announced the death in a statement shared by Mr. Donatelli’s friend Julie Chase, who said he had been hospitalized Friday with an illness. Additional details were not immediately available.
Along with developers such as Douglas Jemal, Monty Hoffman and Jim Abdo, Mr. Donatelli emerged as a builder eager to invest in blue-collar D.C. neighborhoods in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as the city sought to regain its financial footing after nearly going bankrupt.
With allies at city hall who helped his projects procure tax abatements, Mr. Donatelli built luxury rental apartments catering to young professionals along what were then forlorn stretches of the U Street corridor and in the neighborhoods of Columbia Heights and Petworth. He later turned to constructing affordable housing projects in neighborhoods on the city’s east side.
Abdo, in a telephone interview Monday, said Mr. Donatelli’s success on U Street — where he built the Ellington, a 190-unit apartment complex that opened in 2004 — signaled to other developers that the corridor was ripe for a makeover. The building, at 13th Street NW, was named for Duke Ellington, the jazz great who grew up in Washington, and intended to evoke U Street’s history as a center of Black culture.
“Much of what is there today happened because developers could point to Chris’s success,” Abdo said. “He was willing to invest in transitional neighborhoods long before it became fashionable.”
In more recent years, several personal, financial and legal crises forced Mr. Donatelli to cease building. He retreated from the social and political circles where he had been a regular, as an active supporter of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and former mayor Adrian Fenty, among others.
Mr. Donatelli had contributed thousands of dollars to local political campaigns. In 2014, after Bowser won the Democratic primary for mayor, Mr. Donatelli posted a photo on his Facebook page of him with his arm around the candidate. “New Mayor! Muriel Bowser!! Way to Go!” he wrote in the caption.
Until recently, Mr. Donatelli and his then-wife, Karen Donatelli, owned a historic mansion known as the Owl’s Nest in D.C.’s Forest Hills neighborhood. The couple hosted gatherings at the turreted 19th-century home, including a birthday party for Fenty and a dinner for President Barack Obama.
The couple sold the property in 2025 after divorcing.
At his peak, Mr. Donatelli was a press-friendly builder who promoted the virtues of city life, choosing locations near Metro stations to build his projects. After completing the Ellington, which his company sold in 2011 for $100 million, Mr. Donatelli turned to Columbia Heights, a neighborhood along the 14th Street NW corridor that had been ravaged during the 1968 riots.
Mr. Donatelli completed two projects in Columbia Heights, beginning with Kenyon Square, a 153-unit building that he finished in 2007, just before a new shopping mall, anchored by Target, opened across the street. The next year, he completed Highland Park, an apartment building that initially had more than 200 units on Irving Street NW.
Mr. Donatelli opened a tavern on the ground floor of Highland Park, which he named Lou’s City Bar in honor of his father, Louis Donatelli, himself a prominent developer in the Washington region. The bar closed more than a year ago as Mr. Donatelli’s troubles mounted.
Christopher Joseph Donatelli was born Oct. 27, 1967, and grew up in Bethesda. In addition to his father, his brother Douglas also became a prominent player in Washington real estate.
After graduating from Gonzaga High School, Mr. Donatelli attended Villanova University and earned a master’s degree in real estate from American University. He joined his father’s firm, Donatelli & Klein, which he eventually took over and renamed Donatelli Development.
After his success on U Street and in Columbia Heights, Mr. Donatelli turned to Petworth, another neighborhood where demand for new housing was burgeoning. The city chose Mr. Donatelli’s firm to develop a city-owned Georgia Avenue parcel — also near a Metro station — that he turned into a 161-unit building that opened in 2009.
The project had a measure of personal meaning to Mr. Donatelli, whose mother, Ann Kirlin Donatelli, had grown up nearby on Varnum Street NW. She died in 2024.
In addition to his father and brother, survivors include four children, another brother and a sister.
Mr. Donatelli’s first major affordable-housing project, a 376-unit building known as Park 7, opened in 2014 at the corner of Benning Road and Minnesota Avenue NE.
The building proved to be a source of controversy, as Mr. Donatelli faced complaints from tenants who said he failed to make timely repairs. In 2019, the Office of the D.C. Attorney General ordered him to refund over 400 tenants $450,000 because they were improperly charged for using water when it was supposed to be included in their rent.
A development team led by Mr. Donatelli was also chosen by the Bowser administration to construct an affordable housing project near RFK Stadium that became known as the Ethel. In November, a Washington Post investigation found that it had collected millions of dollars more in government subsidies than is customary.
In the meantime, Mr. Donatelli’s financial troubles deepened.
A lender initiated legal action against him last May, claiming that Mr. Donatelli and his father were in default of a $17 million loan plus $12 million in accrued interest. Mr. Donatelli eventually acknowledged that he had forged his father’s signature on loan documents.
In recent weeks, a federal judge ordered him to repay nearly $30 million for the defaulted loan. Mr. Donatelli had previously admitted to forging his then-wife’s name on a separate application for a $5 million loan from Capital Bank in 2023.
Over the course of the turmoil, Mr. Donatelli’s associates in the development world puzzled over his downfall. During a chance encounter with a Post reporter last month, Mr. Donatelli said the economic pressures during and after the pandemic had been a major factor.
Mr. Donatelli appeared to relish the opportunity to explain what had happened, agreeing to an interview request.
“I think it would be beneficial to get the story out there,” he texted later that night.
He did not respond to a follow-up message seeking a time and place.
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