Posts about Logan Circle

Thse two maps show DC neighborhood density at the time of the 2000 census (top) and 2010 census (bottom). I made the 2000 map using census.gov sometime after the 2000 census. Michael Rodriguez created the bottom map just recently. Unfortunately the two maps use different scales, but they're still informative.

In 2000 the densest census tract in the DC region was in northern Columbia Heights, between Spring Road and Newton Street. It had 57,317 people per square mile (ppsm). In 2010 that tract is up to 59,209 ppsm, but that's only good enough for 2nd place in DC, and 3rd regionally.

The densest tract is now southern Logan Circle, between Rhode Island and Massachusetts Avenues. It's boomed and is now a whopping 67,149 ppsm.

The rest of central Northwest, from Mount Pleasant down to Massachusetts Avenue, varies from around 30,000-50,000 ppsm. Capitol Hill is in the 20,000-30,000 ppsm range.

Meanwhile, in Alexandria, the tract at the corner of I-395 and Seminary Road is up to 59,886 ppsm, 2nd densest in the region after Logan Circle. There hasn't been any new development in that tract since 2000, but the suburban-style apartment towers in it may have fewer singles and more families, which could account for the increase. Crystal City is 45,448 ppsm, and Ballston is 43,788 ppsm.

Suburban Maryland's densest tract is in Langley Park, at 49,354 ppsm. Downtown Silver Spring is 34,816 ppsm, and downtown Bethesda is around 11,000 ppsm.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

Named for Smith's father, Henry Smith, the restaurant is famous for its stick-to-your-bones comfort food and sweet potato pie, which was profiled by The Washington Post in 2007. "Mr. Henry can't cook, so he had to have other people cook," Smith said. Her brothers own the store's 2 other locations, at the intersection of 4th and K Streets NW and in Oxon Hill, MD.

While she said that the new restaurants are competition for her business, Smith sees the changes on U Street as a good thing. "The neighborhood is more diverse now," Smith said. "You're dealing with all walks of life." She has been able to rely on a steady flow of regulars, who come to 17th and U from all over the DC area for her smothered pork chops, fried chicken and ribs. "You don't forget where home is," she said.

One of those customers is Darren Snell, 47. Snell has been coming to Henry's for 21 years, and said that not much has changed. "The meatloaf still tastes the same today as it did back then," he said.

Smith said that gentrification has made the area more diverse, which bodes well for Henry's prospects going forward. "The regulars are still coming and the newcomers are coming too," he said. "[Henry's] isn't going anywhere."

In Logan Circle, Chong Hu, 58, has no plans to close her business, The Carry Out Deli. Like Smith, Hu said that loyal customers have helped her stay afloat for the last 27 years.

Lily Pilgrim eats breakfast at The Carry Out Deli in November 2012. Photo by the author.

Lily Pilgrim, 84, lives two blocks away from the Deli and stops by 2-3 times per week. "[It's] much better and cheaper than any other restaurant on P Street," she said.

Pilgrim is bullish on the Deli's chances of staying open. "[Hu] has the same customers over the years. They go out of their way to come here. It should be here for a long, long time," she said.

Hu sees both the pros and cons of development. As office buildings on 14th were replaced by condos in the last few years, the lunch crowd has died down dramatically, cutting into her profits. "My business is real slow," Hu said. "Now everyone goes to coffee shop."

But, on the positive side, there are "no more drunk people," Hu said. In the 1980s, "every day I called the police," she said. For her part, Pilgrim, who has lived in the area for 30 years, said that she used to avoid walking down 14th Street because it was too dangerous.

Brendon Miller, public affairs director for the city's department of small and local business development, said that new development does not automatically result in an outward flow of small businesses. "You've got small businesses that come in and you've got small businesses that depart. It's cyclical," he said.

And some small businesses, like Henry's and the Carry Out Deli, have reached "institution status," which helps them stay open in a changing landscape. "The business owners take the time to identify with the folks coming through the door, and to sort of cultivate repeat customers," he said. "It's got to attract people from the neighborhood."

The former Yum's Carry Out on 14th Street NW.

A few carry outs have left the area for various reasons. Yum's, which used to sit at the intersection of 14th and Wallach streets NW, was recently demolished to make way for an upscale apartment building. It will reopen soon in Pleasant Plains, a neighborhood east of Columbia Heights. And the Mid City Deli, which neighbors The Carry Out Deli, closed its doors in June 2012.

City health inspectors have played a role in shutting down some carry outs, at least temporarily. Before becoming a hole in the ground, Yum's was cited for two health hazards and closed for a day. And in April, the Mid City Deli was closed twice for a variety of health hazards.

China Dragon Carry Out, which sits at the intersection of 11th and P Streets NW, was recently closed "for gross unsanitary conditions, operating without a license, [having] an improperly trained manager and failure to minimize insects."

Alicia Davis-Coates, 39, said that she looks for information about health inspection-related closings in the newspaper when deciding where to eat. Her carry out-of-choice is Yum's II on 14th Street. A resident of Fort Totten, Davis-Coates said that Yum's II is worth the drive.

"The food is fresher. You can actually see them make it," she said on a recent Friday night, take out bag in hand. "And they've never been shut down."

While demanding unlimited free parking isn't really fair, the Logan Circle churches have some reasonable gripes. A few months ago, Councilmember Jack Evans suggested to the Logan Circle ANC that they try this parking change; the ANC approved the plan and DDOT put it into place. The churches, evidently, weren't part of that discussion.

This is a simple matter of allocating a scarce resource. Before, the policy on Sundays was to allocate the spaces to whomever showed up first or circled around long enough to find a space. Now, it privileges residents at the expense of churchgoers or shoppers or others. Maybe that's a better policy, maybe not, but we all need to acknowledge that it's a tradeoff; when one group gets more privileges, another loses them.

Pricing has to be part of the equation

One participant, Emily from Adams Morgan, pointed out that the current political system favors residents, though not for any sound policy reason. She was one of the handful of people who pushed for a market-based pricing approach. There's still a way to go to sell this to the church folks, however; many were grumbling and shaking her heads when Emily, or anyone else, suggested that a solution to church parking is to stop having it all be free.

But that's ultimately what we have to do. Richard Layman pointed the finger for parking problems at the way most District parking policies assume parking should be free. Thus, the argument always revolves around whether to give one group free parking or another, rather than to use tools like pricing to manage demand.

He took aim at the sentiment that because people pay for RPP stickers, they have already paid their share. "You think you're paying for parking, but you're not paying squat," he said. Angelo Rao, DDOT's parking manager, also suggested RPP rates are too low, noting that the current sticker costs only 9.6¢ per day.

Several people, including outgoing southern Woodley Park ANC commissioner Anne-Marie Bairstow, new northern Woodley Park ANC commissioner Gwendolyn Bole, and Friendship Heights ANC commissioner Tom Quinn, all asked for smaller RPP zones.

Bairstow said the current visitor pass program, which automatically mailed out passes to every household, is flawed; she has neighbors who have driveways and garages and still got the passes, so they just gave them to friends from outside Ward 3 or even outside the District, who then use Woodley Park as a park-and-ride.

What's the answer for churches?

Smaller zones and higher RPP prices are policies that should clearly be part of any solution; the only obstacle is politics. The church issue is trickier. I've been pushing for a system where residents buy annual passes, as they do today but at a higher rate, for their immediate areas, and anyone else can buy daily passes, maybe at varying rates based on public policy.

Instead of the current visitor placards, give each resident a "booklet" of free day passes to use for contractors, nannies, dinner parties, or whatever else, and let them purchase more booklets if needed. For a church that really contributes meaningfully to its community (many do, some don't), we could give the church even more booklets, enough to provide for a large proportion of their parking need, but perhaps not all.

There needs to be some incentive for the churches and neighborhoods to work together in a partnership. Churchgoers can reduce their parking load to some extent, such as by organizing carpools. In some neighborhoods, there are empty office garages; if enough people were willing to pay to park in them, they could open on Sundays. But the church community has to be willing to figure out how to accommodate some of their demand in other ways.

The booklets could form an incentive to do this, if DDOT could manage the total numbers of booklets and passes it gives out so that the total demand doesn't vastly exceed supply. Or, economists might say, just give the church money and let them buy however many booklets they need, though that could be legally tricky.

The summit did bring this fundamental tension into clear relief. Lots of people want the spaces. There aren't enough. Someone has to divvy them up in some way. A program of letting anyone park for free doesn't work, and the complex patchwork of restrictions and limits that DDOT has been moving toward doesn't really work either.

Also tomorrow is a Humanitini panel on gentrification. Washington City Paper editor Mike Madden is moderating the panel, which includes Rauzia Ally and Maria Casarella, two architects who serve on the Historic Preservation Review Board; Jonathan O'Connell of the Washington Business Journal; and former Mayor "that's an old movie" Tony Williams. Sign up to attend here.

Next week are 2 of DDOT's Parking Think Tanks, Wednesday evening 10/3 at the West End Library (large conference room) and Thursday 10/4 at Wilson High School (cafeteria). Both are 6:30-8:30. If you can't make one of them, don't forget to fill out the online survey, which asks about both car and bicycle parking issues.

Also next Thursday, October 4, the Office of Planning is having a Citizen Planner Forum to talk about how planning projects can engage more residents. They held 4 focus groups with residents about ways planning processes can work better, and will talk about the results, new tools to involve the public and more. The event is 6:30 to 8 at the District Architecture Center, 421 7th Street, NW.

Finally, there's a pretty important hearing for those of you who can make a 1 pm DC Council hearing on a Friday. Zoning update opponents convinced former Chairman Kwame Brown to hold an oversight hearing on the zoning update, even though the topic already came up during the annual oversight hearings for the Office of Planning each of the last 4 years. Phil Mendelson kept it on the agenda when he became chairman. It was originally supposed to be today, but since it's Yom Kippur, they moved it to Friday, October 5.

Zoning update head opponent Linda Schmitt sent a predictably provocational and misinforming email, claiming that a process over 4 years with hundreds of community meetings (and more to come) is about "high-handed decisions by city officials ... who make every effort to play "hide the ball," deflecting questions, maligning civic advice and avoiding
stating their intentions." To sign up to testify, email cgordon@dccouncil.us with your name, address, and phone number.

Post-war DC was a rough place. According to one government official interviewed in the Post in 1902, "Washington passed through its period of lawlessness and disorder fully as bad, if not worse, than that which prevailed in Cripple Creek, Colo. or Tombstone, Ariz."

Small fields of corn and cabbage gardens were scattered about everywhere, many of them within a stone's throw of the Capitol, while cows had the run of the town from Georgetown to Anacostia Creek, grazing on the pavements, breaking into front yards, disturbing the slumbers of the citizens by their incessant lowing, and making themselves generally obnoxious. I recollect there use to be a brick yard at Ninth and O streets northwest and not far distant was a cornfield inclosed [sic] by a stake and rider fence. ...

The war had ended, leaving stranded in this city a vast horde of enfranchised slaves, discharged soldiers, and a cloud of riffraff, bummers, and camp followers... and their arrival soon made this city one of the most disorderly places in America. Fights, murders, stabbing, and shooting scrapes were of daily occurrence.

The neighborhoods with the most infamous conditions had nicknames that were never shown on any official plat. But the Washington Post put together the amazing map above on its 50th anniversary, to show the neighborhoods that existed when the paper was founded in 1877.

Hell's Bottom, a former "contraband camp" extending irregularly from 7th to 14th Streets NW, and from O Street to the Boundary (now Florida Avenue), was one of the most notorious sections of the city. Living conditions were poor and crime was high.

According to a Post article from 1897, some Hell's Bottom residents lived in shanties the size of a "hall-room," with roofs so low that an average person could only stand upright on one side. These homes, which could house up to 3 families, were of "the rudest possible construction, few having any sashes in the window aperture, a board shutter closing out the cold winds, light and ventilation together, when shut. The only salvation from suffocation lies in the gaping cracks existing round the doors and windows, without which many a family would doubtless be found dead in the morning of cold nights."

Keith Sutherland, an old Hell's Bottom inhabitant, said this about the neighborhood in a 1900 Post article:

"Money was scarce and whisky [sic] was cheap—a certain sort of whisky—and the combination resulted in giving the place the name which it held for so many years. The police force was small. There was no police court, and the magistrates before whom offenders were brought rarely fixed the penalty at more than $2. Crime and lawlessness grew terribly, and a man had to fight, whenever he went into the "Bottom."

Murder Bay: The area east of the White House across Pennsylvania Avenue was known for its brothels, gambling, and crime. It was sometimes called "Hooker's Department," after Civil War General Joseph Hooker, who hoped to concentrate the city's brothels in the area.

The "red light district" known as Murder Bay at the corner of C Street NW and 13th Street NW, April 1912. Griffin Veatch, a "night messenger" or child laborer who directed customers to brothels, is leaning against the tree at left. Photograph by Lewis W. Hine for the US National Child Labor Committee.

White Chapel: A dirty alley between 24th and 25th Streets, and M and N Streets, NW. During the 1880s, there was almost constant warfare between the residents of this area and the police.

Pipetown: East of 11th Street SE to the Anacostia River, this neighborhood was made famous by Pipetown Sandy (1905), John Philip Sousa's semi-autobiographical young adult novel about the neighborhood where he grew up. One Post article described Pipetown as "a community of extensive commons, of ash dumps, of tumble-down houses and shacks of nondescript architecture, a place where goats browsed among the tomato cans and the travelling fair pitched its weather-beaten tent."

Bloodfield: This neighborhood was "a vague name for the entire region around the James Creek Canal" (in today's SW near the Navy Yard), and one of the most dangerous and notorious slums in the city. Arrest attempts by police (who would only walk their beat in pairs) resulted in injury or worse to the officer or the resident:

Policeman Muller was attracted to the Shears house by the shooting, and when he arrived there he found Shears lying dead on the floor of the kitchen having been shot in the left temple. Curry was covered with blood from head to foot and gave evidence of having had a terrible struggle. His badge was smeared with blood and his coat was saturated with it.

Brothels, illegal speakeasies, and tough characters filled the neighborhood:

A steel corset stay, pointed and sharpened into a dangerous weapon, was used in an affray early yesterday evening...

Sergt. Daley, of the Fourth Precinct, was abroad in Bloodfield with his raiding clothes on last night, and, as a result, a number of alleged disorderly houses were closed up.

As the city and police force grew, the neighborhood calmed, but it retained its name up to the '20s.

Cowtown: A neighborhood located north of Hell's Bottom and west of 7th Street, NW.

The Island: This swath of land south of the Mall was so called because the canal cut it off from the rest of mainland DC.

I'd much rather live in Hell's Bottom than Logan Circle, wouldn't you?

Cross-posted at The Location.

Now, Jack Evans seems to have jumped on the bandwagon. According to ANC commissioner Nick Barron,

Evans is proposing a pilot program for at least part of ANC 2F that would make one side of a street for Residential Parking Permit (RPP) holders only for at least six days a week. The opposite side of the street would remain unchanged, with two-hour time limits except for RPP holders. I believe street sweeping rules will stay in effect.

Logan residents who would want to exempt their street from the pilot program would have an opportunity to do so, provided they supply a petition signed by a majority of residents on that block stating they do not want their block participating in the program. There would likely be a time limit on when such a petition needs to be provided.

If the program is successful in ANC 2F, it could be rolled out District wide.

Currently, all DC residential parking permits apply for an entire zone, which almost always corresponds with ward borders. There's no good reason for the zones to be so large; many other cities have smaller zones, and ward boundaries are fairly arbitrary, given that they need to move every 10 years to reflect changing populations even though the boundaries of communities don't shift.

Logan Circle is (now) at one edge of Ward 2. If this program also applies to all of Ward 2, it will amount to a major parking giveaway to people in Georgetown, Kalorama, Dupont and Foggy Bottom, at the expense of drivers living north of U Street (which is in Ward 1), Columbia Heights (also 1), Shaw (which is now in Ward 6), Mount Vernon Triangle (also 6), Bloomingdale and Truxton Circle (5), and other neighborhoods which are closer to Logan Circle than Georgetown and Kalorama.

In fact, Georgetown and Kalorama residents can already drive to Logan Circle and park near the Green Line all day with their Ward 2 stickers. This policy could exacerbate the practice as well.

Proposed post-redistricting ANCs for Ward 2. Image from the DC Office of Planning.

The stated purpose of the RPP system is to help residents park relatively near their homes, not to give residents of certain neighborhoods special priority to park near a special set of other neighborhoods. If this program is to actually advance such a goal, it must apply to a smaller zone.

The new ANC 2F could form an appropriate such zone. Give new "Zone 2, subzone F" RPP stickers to drivers living in the 2F boundaries. Limit the one side of each street to those holding these stickers. To avoid hurting people who live right next to the boundary, DC could also give the permits to anyone living, say, within 500 feet of the zone boundary.

This policy may also reserve spaces for residents so well that the spaces aren't filling up on all blocks. In that case, as I suggested for H Street, the legislation should let DDOT offer the extra space to non-residents for a fee, and dedicate some of the money to local improvements that help local businesses.

That's cheap and easy to do with the new pay-by-phone systems. All DDOT would have to do is put up signs that say, "Reserved for holders of 2F permits; others pay by calling 800-xxx-xxxx or at parkmobile.com." The rates for this space should be high enough that it doesn't just fill up the blocks and make space too scarce for residents once again.

Finally, why 6 days a week? Presumably this excludes Sundays. But Sunday is one of the days parking is in demand in Logan Circle. Given all the churches, it's actually the day of most demand, but there's also demand to park for the restaurants and shops as well. If the policy is going into effect, it should apply all the time, as the similar restrictions in other neighborhoods do.

ANC 2F is hearing about Evans' plan at its meeting tonight, which starts at 7 pm at the Washington Plaza Hotel on Thomas Circle.

Many drivable-fringe house prices are now below replacement value, meaning the land under the house has no value and the sticks and bricks are worth less than they would cost to replace. This means there is no financial incentive to maintain the house; the next dollar invested will not be recouped upon resale. Many of these houses will be converted to rentals, which are rarely as well maintained as owner-occupied housing. Add the fact that the houses were built with cheap materials and methods to begin with, and you see why many fringe suburbs are turning into slums, with abandoned housing and rising crime.

I don't know much about Capitol Hill or Virginia Highland, but I do know something about Logan Circle and German Village. One very important (and I think non-trivial) quality that they share is that they both have a high quality, durable housing stock that has held up very well, given its age, all things considered.

When I think about what made cookie cutter houses in suburbs appealing to people, in addition to the square footage and the yards and the school systems, I really suspect that one of the things that people were drawn to was the absolute "newness" of everything. People love having new stuff—new appliances, new counter tops, new floors. When stuff is brand new, it's almost guaranteed to be in style. When it's brand new, it's not in need of immediate repair. There's a lot to like about brand new.

The problem though, as Leinberger notes, is that fringe suburbs were literally built on the cheap. They may have looked nice initially, but the drywall they used to throw up houses in Prince William County is not the same as the brick they used to build rowhouses in Dupont Circle. At the time, the appliances they put into new suburban homes might have been nicer than what was in old urban houses, but appliances can easily be replaced, structures can't.

Around DC, a lot of old rowhouses have gone through the process of renovation—some have gone through many renovations since originally being built. The interiors have been gutted, redesigned and rebuilt, but the physical structure is generally the same. These houses were built to last, I can only imagine what a cookie-cutter house on the suburban fringe might look like in 100 years. The rowhouses in DC that have been re-built look beautiful, easily as nice as what got built in the suburbs during the boom.

At one point, the suburbs looked so much "nicer" because that's where the building was—that's where stuff was brand new. That's not necessarily true anymore. Now, some of the newest, shiniest stuff is right in the heart of the city.

I was reminded of this when I saw this article in the Plain Dealer last month. The author makes the case that there's more demand for housing in downtown Cleveland than the market can keep up with. A lot of folks will use this as evidence of a downtown renaissance, I think it says that people are no longer afraid to live downtown (something that was true in Cleveland for many years) but I also suspect it has something to do with the quality of downtown housing.

While it seems true that downtown Cleveland is doing well, many other urban Cleveland neighborhoods are not doing well at all. The apartments and condos popping up downtown are all brand new, beautifully renovated spaces. The houses in Cleveland's urban neighborhoods, on the other hand, are much lower quality. Compared to Washington's rowhouses, they're downright terrible. I suspect that many of Cleveland's houses are also below replacement value. The only hope is to knock them down, and that's exactly what's happening.

When I studied home prices in Cleveland a few years ago (pdf), I found that while downtown was in fact the neighborhood in the city with the highest prices, there was nevertheless a positive relationship between home price and the distance from the city center. In other words, the farther from downtown you went, the higher the price of homes. It was "drive til you qualify" in reverse.

I think the future of suburbs as Leinberger imagines them is going to look like some of Cleveland's neighborhoods today - Hough, Mount Pleasant, Cudell—places with generally poor housing stock that isn't worth fixing up. Places where crime is frustratingly high, where most of the housing that isn't vacant is renter-occupied, and where few are willing to make any investment.

Wayne Senville, Planning Commissioners Journal.

Is it true to say that millennials and baby boomers have a taste for urban living? I think there is good evidence to support that theory, but it's clearly the case that they don't want to live just anywhere in the city. Nobody wants to live in a slum, and the type of homes that people want has to meet at least a certain threshold of quality.

In high-cost cities, like DC, that's not so hard to pull off. A $200,000 rowhouse rehab might be well worth the cost when you can turn around and sell the house for half a million or more. A similar job simply doesn't make any financial sense in a city like Cleveland. In fact, the Plain Dealer article above specifically says that developers aren't building in downtown Cleveland without government incentives because the rents are too low to support the kind of investment they need to make.

I think the more realistic assessment of suburbs and cities is that some suburbs will see a precipitous decline, some urban neighborhoods will experience a renaissance, and the degree to which each happens will be highly dependent on local market conditions. In other words, it will happen, but it won't be as clear cut as the magazine articles might lead you to believe.

Crossposted on Extraordinary Observations.