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Aldi and TJ's are owned by the same people but they are different companies with separate management and ownership structures. If you proffered maybe $1.5MM, which is about what the Foggy Bottom assn. paid to TJ's (note: the city didn't pay it, the neighborhood assn. did), they might be willing to come to CH. Aldi doesn't do, generally, in-city locations, which is true of most supermarket chains. Still, isn't the Giant enough? + the proximity to Whole Foods. I don't think it's reasonable to provide more tax incentives to grocery stores in an area with grocery stores, and to provide tax incentives to new grocery stores when "old" grocery stores (not the Giant, but the Safeway in Adams-Morgan and the independents on Mount Pleasant Street, not to mention PanAm on 14th Street NW) never received a penny of tax incentives.

2. WRT the loan that built the parking structure, it was from an old HUD program that no longer exists. Sec. 108. It was about $42MM. I wrote about it and "against" the use of such funds quite a bit at the time.

3. Actually Lance, I think you're wrong about farsightedness vs. shortsightedness and this parking structure. More should be done to encourage optimal mobility, which is not focused on encouraging private automobile trips. The best use of resources in that area are transit (bus, subway, potentially streetcar).

However, one way to use that parking space would be to go back and build housing on top of the shopping center. (I don't understand why such wasn't done.) That would use up some of the space.

Frankly, e.g., a shared "package delivery service" for the commercial district would go a long way towards reducing demand to service automobiles, and would cost a lot less than the parking structure too.

But the transpo initiatives in CH and elsewhere, and this includes performance parking, are all piecemeal disconnected iniatives.

P.S. no one would ever drive to DC/USA, park there, and then take a circulator to the Zoo, in all likelihood. It's miles away. Again, better that people be encouraged to take the red line. Satisficing planning decisions, such as this, is almost always a bad idea. People are like water, their bias is towards the easiest solution, just as water seeks to flow at the lowest point in the topography. Rational planning can't change this reality, unless you were to do something, like pay each person $10 to do this, to pay them for their time to do something inefficiently and otherwise illogically. Of course, that isn't cost effective.

by Richard Layman on Apr 28, 2009 11:39 am • link • report