Public Spaces
An even better Brookland
Take the Metro to U Street, Clarendon, or Bethesda, and you find yourself in the middle of a lively neighborhood. Public plazas, shops and housing fill the surrounding blocks. There's a feeling of place.
Emerge from the Brookland/CUA station, on the other hand, and you'll see none of this. There's only a concrete-filled traffic oval for cars to pick up and drop off. To the east lies a parking lot and a few empty lots. Walk north, and you have to cross another concrete expanse for shuttle buses before crossing a weed-filled plain underneath Michigan Avenue. At the end of the path is another parking lot surrounding the one-story Comcast warehouse. Continue north, and you'll pass a gas station, some industrial buildings, a strip mall, and a park.
Brookland is a beautiful neighborhood with attractive houses, historic buildings, and a charming neighborhood main street. The Metro station, meanwhile, lies in a bleak, industrial pocket with none of Brookland's charm.
Outside the Brookland Metro. Image from Google Street View.
Comcast depot just under Michigan Avenue from the Metro station. Image from Google Street View.
Twenty years from now, this could become a lively neighborhood center, if the DC Council approves the Brookland Small Area Plan after their February 10 hearing. The plan aims to add housing and retail opportunities near the Metro and alongside the train tracks. It replaces unusable empty space with productive community parkland. It reconnects the street grid in several places and creates continuous chains of buildings from the commercial 12th Street east of the tracks to Catholic University on the west, and makes a vast and empty chasm into a pleasant, walkable link. At the same time, it respects the low density of the existing housing near the Metro by stepping down building heights close to existing houses.
Left: Brookland Metro station area today. Image from Google Maps. Right: Metro station sub-area plan.
The plan reconnects 9th and Newton streets through the site, making bus drop-off and kiss-and-ride part of the street grid instead of pedestrian-unfriendly suburban formats and building a plaza around the Metro escalator on each side. It adds new housing on both sides of the train tracks, but with stepped-down heights near single-family homes. For example, see the townhouses in the upper right of the image above, between the apartment buildings and the detached houses east of 10th Street.
As Monroe street crosses the train tracks, the plan calls for low retail buildings over the tracks to fill the gap in the street wall and make Monroe Street a gateway between the two sides of the tracks. To create usable open space, it recommends building a civic gathering place on the grounds of the Brooks Mansion (the solitary building toward the lower right of each image) and replacing Brooks' surface parking with underground parking below some of the new buildings. There will also be a new civic plaza west of the train tracks at a realigned intersection of Monroe and Michigan Avenue.
As with most changes, residents disagree about what's best for the neighborhood. A vocal group of Brooklanders are fighting the plan, arguing that the empty spaces around the Metro station are the neighborhood's precious green space. Others, meanwhile, call that space a "trash-strewn chain-link blight" and prefer usable parkland over somewhat larger but inactive spaces. Opponents charge that four-story buildings will tower over their small bungalows, while supporters point out that a two-story bungalow with an attic and a front door six feet above the street, as many houses have, is nearly four stories tall itself. A six-story building with an attractive facade and setbacks from the street is much less imposing than a three-story concrete box.
We grow accustomed to bad design over time. My irritation at the voids in public space on 17th Street have softened as I shopped there more often. I've gotten used to the desolate sidewalks downtown (except at Gallery Place) on weekends and middays. That doesn't mean 17th uses public space well or that we shouldn't work to make downtown more lively. Just because we become used to a status quo doesn't mean there's not a better option.
Likewise, many people have grown familiar with crossing a parking lot and multiple car dropoff lanes to walk to the Metro each day. They see Brookland as a suburban pocket and understandably worry about change. But a lively plaza with retail will enhance safety around the station. It will bring in residents to patronize Brookland's shops and strengthen the 12th Street business corridor. It will help the environment by accommodating more residents who don't have to drive, the city by growing our tax base, and our population by adding opportunities for housing that regular people can afford. It will even enhance the value of the existing residents' homes by making Brookland a more pleasant neighborhood for all.
In an email to the Brookland email list this morning, one opponent referred to the community's success at blocking a parking garage Metro wanted to construct next to the station in the 1970s. Good for them. If Metro had built that garage, we'd all look back on that as a mistake. But if the DC Council approves the Small Area Plan, residents in twenty years will thank planners, the Council, and supportive residents for laying the groundwork to make Brookland a better, safer, happier place to live.
If you live, work, shop or learn in or around Brookland, please weigh in to support this Small Area Plan by signing Ryan Avent's petition or testifying at the hearing at 3 pm on Tuesday, February 10th.
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.   |
Comments
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Also, I haven't really looked into this in detail, but you do a lot better job making a case for change with this entry, instead of launching the usual NIMBY charge and moving on.
by Jazzy on Feb 2, 2009 1:18 pm • link • report
by David Alpert on Feb 2, 2009 1:28 pm • link • report
by Bianchi on Feb 2, 2009 1:36 pm • link • report
All of 'm are surrounded by wastelands of parking lots and kiss 'n ride lanes.
As a daily visitor of F-S, I just don't understand why the Mall never got that if the metro station had been *in* their mall, the mall would get so much business.
Just look in Europe. Every major transit station *is* a virtual shopping mall.
by Jasper on Feb 2, 2009 1:45 pm • link • report
by SG on Feb 2, 2009 1:46 pm • link • report
by Cavan on Feb 2, 2009 1:51 pm • link • report
by rg on Feb 2, 2009 2:10 pm • link • report
Fortunately we have enlightened visionaries to do our urban planning for us. Let's trust them like we have for the last 50 years.
by MPC on Feb 2, 2009 2:12 pm • link • report
by David Alpert on Feb 2, 2009 2:15 pm • link • report
Remember, Robert Moses did not have hearings and seek community feedback. On the other hand, the very nature of the community feedback process is to prevent the abuses of Robert Moses from being repeated. We have chosen to err on the side of deliberation over the advantages of speed. That's fine. There are many who choose to turn the process of deliberation on its head as a means to cynically stop all change from occuring.
It would appear that is your tactic when you constantly bring up the late Mr. Moses.
Meanwhile, the problems that result from inaction compound with each passing day.
by Cavan on Feb 2, 2009 2:17 pm • link • report
I think the FS station's location has more to do with right of way issues as it rides along the VRE and CSX lines. However the new owners of the mall plan on taking advantage of the mall location as they plan on a major redevelopment.
http://www.springfieldtowncenter.com/index.php
Also forget anything being build around the station, as is sits right next to a protected wetland.
by RJ on Feb 2, 2009 2:26 pm • link • report
Bringing up Moses like this also does a disservice to times that may come up in the future when the comparison could be apt. Having cried wolf now, who will listen then?
by BeyondDC on Feb 2, 2009 2:34 pm • link • report
If something was done in the past, in retrospect with mistakes, we should never revisit that "thing" because we might make mistakes we can't yet see. This worldview you espouse is most defeatist.
by Bianchi on Feb 2, 2009 2:43 pm • link • report
by Ward 1 Guy on Feb 2, 2009 3:01 pm • link • report
Less than ideal perhaps, but Silver Spring and Alexandria King Street turned out OK, as did Chicago.
by BeyondDC on Feb 2, 2009 3:12 pm • link • report
First off, we can greatly increase the number of safe pedestrian crossings. Pittsburgh's trolleys are a good example of how ample crossings can keep the neighborhood intact (although Pittsburgh's trolleys are perhaps TOO deferential, as in most places the crossing is at-grade, which forces the trolleys to watch out for peds and cars).
The other solution is commercial buildings right on top of the train tracks. Workers like the easy commute, and with enough insulation there's not a noise issue. Chicago and outer-boroughs New York have plenty of examples of this method working out.
by tom veil on Feb 2, 2009 3:31 pm • link • report
Grade crossings are a non-starter at this location. Pittsburgh has streetcars and light rail, this is a third rail subway, commuter rail tracks, and plenty of freight traffic as well.
I personally liked the original plan that included development and a deck on top of the tracks, sloping down roughly at the same rate as Monroe and Michigan, thus creating a subway-like function, as well as creating a new entrance space.
by Alex B. on Feb 2, 2009 3:38 pm • link • report
I know the Springfield Mall is thinking about changing. Let's see how the current real estate crisis impacts that plan. I don't expect much.
I understand why they wanted to stick to the other rail tracks, but they could have still done way better on a pathway to the Mall. Right now you have to be pretty courageous to cross under 7900. No good pedestrian walk ways. However, I will admit that they are there.
Obviously, it is also unhandy at least that the station is not accessible from the South side.
I didn't know about the protected wetlands. Really? Those unused stamp-sized areas are protected wetlands? Wow. Fairfax really puts a tag on anything they don't want to develop.
by Jasper on Feb 2, 2009 3:50 pm • link • report
This project in its current form subverts the main D.C. northern radial transport corridor.
We have plenty of buildings.
What we need is am truly multi-model corridor with railway and highway beneath a new linear park with some store front retail.
Build the underground North Central Freeway; it will make not only a new much needed highway but a new northern mall faced by new museums made from adaptive reuse of former CUA.
Fire the people behind this transportation subversion.
by Douglas Willinger on Feb 2, 2009 4:20 pm • link • report
Correct the pathway to the mall and the Metro needs work and they are thinking about it at least: Check out their connectivity study that they did for the metro and surrounding area:
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/dpz/springfield/
by RJ on Feb 2, 2009 4:47 pm • link • report
by Kk on Feb 2, 2009 9:23 pm • link • report
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-obama-must-do-for-transportation.html
by Douglas Willinger on Feb 3, 2009 1:27 am • link • report
Nice work. Didn't know that. Too bad the plans are gathering dust. Seems they are two years old... I like them overall, but do think they are brushing too easily over some issues.
They question whether the Mall is considered 'scary', for instance. With the number of stabbings and murders, it is a fact that the place is scary. Last, they believe too much in "rebranding", but hey, it that gets a better neighborhood, whatever.
Now, let them start planting trees!
by Jasper on Feb 3, 2009 10:35 am • link • report
Brookland serves as a small commuter hub for the entire eastern area to the DC line and Maryland. The plan's authors have completely dismantled this hub, without substitute. Commuters will 'use busses on the street'. This is an anathema to the public transportation and wise energy use agenda.
In addition, buildings will be 8 stories high, dwarfing everything in the area. While this isn't the end-of-the-earth factor, it provides evidence of the underlying driver for this effort: tax base. Opposition to this is simply that anything over 6 stories is not communal. Look it up.
Finally, our elected representatives fight their own constituents at every turn. They are unresponsive, and pursue their own personal enrichment agenda, supported by a passive and apathetic majority - witness the most recent power-line burial debacle. The folks who recognize this are called 'vocal' - code word for 'unimportant but loud fringe'. All they want to do is put some more green space where that huge, ugle E building is. Wow, those crazy radicals.
Is core-rotten corruption so unheard of in DC? Is it not democratic to speak out?
At the end of the day, most of the Brookland resident welcome some sort of Development. The ‘vocal’ group is merely attempting to provide cogent, local input into this.
And one more thing to the short-attention span crowd here. Brookland was instrumental in stopping the Interstate project in the 1970s that was to put a four line overhead highway right through Brookland, effectively destroying it. Determined and radical opposition helped stop this project, and the money was, in part, used to fund the Metro. No sentiments like that exist today, merely a desire for some degree of temperance in the money grab department.
by Mike Overturf on Feb 17, 2009 3:17 pm • link • report
There was something like that in 1965.
A far better plan which appeared in 1966-71 was also defeated as per a myth that the money was needed for WMATA when in fact the money was there without stopping the much needed highway.
See within my blog under the tag North Central Freeway to see more.
by Douglas Willinger on Feb 17, 2009 6:14 pm • link • report
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