Planning team recommends residential, not commercial, Buzzard Point

DC’s Comprehensive Plan designates a number of areas for high-density commercial or mixed-use development: Downtown and the Golden Triangle, the Penn Quarter and NoMa, the Southwest Federal Center and Capitol Riverfront… and Buzzard Point.

Along with the Captol Riverfront, Buzzard Point is DC’s closest thing to a blank slate. Both provide opportunities to build a new mixed-use and high-density neighborhood adjacent to downtown. It contains a power plant that will eventually close, the Coast Guard Headquarters that will move to St. Elizabeth’s within ten years, and auto impound lots along with low-density, low-cost housing.

Two streetcar lines will eventually serve Buzzard Point. Fort McNair cuts the peninsula itself off from the Washington Channel to the west, but once existing uses clear the access to the Anacostia, the neighborhood could contain parks and waterfront cafes on the river. It’ll be a short walk from current and future Southwest Waterfront development to the northwest and the ballpark neighborhood to the east.

What should this neighborhood look like? Akridge is pitching their 9-acre, three-block 100 V property (annoying Flash) as ideal for a federal agency or defense contractor that needs a secure campus. But putting up a big fence to create another dead superblock is not the way to build a lively neighborhood. DC United may also be considering the site.

A Planning Assistance Team (PAT) from the American Planning Association spent a few days last week looking at the site and talking with community members. Southwest… The Little Quadrant That Could attended the meetings, and reports that the team recommended residential rather than commercial development for Buzzard Point.

They recommend having the DC government buy the Coast Guard property once it becomes vacant and turning it primarily into a park, marina, or other open space, and pushing for 100 V to become housing, perhaps for military families and federal employees.

To improve access to the site, the PAT suggests reroutting the planned streetcars. Current plans have them traveling along M Street from the east and west and turning south on 1st Street SW. The team instead suggests an alignment that leaves M Street between 1st St SE and 4th Street SW, traveling past the ballpark, along Potomac Avenue to Ft. McNair, then along P Street to Southwest Waterfront. They’d extend Potomac Avenue one block to the Ft. McNair gate and create some commercial development like stores to serve people at the fort. The Potomac Avenue and P Street route could also become a primary pedestrian connection to the adjacent neighborhoods.

Finally, the team cautions DDOT to take care when designing the future traffic oval at South Capitol and the Federick Douglass Bridge to ensure it is welcoming and safe for pedestrians rather than another forbidding zone with nothing but speeding cars.

The PAT is supposed to put their presentation online and later a final report. For those of you who are planners, please stop the annoying practice of showing a snazzy PowerPoint at a community meeting, then taking weeks to put it online. I know that there’s always something you want to fix or you’d like to create explanatory Web pages accompanying the presentation, but it makes it very hard for interested people to discuss your ideas. If the presentation is good enough to show the community, it’s good enough to put online.