Breakfast links: Debating density

by David Alpert • December 7, 2009 8:48 am

Bottom floor of H Street proposal.

Four stories? Professional offices?: ANC 6A opposes a 4-story building on a block of H Street mostly made up of 2-story buildings, and having ground-floor professional offices instead of retail. (DCmud)

Matt Yglesias argues that "taller" buildings and offices both add more customers, especially daytime ones, for existing and future retailers. Richard Layman points out that the developer's proposal not only would not put retail there but design a building that couldn't be easily converted to retail in the future.

A walkable Herndon?: Herndon is trying to cluster retail in its downtown area and increase the number of residential units there. This would be a huge improvement over the existing strips of auto dealerships and restaurants surrounded by huge parking lots. Many residents agree, though some want lower density and the story quotes Councilmember Connie Hutchinson advocating for wider streets and fretting about traffic from new residents. (Herndon Connection, Joshua D.)

Good questions: It looks like many of you submitted questions for Metro chief planner Nat Bottigheimer's bus chat on Friday, since they were all really important policy questions facing Metro. Nat addressed devoting road space to buses, bus stop spacing, bus bunching, NextBus accuracy, data openness, the D6, the 5A, the Q2 and the 16A/D, bus widths, and more. (WMATA)

I-66 metering now two-way: Virginia will now use ramp metering on I-66 in both directions during rush hour. The road's traffic is no longer primarily one-way; "reverse" traffic is only about 10% lower than in the traditional direction. They may expand the ramp meters to weekends as well. (Examiner, Michael P)

More water for bank deserts?: The FDIC is considering increasing the credit banks get under the Community Reinvestment Act for certain "basic financial services" to try to reduce "bank deserts." (Post, Chuck Coleman)

Locking the canal again: NPS is restoring the C&O Canal's locks for mule-powered barge rides to once again ply its length. Barging on Europe's canals (in motorized barges, not mule-drawn ones) is a major tourist activity; could the canal be even more popular with more than just mule-drawn historic interpretive tours?

Free car with condo: The Savoy Court condo in Congress Heights is giving away a Smart Car with the purchase of a condo. Fortunately, they are also offering a $12,000 cash-out for those who don't need or want it. They say potential buyers like the building but it's too far from Metro (though a bus stops right in front). (City Paper, JTS)

Have a tip for the links? Submit it here.

25 comments

Tags: ANC, banks, bus bunching, bus priority, buses, C&O Canal, cars, Congress Heights, data openness, DC, development, east of the river, Fairfax, H Street, Herndon, I-66, links, Nat Bottigheimer, NPS, poverty, retail, stop spacing, TDM, traffic, VDOT, Virginia, walkability, WMATA

David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington. He has had a lifelong interest in great cities and great communities. 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
Add a comment »

How about we use the C+O again for actual shipping? It would be slow, but really cheap and really energy efficient.

by Cavan on Dec 7, 2009 9:19 am

Downtown Herndon is already walkable. It's because it used to have a railroad station.

by Michael Perkins on Dec 7, 2009 9:25 am

That H street project raises three key issues -

Density/height: As always, density and height are not the same thing. Either way, this part of the city could easily stand to have more of both, and objections to the project on these grounds ring awfully hollow

Use: H Street is 'up and coming' but it's not there yet, and if there's a market for professional offices, I see nothing wrong with letting the market fill that niche. Businesses come and go, but buildings last a long time, and trying to proscribe the exact type of use via the zoning code is difficult.

Design: As Richard Layman notes, there's absolutely no reason this building shouldn't be designed with retail standards for the 1st floor. As noted above, businesses come and go, but buildings last a long time - and having that versatility in a building's potential uses is crucial. Designing a retail 1st floor should in no way encumber the current proposed use of a professional office, but will open up many more doors in future years.

by Alex B. on Dec 7, 2009 9:28 am

I thought the ramp meters were already used on weekends when traffic flow gets heavy.

by ah on Dec 7, 2009 9:29 am

The Purple Line can't come fast enough. In the meantime Metro should increase service on the J2 from every 20 minutes to every 15. Every time I take it (about 3-4 times a week) it's overcrowded.

Do some BRT now ahead of the purple line and increase your ridership.

by silver spring rez on Dec 7, 2009 9:30 am

The C & O Canal WOULD be used for shipping .... Tourists ..
Plus, an added benefit would be for them to be able to bring their bikes --- then continue on the allegheny Highlands Trail at Cumberland on up into PA towards Pittsburgh .... I know Cumberland is trying to re-water a portion of the canal at this end ... who knows.... But the Canal Basin where the boats were stored and turned around no longer exists ... It is now a part of the Canal Place Heritage Area, the pylons for the crosstown bridge(I - 68), the Atlantic Broadband building (cable TV), and the parking lot for the Western Maryland Station Center.....any alternatives?

by coneyraven on Dec 7, 2009 10:47 am

Re: the bus chat, I can't say I was satisfied with the NextBus accuracy answer. Nate's position was that they're striving to meet their 95% on-time accuracy goal and that they're still working on training for drivers, who apparently manage to forget about turning on their NextBus gadget every now and then.

As a policy matter, the 95% goal is a worthy one for actual bus arrivals. But NextBus helps a rider manage the 5%+ instances where the bus isn't on-time. For the system as a whole to work, the real-time tracking has to work 100%.

The training excuse doesn't wash either - my observation is that more buses are missing now than I'd see when the system was introduced in July.

Further, the very nature of the system should allow for WMATA to track how many buses are not running or just off-the-grid in real time, all the time. Of course, if they opened up the data, there are many who might just write them the program to do this analysis.

by HM on Dec 7, 2009 10:51 am

@ Cavan: The C&O Canal was actually closed in Great Falls Park MD this Summer. I can't find the spot on Google Maps, but somewhere along the second Island, the actual tow-path had collapsed and the pathw as diverted along the other side of the canal.

by Jasper on Dec 7, 2009 10:54 am

I read that article on the C & O Canal and it didn't seem to say that they are planning on restoring the whole canal, am I wrong?

If they really want to restore the whole thing, it's a humongous project. There are huge sections out towards Harpers Ferry that are nothing more than a slightly depressed path through the woods. It's more built up at Harpers Ferry, but it's still completely dry. Maybe all it takes is to open up a dam or two, but I kind of doubt it's that simple.

by Reid on Dec 7, 2009 11:03 am

Actualy canals are not that cheep to maintain. The canal closed ultimatly becasue they could not afford to maintain it.

by Matt R on Dec 7, 2009 11:08 am

The bus chat had an interesting statistic that buses are 1% of vehicles on 16th Street but carry 30% of the travelers.

It seems clear from that stat that buses need dedicated space.

by himle on Dec 7, 2009 11:32 am

I had previously read all the DCMud, Yglesias and Layman articles on the proposed H Street NE four-story development. I don't feel I fully understand the motivation behind the developer not wanting to design the first floor to the retail standards. I feel something big must be missing because the "it'll cost more" isn't an overly sympathetic angle.

If the developer increases the ground floor height by four feet to the retail standards will that push the total height of the project above some arbitrary cutoff point and jeopardize his chance to have the fourth floor? Is that the source of his reluctance?

by FourthandEye on Dec 7, 2009 11:33 am

@ah

I was on 66 last night at 9:15 and I was metered in (Eastbound entered at Rt 7).

I also take 66 on occasion for my reverse commute, its metered at Fairfax drive seemingly most days after 7:15 AM. It was like that back in July/August (the metering started later though). This article doesn't seem to point to anything different.

by Kiran on Dec 7, 2009 12:01 pm

To clarify I meant the metering started later in time (closer to 7:30 rather than the current 7 or 7:15).

by Kiran on Dec 7, 2009 12:06 pm

I work at the corner of Fairfax Dr. and Glebe Rd., right where the onramp for I-66 westbound is. It's horrible in the mornings.

Maybe VDOT should consider HOV restrictions in the reverse commute too.

by Tim on Dec 7, 2009 12:17 pm

@Micheal Perkins.

There are a couple of blocks that are really walkable. But they want to expand this instead of having a bunch of disjointed retail joints surrounding a small walkable area.

by Joshua Davis on Dec 7, 2009 12:24 pm

ah/Kiran: about a month ago I hopped on EB 66 from Route 7 on a mid-day Saturday and the ramp meters were on...

by Froggie on Dec 7, 2009 12:43 pm

Free car with your condo? Forget that -- Toronto city council is forcing new condo builders to provide buyers with a year's worth of free public transit. word up!

by Peter Smith on Dec 7, 2009 3:09 pm

@ Matt R ,
You are partially right .... when the Canal went bankrupt, the railroad bought it to prevent a competing company from acquiring it .... they ran both the RR and the Canal, then after a flood, it was shut down .... up here at the western terminus, most of the basin was filled in during a flood control project back in the 50's ... As they were building the Shops at Canal Place, several canal boats were discovered during excavations.

by coneyraven on Dec 7, 2009 3:13 pm

@Peter Smith

Yea! Deadweight loss!

by M on Dec 7, 2009 3:53 pm

@ Tim,

A third lane from/for that on-ramp out to the Dulles Toll Road split would solve most of this back up issue. I am not pro-highway either. But I suppose I am willing to wait and see what the silver line does to congestion first.

by NikolasM on Dec 7, 2009 4:02 pm

here's a google map of walking directions from the condos to the Congress Heights Metro Station. says it's about 1.1 miles.

that distance is, in my opinion, very walkable -- but only assuming it is safe and comfortable. safe not just from cars, but from people. i can imagine a 15-20 minute walk for women is about 15-20 minutes of potential harassment -- not a big selling point for the condos, i'm sure.

it'd be a pretty quick bike ride. I would be curious if we built all of our Metro stations, or retrofitted them, as multi-modal transit hubs, if it'd change folks' minds about the potential for walking or biking to the station. if we had bike lanes for 3 miles from the station on every major road/street in every direction, and really did something about catering to walkers and bikers - like provide high-quality bike parking, etc. right now, i'm guessing it doesn't even cross folks' minds that riding a bike is an option (or my new fave, kick scooters, like Raazors).

i'd say the same is probably true about the possibility of taking the bus -- it's not really on folks' radars. but, a year's metro pass might open up some minds about the bus.

by Peter Smith on Dec 7, 2009 4:20 pm

There needs to be some corrections to the story as reported in DCMUD.

1/. There has not been a subsequent meeting with I. S. Enterprises, though the Economic Development and Zoning committee, at the request of the developer, scheduled a special meeting specifically to hear from them.

2/. The matter is before the Board of Zoning Adjustment, not the Zoning Commission.

3/. The H Street Overlay requires 14 foot high ceilings to make the space usable for retail in any future use of the site, and to retain a visual continuity with the commercial facades of the rest of the block and the street as a whole.

4/. The permissible FAR in the H Street Overlay is 1.0 for non-residential use, not 3.0; and the underlying FAR is 1.5 for non-residential use in this C-2-A zone.

The H Street Overlay requires that new and rehabilitated structures Â“be consistent with the historic character and scale of the Overlay DistrictÂ” Â– this proposed structure is not.

The developer seeks the extra building height because of the proposed use of the upper floors as office/professional space. Unfortunately the mandatory stairs and exit aisles appear to take about 30% of each floorÂ’s space Â– one of the reasons that the Overlay requires residential use on the upper floors.

The proposed office/professional , as opposed to retail, use is something I will support as an ANC 6A Commissioner. It adds needed commercial diversity to the street.

I know the ANC hopes to work with the developer to fill this vacant lot.

David Holmes
Commissioner, ANC 6A03
dw (dot) holmes (at) yahoo.com

by David H on Dec 7, 2009 4:24 pm

Peter: I don't think it's so much a matter of how to bike to the Metro stations as it is what to do with your bike once you're there. Often, bike parking is insufficient or not very safe. And Metro's archaic rules regarding bringing bikes on trains, while understandable during rush hour, are the single biggest reason why I don't bike to Metro.

by Froggie on Dec 7, 2009 5:12 pm

Density, allowing increased building heights, and ground floor or more retail are all important considerations that must be encouraged in DC. We need more density, more retail options, more taxpayers, more population. The strength of the new H street revival is due primarily to the non-interference of NIMBY areas- and allowing them to intervene and promote their car-oriented vision of a future DC is destructive and will drive new and dynamic businesses away from H street and into the suburbs.

by w on Dec 8, 2009 12:51 pm