Typical rowhouses in Bloomingdale. Photo by Elvert Barnes on Flickr.

The neighborhoods north of Union Station are one of the last affordable, walkable areas close to downtown DC. Can an area change for the better while keeping prices low? That’s what DC’s trying to figure out with the Mid City East Small Area Plan and Livability Study.

As U Street to the west and NoMa to the east have boomed, the Mid City East neighborhoods of LeDroit Park, Bloomingdale, Truxton Circle, Sursum Corda, and Eckington remain a relatively affordable option. However, as million-dollar houses pop up, neighbors want to secure the diversity and affordability that lend the neighborhoods their character.

Since January, the DC Office of Planning (OP) and District Department of Transportation (DDOT) have been studying these neighborhoods and have released their draft recommendations for comment. The results here may provide lessons for what happens in similarly transitioning DC neighborhoods like Hill East or Anacostia, or Columbia Pike in Arlington.

The planning process kicked off in April. Through public meetings, informal office hours, and a collaboration website, neighbors have asked for a greater variety of housing and retail options, less concentration of social services, better use of vacant land and marginal land. They also want a re-think of the commuter arteries that divide the neighborhoods, Florida, Rhode Island, and New York avenues, and North Capitol Street.

Neighbors’ vision as captured by an illustrator during the April 27 kickoff meeting.

Planners recommend reopening streets, preserving single-family homes

OP and DDOT spent the summer developing their respective Small Area Plan and Livability Study around the neighbors’ input and released their draft recommendations September 26. OP’s Small Area Plan is also based on a detailed survey of the area’s built, natural, and human resources and their physical and economic connections to the rest of the District.

Based on these inputs, OP recommends focusing on North Capitol Street to take advantage of its emerging mix of creative, retail, and restaurant businesses and still-vacant lots in key locations. Among the recommendations are increases in density along the street, requirements that planned-unit developments include space for retail, and a deck over a sunken portion of the roadway between T Street and Rhode Island Avenue.

More broadly, OP would also like to open a handful of neighborhood streets to reconnect the street grid and solicit proposals to turn two vacant schools into an innovation campus.

To address neighbors’ other concerns, OP recommends organizing local groups to promote preservation, walkability, and the upkeep of local parks. Through these changes, OP would promote affordable housing by giving developers incentives to build more affordable units while maintaining the current stock. But OP also recommends strengthening the zoning code “to preserve the availability of the current supply of single family housing stock” in Mid City East, which by constraining supply would seem to increase prices.

DDOT’s analysis of crashes in the Mid City East area. The numbers in the yellow circles represent numbers of victims (injuries and deaths).

DDOT’s Livability Study, the other component of the joint effort, further took into account neighborhood travel patterns and the state of the existing streets. DDOT’s data show that crashes are no accident along the area’s major arterials, with hundreds of people injured and several killed over a three-year period. DDOT proposes to improve safety by removing slip lanes and widening median refuges at major intersections and lowering speed on neighborhood-serving streets through wider sidewalks, curb extensions, and mini-roundabouts at intersections.

DDOT’s proposal for stormwater management through pervious pavement in alleys (red) and tree box filters (green).

Both OP and DDOT are stressing sustainability after heavy rains overwhelmed sewers and flooded in recent years. Although a stormwater storage tunnel for the neighborhood is already in the works as part of the Clean Rivers Project, DDOT also proposes to install pervious pavement and other green infrastructure designed to keep water from entering the sewer system in the first place. As part of its most ambitious proposal, DDOT would install permeable paving in about half of Mid City East’s alleys and divert stormwater to sidewalk tree boxes on about a dozen streets.

Will the vision be realized?

Are OP’s and DDOT’s recommendations bold enough to keep the Mid City East neighborhoods on an inclusive, sustainable path that makes the most of nearby development while preserving local character? There are few large projects; instead, OP and DDOT want to make the best use of the area’s current assets and encourage neighbors to help themselves through better resident and business collaboration.

The streetscape improvements and the North Capitol Street deck, though welcome, would not change the balance between commuters and residents along the major arterials. Intersection improvements would help bridge the gaps across Florida, New York, and North Capitol, but without a clearer plan for pedestrian and bicycle circulation and connections to other neighborhoods, moving across the area will still be difficult.

What do you think about the draft recommendations? Will they help the area achieve an inclusive, sustainable future? Please leave your ideas in the comments or stop in at OP and DDOT’s office hours today between 6-7:30 pm at Big Bear Café at 1700 1st Street NW.