Posts about Poplar Point
Development
Development remains elusive at Poplar Point
"Don't eat any dirt. And when you get home take a shower," warned park ranger Jim Rosenstock as he led a dozen residents on a walking tour of Poplar Point this weekend. Despite a flurry of public meetings and development plans in recent years, Poplar Point remains unrealized.
View of Poplar Point from Anacostia Metro. Photo by the author.
Changes in ownership, pollution, and lack of a consistent vision have hampered efforts to do much with the site. Meanwhile, dumping of toxic materials has contaminated the soil with petroleum, arsenic, pesticides, and other hydrocarbons.
Poplar Point was once a spit jutting into the Eastern Branch that was covered in Poplar trees. Today the term roughly refers to the swath of 110 acres within Anacostia Park that is bounded by I-295 and Howard Road to the south, the Anacostia River to the north, the South Capitol Street Bridge to the west, and 11th Street Bridge to the east. Metro's Green Line runs about 40 feet beneath the point.
According to the legislation that created Anacostia Park, Poplar Point has historically been planned to be developed as a public park, but that idea has never materialized. Over a period of several decades, ownership of the site has repeatedly been passed between various government agencies, none of whom seem to know what to do with it.
The site hosted the Navy from World War II until the 1960s, and a collection of greenhouses and nurseries operated by the Architect of the Capitol from 1927 to 1993. In fact, many of DC's street trees come from Poplar Point.
So far, all the major development proposals have fallen through. The most recent was a proposal to build a dedicated soccer stadium for DC United. However, there has been some limited activity there this year, in the form of a new asphalt trail parallel to Anacostia Drive SE. The path can accommodate joggers and bikers, where previously they had to share the road with vehicular traffic.
Photo by the author.
Currently owned by the federal government, a transfer of Poplar Point to DC has been in the works for years. Before it can happen, the environmental assessment must be completed. Apparently that began in 1997 and is still ongoing.
At a book talk earlier this week with Councilmember Wells and Office of Planning's Harriet Tregoning, an east of the river resident remarked, "That river is wide and it's deep; when I read about Manhattan I kept thinking about downtown and northwest, and when I think of Ward 7 and Ward 8, I think of Detroit."
Out of sight and out of mind to most of the District, development plans for Poplar Point have been a disappointment.
Sustainability
An environmentalist says Gray is greener
The author is Conservation Chair of the DC Sierra Club and a member of the Board of Directors of the national Sierra Club.From an environmental standpoint, the decision between Adrian Fenty and Vincent Gray is not difficult. Fenty has repeatedly disappointed with his budget, personnel, and regulatory decisions, while Gray has been the greenest Chairman ever.
Photo by M.V. Jantzen on Flickr.
Four years ago, Tony Williams was stepping down after eight years as the District's first pro-environment Mayor. He had stood with us in our various park-protection battles (including the defense of Klingle Valley and Anacostia National Park), supported Dan Tangherlini's visionary plans for new streetcar lines, and put Jim Sebastian in charge of the new Bicycle Office and given him an ambitious agenda.
He commissioned the Office of Planning to develop a terrific new development and preservation plan for the Anacostia, and signed several cutting-edge laws passed by the DC Council, including the Tree Bill, the hazmat train prohibition, and the Green Buildings law. He had worked with the Council to create a new Department of the Environment (DDOE).
But in September of 2006 the Sierra Club couldn't decide whom to endorse for Mayor. Neither Linda Cropp nor Adrian Fenty had been an ally previously. Both were big fans of paving Klingle Valley, and neither seemed likely to support the ever-greener ambitions of the Council. For the first time in many cycles, we made no mayoral endorsement. Gray won our endorsement for Chairman over green Kathy Patterson, to the surprise of many. He was simply stronger on the issues.
Since his election in 2006, Fenty has done a good job of continuing Williams' bicycle and streetcar initiatives, both of which are now more than eight years old. But by every other measure, the Mayor has been a great disappointment to environmentalists.
On Anacostia Park, within his first six months in office Fenty dismantled the Anacostia Waterfront Development Corporation, which had been charged with implementing the vision articulated in the Anacostia Framework Plan of 2003. He now wants to build 6 million square feet of commercial and residential development at Poplar Point, compared with the approximately 1 million square feet that had been negotiated during the Plan's development. Defending Poplar Point is the Sierra Club's top land-use priority.
Fenty put a good man, George Hawkins, at the helm of DDOE, but then repeatedly saddled the agency with bloated green-jobs programs that drove Hawkins and most of his senior staff crazy. Hawkins ultimately left for WASA (now DC Water).
Fenty also wouldn't allow Hawkins to express support for Tommy Wells' wildly-successful grocery bag fee bill, which passed the Council with nary a dissenting vote.
This year the Mayor instituted major funding cuts for DDOE As we approached the culmination of our campaign to force Congress to quit burning coal in the Capitol Power Plant, we approached the Mayor with an offer to put him in front of our campaign. We considered this a no-brainer given the obvious health impacts of burning tons of coal in the middle of the District, not to mention the global warming implications. But the Mayor wouldn't accept our offer despite the silver platter. Only weeks later, Congress caved in. Decades of coal-burning in downtown DC ended last year!
Similarly, reduced greenhouse gas emissions are the central goal of DC's new Sustainable Energy Utility. But Fenty recently proposed to reduce its budget by 85%. He then tried to slash the DC tax credits for solar energy installations.
Then the Mayor nominated Lori Lee The Mayor is also fighting us on the pending "MS4" stormwater discharge permit from EPA. We would like to see improvements in the draft permit, but generally support its rigor. The Administration is doing its best to weaken it, arguing that the suburbs should take the lead on water quality improvement.
Meanwhile, during his six years on the Council, Chairman Gray has always been a friend of the District's environmental movement. My records show that he has been a 100% green voter for his entire tenure.
Earlier this year Vince valiantly fended off Mayor Fenty's proposed cuts in next year's budget for sustainable energy development, rooftop solar, as well as basic funding for DDOE. This largely unheralded work came at a steep price, because other budget priorities had to be sacrificed. Granted, he wavered for hours on streetcar funding, but ultimately made the right call. This was, after all, a very tough budget year.
Vince has supported our campaign to save Klingle Valley since the days when Adrian was holding pro-road press conferences in the Valley itself. In responding to our recent political questionnaire, he distinguished himself from Mayor Fenty in his commitment to oppose over-the-top development at Poplar Point.
Gray talks to us. He attended the Sierra Club's Annual Dinner last Fall and gave a rousing address. This is a leader whom we can trust and fully expect to work with in the coming years.
For these and related reasons, the Sierra Club's leadership voted unanimously (10-0) to endorse Gray.
If we want Washington to take its rightful place alongside Seattle and San Francisco as one of America's most progressive environmental cities, we need an executive that will work hand-in-hand with our now progressive legislature. Gray has the vision; Fenty doesn't. And Gray will end the war-between-the-branches that has held DC in second gear for four years.
At the end, the two News 8 reporters talk about how DC would have to make substantial zoning changes and even help Wal-Mart acquire more land for all its parking. Why should it? The purpose of zoning is to define what kind of development we want for an area. If Wal-Mart wants to build a store that fits with the vision for the area, they can. If not, DC should spend its economic development dollars on someone who wants to contribute to building a neighborhood instead of turning it into a parking-lot wasteland. (News 8, Congress Heights on the Rise) (Comment)
Development
Poplar Point planners present possibilities
Should Poplar Point become two separate districts, one extending the Anacostia neighborhood and one connecting across the river? Or should it be one neighborhood, centered around the Metro station leaving parkland along the waterfront, or activating the waterfront with a large park to one side?
Should DC redevelop the Anacostia Metro garage, or leave it? These are some of the questions DC economic development officials asked members of the community at last weekend's Poplar Point presentation.
DC is receiving Poplar Point from the federal government, but with some conditions. 70 acres must remain parkland, which Cavan has argued is too much. Planners also need to designate two sites for memorials. The Secretary of the Interior must sign off on any plan. And the city or developers must remediate any contaminants on the site.
Within those constraints, planners devised three preliminary alternatives.
The bright red lines mark retail streets. Office buildings are blue, residential yellow.
Alternative 1 places the parkland in the center of the site and splits development into two areas. One, along I-295, would connect to the Anacostia neighborhood along existing streets and a new pedestrian bridge at Chicago Street along with a vehicular bridge (presumably also open to pedestrians) at W Street. The development at the other side, near the existing South Capitol Street bridge, would connect to the ballpark and Capitol Riverfront area with another pedestrian bridge over the Anacostia. On that side, the planners suggest an "iconic observation tower" to give people a great view of DC, and a major waterfront cultural attraction similar to Boston's ICA. Since the existing wetlands concentrate mainly in the center of the site, this option leaves them untouched to the greatest extent.
Alternative 2 centers the development in the middle, maximizing the amount near the Anacostia Metro station. Under this plan, DC would redevelop the Anacostia Metro garage, which has an entrance to the station on the Poplar Point side of 295. Riders emerging from the Metro could walk into the neighborhood and over one block to a commercial street stretching from Howard Road to the water's edge. Otherwise, the development would not border the waterfront, leaving that parkland with a marshy edge. This alternative would create new wetlands to replace those lost, including a cafe overlooking the new wildlife habitat. Planners suggest a community garden and a "signature cultural destination." W Street would get a pedestrian bridge, and Chicago Street a full road one.
Alternative 3 activates the waterfront to a greater extent by moving the development to the eastern half of the park. It would span the entire space from the adjoining neighborhood to the water while not touching the western end except for a memorial at the point, preserving most of the existing wetlands. This plan envisions an amphitheater and a waterfront promenade with dining and recreation, piers and a marina, and a water taxi. This plan also leaves the Anacostia garage intact. New road connections at both Chicago and W Streets would link the new neighborhood to the old.
Perhaps the best plan would combine parts of both 2 and 3 to build a continuous neighborhood centered around the Metro station and a redeveloped garage, then extending continuously to the river with a waterfront promenade at the end. Most of the western and a bit of the eastern end would then remain parkland. 3 includes many of 2's top land-use features, but for some reason leaves the garage intact.
The top priority should be to maximize opportunities for people to live near the Metro station. Turning the garage into housing would do that, and the plan should maximize the percentage of development within a half mile of the station. The commercial street in both 2 and 3 would help connect Anacostia and Poplar Point, the Metro and the water. It's not as good as the "deck" Clark Realty had previously suggested to span I-295, but that proved an unrealistic expense.
Option 1, on the other hand, would create too many islands of buildings far from Metro. The bridge across the river is a nice idea, but the Capitol Riverfront area doesn't need a small satellite on the other side of the river. There are too many large expressway-type roads with flyover ramps to the west, and little on the other side for people to walk to. And the long pedestrian bridge could well become dangerous at night, or at least desolate, cutting off the residences on that side to any means of access but the car. Meanwhile, the other clump near Anacostia might not be large enough to function well on its own, given that a large freeway will separate it from the rest of the neighborhood. Better to build a critical mass in one place in Poplar Point, then work as hard as possible to connect it to Anacostia.
Development
H Street United?
Now that DC United won't be going to Prince George's after all, what's next? The Post has a little poll, where staying at RFK, a new DC stadium, or moving away from the region entirely are all about tied.
Reader Max writes in with an intriguing idea. What about something at the Hechinger Mall site at the "starburst intersection" of H Street, Benning Road, Bladensburg Road, Maryland Avenue and 15th Streets, NE? The biggest chunk of this site is now empty with the closing of National Wholesale Liquidators.
Moreover, there actually used to be a stadium nearby, as Brett Abrams pointed out in his chat. A real walkable urban stadium in this area could bring a lot of revitalization to this area. It's right on the planned H Street streetcar, producing a powerful impetus to get that built.
Image from Google Maps. Click for interactive version.
Of course, there are obstacles. The mall is only partially empty right now. It's very near many residential neighborhoods, and they might not all want the activity from a stadium. The site isn't on Metro, though it's only about a mile from Stadium-Armory (much closer than the Redskins), it's a stop on Metro's long-term pie-in-the-sky expansion plan, and a potential infill Oklahoma Avenue station wouldn't be far away either.
Though being only a mile from Stadium-Armory, we might reasonably ask, why not just keep the current site? We could turn it from a suburban-style stadium surrounded by huge parking lots into an urban stadium with commerce nearby. And while District leaders weren't able to do a deal for a site on Poplar Point, the site itself wasn't really the problem. If H Street could use some revitalization that might surround a stadium, Anacostia could even more.
Development
The silver lining of the real estate bust
According to the Washington Post, development has come to a halt downtown. This phenomenon is not unique to our region. Nearly any real estate project not financed before September is now frozen. While a dearth of new construction could hurt municipal budgets, it also has a large potential upside. As a nation, we now have the opportunity to plan and focus our growth, in preparation for the time when expansionary economic conditions resume.
The L'Enfant plan.
In "A Request For Proposals Isn't a Plan", Richard Layman discusses the causes and implications of the way the DC government handled projects around the city, such as Poplar Point. Last month, Clark Realty Capital withdrew from developing Poplar Point. The company cited the changing economic conditions as a cause of its reason to back away from its involvement with the project. In his Washington Post column entitled "Southeast D.C. Project Asked Too Much of the Private Sector", Richard Roger Lewis describes the deal's unusual characteristics:
[T]he boldest element was a very expensive piece of infrastructure: a three-block-long deck spanning Interstate 295 to visually and functionally unite historic Anacostia and a redeveloped Poplar Point.We kept hearing for thirty years that the private sector always works better than government. Our experience with our economy these past few months has reminded us of why we have government. The private sector does a very good job with specific things. Government does other things better. Infrastructure has always been government's responsibility because we need infrastructure for a functioning civilization, but it almost always loses money. No rational business would build a deck over I-295 in Anacostia on its own. Businesses need to generate profits, or else they cease to exist.Last month, Clark announced that it was dropping out. A year of dreadful market and economic conditions made the company want to change the terms of the deal. It reportedly asked the District to take on the front-end financial obligations and risks as an investment partner, with Clark to receive a fee as development manager. The District declined. Although Clark's decision to drop out surprised many, it was inevitable.
The company's withdrawal illuminates the fallacies of the District's Poplar Point strategy. Given the economic climate, the developer was asked to predict, promise and risk too much. It was unrealistic to demand a visionary program and plan whose feasibility was questionable from the outset and then expect the developer to provide all the financing.
Private developers would only take on the volume of risk associated with the infrastructure and planning costs of the failed Poplar Point project if the project also carried an extremely lucrative potential reward. The now-popped credit and housing bubble greatly skewed the risk-reward relationship of such a project. Because creditors were essentially begging customers to borrow money, a business could borrow as much as necessary to fund a mega-project. Creditors would overlook such high sunk costs as constructing a deck over I-295 and a 70-acre mega-park. Also, since land values and commercial rents were inflating, a developer would believe that the revenue from sales and rents would more than make up for the infrastructural sunk costs.
Such a business model was wildly optimistic, even under the conditions of the bubble. It was also wildly optimistic on the part of the Mayor's office to believe that any private developer could take on such large risks. Instead, as both Layman and Lewis suggest, the city should construct a long-term plan similar to Pierre L'Enfant's. They should devise a for a street grid, mixed-use zoning, sewers, pedestrian connections to the Metro, a possible deck over I-295, and parks, before bidding out any projects.
In fact, the plan should encourage different developers to bid on land and projects, building by building and parcel by parcel. That's how urban development happened before mid-20th century "urban renewal" introduced the idea of the mega-development. Rather than developing Poplar Point all at once by a single developer, the a wide array of builders should develop it block by block. That way, if one builder encounters financial difficulties, the whole project doesn't come to a halt.
Once the new neighborhood is fully constructed, if one parcel becomes vacant, it will not be as much of a fiscal strain on the whole neighborhood. A vacancy puts fiscal strain on the landlord due to lost rent. If one real estate company owns an entire neighborhood, one vacancy indirectly puts strain all other tenants. Or worse yet, what if the landlord company goes out of business? What happens then? A single landlord for an entire neighborhood also diminishes the diversity of real estate products, and consequently on the diversity of residents and businesses.
Nationwide, we've become accustomed to the suburban model of development that we start to see it as the only way to construct our built environment. In a car-dependent environment, a developer buys a huge tract of land and then constructs a subdivision, a strip mall or enclosed mall, an office park, or another large single use. Their footprint, including parking lost, occupies about the same land area as an urban neighborhood. Consequently, developers and governments continue thinking on the same footprint scale even as we returned to developing and redeveloping walkable urban places throughout this decade. However, the failed Poplar Point project has shown us the danger of turning over the future of such a large tract to a single company.
We would be wise to learn from successful urban planning of the past, such as the L'Enfant plan that created Washington. We need to plan for an economic environment where the mega-project is no longer desirable or feasible. It will take many years until the banks work through their bad debts and are willing to provide credit for real estate projects again. We should use this time to plan to direct the future pent-up housing demand into carbon-neutral walkable human-scale street-grid transit-oriented places. Our descendants will thank us.
Development
Breakfast links: hardball negotiations
Photo by Jake Mates on Flickr.
Vélib not dying: The operator of Paris's extremely successful Vélib bike sharing program is claiming high rates of theft and vandalism. Streetsblog explains that it's a negotiating tactic by private operator JCDecaux to get more money from the city. Don't be surprised if Clear Channel pulls something similar one day regarding SmartBike.
Greenbelt wants zoning control: Prince George's state delegates can't agree on whether to let municipalities make their own land use decisions. Doing so could enable towns to force better quality developments in their borders, but could also start a race to the bottom where towns try to attract big auto-dependent malls right at the edges of town, raising tax revenue while pushing undesirable traffic effects off on the neighboring jurisdiction.
Et tu, Schume? New York's arts organizations are upset with Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) for voting for Tom Coburn's amendment prohibiting spending stimulus money on casinos, zoos, swimming pools, parks, museums, theaters, art centers, highway beautification projects, and more. Schumer says he didn't read the amendment before voting for it, and though it only applied to casinos and golf courses.
Cleveland Park anti-walkability association: The Cleveland Park Citizens Association is meeting Sunday to consider a resolution on the proposed Wisconsin Giant. Giant supporters point out that CPCA has already filed to be a party in opposition at next Thursday's Zoning Commission hearing, prior to letting members vote on the association's position. Supporters encourage CPCA members to show up and vote against the opposition resolution.
Sorry, Alexandria: There will be no Metro service at or through Pentagon this weekend. Shuttle buses will connect Pentagon City, Pentagon, and L'Enfant Plaza. Track Twenty-Nine has a handy map and more information.
And: GOOD compares the fuel usage of various modes of transportation over the same distances. Bikes win, buses come in second. ... Casey Trees is running a workshop for homeowners to learn how to plant their own trees. Attendees get a free tree. Tip: Lynda. ... Another DC (area) to NYC bus is starting up. This one, TripperBus, will stop in Rosslyn, Bethesda, and midtown Manhattan. Will it take Wisconsin Avenue between the two? If so, might a stop in Georgetown draw a lot of riders?
Public Spaces
Poplar Point and the Case of the Too-Large Park
The District has been fortunate to receive a "once in a lifetime" gift from the federal government to build a whole new neighborhood on empty, unused land. Poplar Point lies just across the Anacostia River from the Nationals ballpark and a ten minute walk from the Anacostia Metro. A successful Poplar Point development, possibly with a soccer stadium for DC United, would create a mixed-use neighborhood and regional attraction in Ward 8, ending its long stint as the forgotten part of the region. If developed according to DC's current criteria, it will also contain too much contiguous parkland. That's right, too much.
Clark Realty's winning proposal with mega-park. Image by stirlingr on Flickr.
The original RFP from the Mayor's Office required all proposals to contain extremely generous amounts of "open space." The winning proposal, submitted by Clark Realty of Bethesda, contained a 70 acre park out of 110 total acres on the whole site. That's large by any measure. In contrast, Dupont Circle's park is under one acre. It is also one of our region's most beloved urban parks. When it comes to urban parks, bigger is clearly not necessarily better.
Now that Clark Realty pulled out of the project, citing economic concerns, the Mayor's Office must go back to the drawing board and re-solicit bids. They should focus on proposals that better integrate small parks into the neighborhood urban fabric. Well-designed parkland would create a sense of place and interact with its surroundings.
The current "open space" at Poplar Point is in a state of disrepair and is underused as a park. There's as much seedy activity there as there is walking, socializing, or recreational sports. Part of the reason is the Anacostia Freeway, which separates Poplar Point from its surroundings. Another reason is that it is too big to have enough "eyes on the street" to discourage undesirable activities. Any 70 acre super-park is very unlikely to have enough "eyes on the street" to dissuade seedy activity.
In her classic book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote,
In orthodox [modernist] city planning, neighborhood open spaces are venerated in an amazingly uncritical fashion, much as savages venerate magical fetishes [sic]. Ask a houser how his planned neighborhood improves on the old city and he will cite, as a self-evident virtue, More Open Space. Ask a zoner about the improvements in progressive codes and he will cite, again as a self-evident virtue, their incentives toward leaving More Open Space. Walk with a planner through a dispirited neighborhood and though it be already scabby with deserted parks and tired landscaping festooned with an old Kleenex, he will envision a future of More Open Space.An urban park is not the same as a suburban park, or a wilderness nature preserve park. No one drives for miles to visit Dupont Circle or McPherson Square. No one would drive for miles to visit a park in any new Poplar Point development. The park is there for the people in the immediate walking area. That is the beauty of DC's existing small neighborhood parks. They contain nice benches with a nice centerpiece. Their design facilitates human social activities. They interact with their surroundings, rather than overshadow them. They are centers of place. In the L'Enfant City, they anchor beautiful sightlines along the diagonal state avenues. People use them to eat lunch on a nice day, read a book, use their laptop or iPhone, meet with a friend, or relax on an enjoyable date.More Open Space for what? For muggings? For bleak vacuums between buildings? Or for ordinary people to use and enjoy? But people do not use city open space just because it is there and because city planners wish they would.
Parks like Dupont Circle and McPherson Square are the right size to enhance their surroundings. On the other hand, Franklin Square is much less popular because of its scale. Even though it is clearly more visually appealing, its size makes it harder to walk in, find a place to sit, and relax. It is too big to truly interact with its surroundings, yet too small to be an attraction itself. Consequently, it is neither fish nor fowl. Rather than enhancing the surrounding urban fabric like neighboring McPherson Square, it acts as a hole.
How can we avoid the failures of Franklin Square in a future Poplar Point? First, Franklin Square is 4.8 acres. Imagine if it were 70 acres. Few would venture in it. The only parks that even partially work on that scale are suburban parks. Like most of suburbia, those parks devote a large fraction of their land area to roads and parking lots. Even still, those parks often grapple with seedy activities under the cover of darkness.
Poplar Point won't have surface parking lots. A 70-acre park won't interact with an urban environment. Rather than "open space", Poplar's park will be "dead space." In fact, the term "open space" is a complete misnomer. It implies a feeling of freedom and escape. It markets suburbia and its central axiom that more is always better. In parks as with romantic relationships, quality is far more important that quantity. Quality depends on the activity surrounding the park and how the park interacts with its surroundings. I would like to see a moratorium on the term "open space" and its uglier, more misleading cousin, "green space". I once heard a very educated, well-meaning transit advocate refer to the trees on the sidewalk in Bethesda as "green space". Let's return to the time-honored term "park".
The next proposals for developing Poplar Point should split up the parkland into more, smaller parks rather than a 70 acre megapark that will be doomed to misuse and neglect. Residents will need public athletic fields. Those needn't be part of a megapark. Athletic fields can bring use and a sense of place to even a one-acre park. When mixed in within a walkable urban context, they draw users to the park at more times of the day, between office workers, residents, and local leagues. They add "eyes on the street." (Unfortunately, they also need to use field turf so they don't become dust bowls.)
Elsewhere in the Poplar Point neighborhood, mimic Dupont Circle or McPherson Square by creating small parks that act as central gathering places in busy restaurant and cultural districts. The developer will be happy to build fewer parks and more floor space they can collect rent on. The city will get more revenue from the additional taxable real estate. They will also save maintenance costs because the smaller parks will attract less vandalism. And all residents and visitors to Poplar Point can have the numerous small parks that Capitol Hill and Northwest already enjoy.
Transit
Breakfast links: Cuts and losses
Photo by skwagner on Flickr.
Blocking the train: Virginia State Senator William Wampler of Bristol, in Virginia's far west where I-81 crosses into Tennessee, wants intercity rail to Washington. That's great, but less great is his budget amendment that would block the planned commuter rail service to Richmond and Lynchburg until the train goes all the way to Bristol. Rail advocates and the Chamber of Commerce guarantee the bill would kill any hope of new trains anytime soon. Tip: Daniel.
Record ridership, time for service cuts: Chris Zimmerman laments the folly of funding capital improvements in transit, as the stimulus does, while leaving operating expenses in the cold. Transit agencies around the nation will be buying new buses to run less service. Roger Lewis argues for more transit funding, and Steve Offutt agrees. Get There discusses some reader proposals for cutting Metro costs.
RIP Don Praisner: Montgomery County Councilmember Don Praisner has died just one year after his wife and less than a year after being elected to complete her Council term. Praisner has asked the County Council to appoint a caretaker to finish the term but who won't run again, to save the County the expense of another special election.
Rats vs. rates: Jack Evans proposes a tax credit for businesses that buy trash compactors, which help reduce rat infestations.
Benefits of open information: Wired profiles Mark Gorton, founder of New York's Open Planning Project (which publishes Streetsblog). The article focuses on TOPP's open source GeoServer, which enables many people to build GIS maps who never could before. Tip: Tom.
Preservation
On the calendar: modern, new, and fast
Photo by afagen on Flickr.
Evaluating the Significance of Modern Structures: The DCPL is sponsoring a panel discussion tonight about modern buildings. I'll be there. I'm hoping that when they say "evaluating the significance" they really mean "evaluating whether something is significant" instead of just "convincing people of the significance". Some modern structures are significant; others are not. Appropriately, the event takes place in one of my favorite modern buildings, the Pan American Health Organization at 525 23rd St, NW (at E Street). 6:30-8, $20.
Poplar Point Planning Powwow: Also tonight is a community meeting to discuss the Small Area Plan for Poplar Point. And Now, Anacostia strongly urges you to provide feedback for "the largest development in the city's history" (since it was first developed, of course). 6-9 at Birney Elementary School, 2501 Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, SE.
Walk for Charlie's Place: Dupont Circle homeless services organization Charlie's Place desperately needs walkers for its Saturday walkathon. It's just 55 35 walkers short of qualifying for a big Fannie Mae grant. Marc Fisher writes today about the huge savings DC realized in emergency room visits from moving homeless people into their own housing. But that program's expansion met the sharp end of the Council's budget axe, making other homeless services all the more important. You can even walk for free and the Dupont Circle Citizens' Association will sponsor you, to get Charlie's Place to the 55 35< it needs.
One more Purple Line hearing: The last of the four is Saturday, at the Montgomery College Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus, Falcon Hall, 7600 Takoma Avenue. Open house 12:30, hearing 1:00.
Rapidly learn about rapid buses: Get home rapidly after Thanksgiving and come to the Coalition for Smarter Growth's rapid bus forum on Monday, December 1. The event will feature WMATA General Manager John Catoe, Maryland State Highway Administrator Neil Pedersen, and WMATA Chairman Chris Zimmerman of Arlington. They'll talk about WMATA's Priority Bus plan and try to get Pedersen to commit to signal priority and dedicated lanes for express buses. 6-8 pm, RSVP required.
@ggwash
- Successful speed cameras require fair speed limits
- Amid scandal, don't lose sight of Gray's policy achievements
- Montgomery plans 160-mile, "gold standard" BRT system
- VDOT ignores own data, pushes widening I-66
- DC's parks are 5th best in the nation, says "Park Score"
- Bethesda gets new but terrible bike racks
- DC's divide need not be black and white
Greater Washington
District of Columbia
