Posts about Saint Elizabeths

And...: Mayor Gray is looking for restaurants for the St. Elizabeth's campus. (Washington Times) ... Take a tour Northern Virginia development projects. (Post) ... Is the Potomac not most endangered river after all? (Post) (Comment)

Austerity brings uncertainty: The Department of Homeland Security headquarters at St. Elizabeth's is beset by Congressional politics, causing delays, rising costs, and uncertainty for the neighborhoods banking on its success. (Post) (Comment)

DHS delayed: The latest spending bill delays by 5 years the DHS headquarters consolidation at St. Elizabeth's. The cost will rise $500 million as a result. (Federal Times) (Comment)

Ward 8 wants construction jobs: Dozens protested the lack of District residents working on the St. E's reconstruction yesterday. But the federal government doesn't have to hire local and construction jobs aren't necessarily sustainable. (City Paper) (Comment)

St. E's triggers TOD: The upcoming St. Elizabeth's development is catalyzing more development nearby, with a 7-story building proposed at Congress Heights Metro. (Examiner) (Comment)

2 visions for St. E's: St. Elizabeth's East could either have windy roads and separated clusters of uses, or a main boulevard and mixed uses. Shouldn't this be an urban design no-brainer by now? (City Paper) (Comment)

Electronics maker to St. E's: Computer equipment maker MVM Technologies will move its HQ to St. Elizabeth's. It will employ 2,800 DC residents in three years. (WBJ) (Comment)

St. E's will still move ahead, needs food: DHS and GSA are insisting that St. Elizabeth's will move ahead. Republicans proposed cutting funding for the project. DHS is also looking for options to provide food, like food trucks or temporary markets, since at least at first, there won't be huge cafeterias. (Post) (Comment)

House committee would halt St. E's: The House Appropriations Committee would halt construction of the DHS complex at St. Elizabeths, according to the Homeland Security budget they passed out of committee yesterday. (CQ, Gavin) (Comment)

St. E's at risk?: Might Congress cut money for the DHS headquarters consolidation at St. Elizabeth's? It would save $4 billion. GSA is trying to see if they can fit more people in than originally planned, through desk sharing and teleworking. (Capital Business) (Comment)

Steps to govern DC: DC's budget shortfall has shrunk by $100 million to $320 million (WAMU) ... Mayor Gray and Chairman Brown have different ideas for getting contractors to hire DC residents (City Paper) ... Gray will create new entities to oversee St. Elizabeth's and Walter Reed, but not like the ones Fenty disbanded in 2007. (Post, Gavin) (Comment)

Is Congress Heights really in?: After the Post Style section declared H Street NE "out" and Congress Heights "in," UrbanTurf profiled the Southeast neighborhood. Given the details available, they fear the Homeland Security development at St. Elizabeth's Hospital campus will bring little to the area. (Congress Heights) (Comment)

Bicycling

St. Elizabeths plan threatens South Capitol Trail

by David C. • January 11, 2011 9:41 am

A Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Department of Homeland Security at St. Elizabeths is available for comment. It includes several improvements that should appeal to cyclists, but at least one alternative threatens the important, planned South Capitol Street trail.

The S. Capitol Street trail is the dotted orange line.

To accommodate the increase in jobs, the EIS primarily adds vehicular capacity by widening South Capitol Street, adding interchanges to I-295, and more. One area of such widening is at the interchange between 295 and Malcolm X Avenue. Alternative 1 rebuilds the I-295 S/South Capitol Street interchange to allow southbound traffic to use South Capitol and Malcolm X to reach the West Campus Access Road.

But to handle the added traffic, it would push South Capitol to the west using the same right-of-way that DDOT plans to use to build the South Capitol Street Trail (circled in black below). The EIS does make it clear that planners are aware of the trail, but it seems they are either unaware or unconcerned that these plans threaten it.

Alternative 1 of I-295/Malcolm X Avenue interchange expansion. Image from the EIS.

GSA should either pursue Alternative 2 or work to modify Alternative 1 to allow for the South Capitol Street Trail. If you contact GSA or go to the public hearing on Thursday night make sure they know how important this critical link is and that any alternative must not preclude construction of the South Capitol Street Trail.

But all is not gloom and doom. There are other more positive developments. As mentioned before, both alternatives for the West Campus Access Road include a 10-foot wide multi-use trail along the road from South Capitol Street (south end), across Malcolm X Avenue, and continuing to Firth Sterling Avenue/Defense Boulevard. This adds another north/south connection to the District's trail system. Even the No Build Alternative includes bike lanes and a sidewalk on the Access Road (but not all the way to Malcolm X Avenue).

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, Alternative 2 widens the street by 8 feet more than Alternative 1, from 78 to 86 feet wide, to make room for bicycle lanes. This will, unfortunately, involve removing 27 trees - as opposed to 21 for alternative 1. Still, this is the better alternative of the two, as new trees will be planted to mitigate the impact.

There are also plans to extend 13th Street on the east campus, and that extended street may include bike lanes.
Finally, the Great Streets initiative for MLK Avenue includes plans to add bike racks.

According to GSA, only about 1% of employees are expected to bike to work at the new facility. But the multi-use trail is expected to become a main route for the 8% of employees expected to walk from the Metro station. GSA notes that other steps can be taken to get more people to bike. For example, the EIS notes that by building a smaller parking lot to serve the FEMA building, employees would be encouraged to use public transit, bike or walk to work.

The EIS also recognizes that planned bicycle lanes on Howard Road and along the new MLK Avenue Bridge over Suitland Parkway, as well as unplanned improvements from the Wilson Bridge would do more to improve bike/ped access. This, along with the South Capitol Street Trail—if they don't inadvertently kill it—should help the bicycle mode share to climb higher.

GSA will be holding a public hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (Draft EIS) for the amendment to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Headquarters Consolidation Master Plan at St. Elizabeths on January 13, 2011, from 6-8:30 pm at the Matthews Memorial Baptist Church, John H. Kearney, Sr. Fellowship Hall, located at 2616 Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, SE, Washington, DC. You can also submit comments online.

Cross-posted on The WashCycle.

6 comments

Tags: bicycling, bike trails, DC, GSA, Saint Elizabeths, South Capitol Trail

Developments in the works for 2011: Lydia DePillis previews the development
expected to take place in the District in 2011. Major projects include the McMillan Sand Filtration Site, Walter Reed, Hill East, and St. Elizabeth's Hospital. (City Paper) (Comment)

No mixed-use next to St. E's?: NCPC staff say a Comprehensive Plan amendment for mixed-use development on MLK Avenue adjacent to St. Elizabeth's is "contrary to the federal interest" because of the historic wall and security needs for the DHS headquarters. (Housing Complex) (Comment)

Keeping you Posted: Dr. Gridlock reviews the status of WMATA budget discussions and the feedback from the public hearings ... Henri Cauvin reviews the history of St. Elizabeths and plans to build a new DHS headquarters. (Post) (Comment)

DHS needs even more space: Even the huge St. Elizabeth's campus isn't big enough for the entire Department of Homeland Security. GSA will issue an RFP for 1.1 million more square feet. How about a site on top of Metro station? (DCmud) (Comment)

Hopefully not just like the Pentagon: "In her own Special Olympics-like gaffe, the [DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano] referred to St. Elizabeths as being in 'a very run-down part of the District of Columbia.'" But, DHS also hopes their upcoming move to the Ward 8 campus will "do the same thing for the surrounding neighborhood that the CIA did for Langley and the Pentagon did for Northern Virginia." Great, but this is still part of the city, not part of the 'burbs. Ideally DHS will "do" more for Ward 8 than just drawing large amounts of auto traffic to the area. (DCmud, Jaime) (12 comments)

Preservation

On the calendar: St. E's, WABA gala, Anacostia cleanup, District 4

March 12, 2009 4:30 pm

St. Elizabeths West Campus. Photo by Jaime Fearer.

See St. E's: As GSA plans to move DHS to the Saint Elizabeths West Campus come closer to fruition, the DC Preservation League is again offering a walking tour of the west campus of the National Historic Landmark on Saturday, April 4 at 10 am. Here are pictures from the last tour. You can RSVP by calling the DC Preservation League office at 202.783.5144 or emailing rsvp@dcpreservation.org. The tour should fill up quickly so sign up soon. (by Jaime Fearer)

Celebrate with WABA: WABA's tireless efforts to make our city safer for bicyclists depend on our support. You can support them and have a great time at their annual gala, on Saturday, March 21. The event will honor Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Congress's leading bicycle advocate. It's $80 for WABA members and $115 for non-members. Get your tickets here.

Support a trash-free Anacostia: The DC Council will hold a hearing on the bill to incentivize reusable bags on Wednesday, April 1. The hearing will start at 2 pm and continue into the evening to enable people to testify either in the afternoon or after work. To sign up, email or call Aukima Benjamin, abenjamin@dccouncil.us or 202.724.8062. Tell her when you'd like to testify. Never testified before? Just write out up to 3 minutes of comments and bring a few copies with you.

District Four-um: The Action Committee for Transit and the Sierra Club are organizing a forum for County Council candidates in Montgomery's District 4 on Wednesday evening, March 31st. Mark your calendars and look for more updates soon.

5 comments

Tags: bag fees, campuses, Earl Blumenauer, historic preservation, links, Montgomery, politics, Saint Elizabeths, WABA

Development

St. Elizabeth's is a campus, not a fortress

by Dave Murphy • January 11, 2009 9:23 am

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is consolidating its 60-some-odd area offices to a centralized campus. Finally. This move is smart, as it will improve the organization's efficiency and bring it up to par with other executive branch defense organizations with their own headquarters like the CIA, the NSA, the Department of Defense, the DIA, and the FBI.

Secure facility or college campus? Photo by bjackrianaol on Flickr.

Unfortunately, the new headquarters will destroy a huge chunk of historical landscape. The National Planning Commission has given final approval to consolidate DHS's officees on the west campus of the Saint Elizabeths Hospital in Southwest DC.

Seriously? DHS is going to take over a National Historic Site? The feds will remake the site with new office buildings, acres of surface parking, and a cordon of security gates before the first terror suspect is ever questioned there. I'm all for DHS, and I think consolidating their offices is a very smart thing to do. But there are much better places to do it.

Here are some possibilities:

The power plant at River Terrace. It's isolated enough to pass muster for security, near a highway, and a potential infill Metro station.
DC General Hospital. Also centrally located and near a Metro station, this could repurpose existing buildings much like the St. E's site.
Bolling AFB. Put it on a military base like NSA or DIA. Bolling would need to consolidate its land use, but the base ought to do that anyway.
The warehouses near Van Dorn Street Metro. Highway, Metro station, relative isolation for security purposes.
Lady Bird Johnson Park. It's near the Pentagon, near a Metro station, and it would be a great excuse to get rid of that highway spaghetti there. Plus, it's technically in the District.

Those are just a few places DHS could locate. Meanwhile, DC should repurpose St. E's west campus into a full public university. Expand (not relocate, as suggested in 1999 by the Mayor Williams) UDC to St. E's. Make the Van Ness campus the graduate school and give the students dorms and a historic campus. UDC at St. E's could hold public events and allow the entire city to take advantage of the views and historic atmosphere of the campus.

More importantly, this is Washington, DC's last shot at providing a traditional college campus for what ought to be its flagship public institution of higher learning. The site looks like a college campus. Not using it as one sends a very bad message to the city's residents: We're not interested in investing in your education, and we don't think you deserve the type of college campus enjoyed by every other state and territory in the US.

The amount of federal money it would take to make this happen is astronomically higher than what governments normally spend on public universities, I fear. But we must make a commitment to education in a city reknowned for bottom-feeding in education. DC will never reach its potential as a city if it is not willing to truly invest in the education of its citizens. DHS deserves a centralized campus, but UDC deserves dorms for its students, and they've been waiting a lot longer.

36 comments

Tags: campuses, DC, NCPC, Saint Elizabeths, security, UDC

Parking

Saint Elizabeths: reuse or abuse?

by Jaime Fearer • December 10, 2008 1:01 pm

In mid-November, I attended the second St. Elizabeths West Campus walking tour hosted by the DC Preservation League (DCPL). Founded in 1852 as the Government Hospital for the Insane at the urging of social reformer Dorothea Dix and its first Superintendent, Charles H. Nichols, St. Elizabeths' entire campus was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990, named to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's "Eleven Most Endangered" List in 2002, and placed on the DC Inventory of Historic Sites in 2005. In 2008, DCPL named the West Campus as one of DC's Most Endangered Places.

The East Campus, now under District control, continues to operate as a hospital, and DC recently finalized a framework plan for redeveloping the site. Meanwhile, the West Campus was essentially abandoned in 1987. In 1999, Mayor Anthony Williams suggested moving UDC to the West Campus. In hindsight, and in my opinion, this proposal would have proven beneficial to both UDC and Anacostia. After all, the Center Building was designed by Thomas Ustick Walter, the fourth Architect of the Capitol and designer of the Capitol Dome. The Main Building—its three-story columns facing a sprawling quad—was designed by the Boston firm of Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, architects of the Stanford University campus.

Outrage over the proposal, fostered primarily by accusations of racial insensitivity, killed the idea (at least on an official level) and the land was transferred to the federal government in 2004. Shortly after, GSA began shoring up the buildings with red plywood. GSA cut off public access to "The Point"—with the best views in the city across DC and into Virginia—and a cross-shaped Civil War cemetery. They will remain inaccessible to the public if the Department of Homeland Security moves forward with its plans to build up to an additional 4.5 million square feet of office space and 1.5 million square feet of parking to serve up to 26,000 DHS employees.

DCPL and community members are pushing for "a re-use incorporating rehabilitation of historic structures and landscapes, sensitive new construction, and public access to The Point." Will future generations of residents get to enjoy this site, its buildings and its views, or will Saint Elizabeths West turn into another giant missed opportunity for DC?

8 comments

Tags: Anacostia, architecture, campuses, excessive parking, GSA, historic preservation, Saint Elizabeths, UDC

Transit

Dinner links: Six feet under budget

by David Alpert • October 23, 2008 6:27 pm

Image by Ora Pera on Flickr.

"Hangover of America's romance with the car": Salon examines the paradox of governments cutting transit funding as buses and trains face record ridership, and the double standard in the way we think about funding new roads versus funding transit.

Next stop Saint Elizabeths: Plans for the Saint Elizabeth's campus in Ward Eight include an infill Green Line station, or possibly a spur off the main line. Just don't give it a new color. (Ryan Avent)

Brookanders win a burial: The DC Council has voted to require burying the power lines on Brookland's main streets during the upcoming streetscape reconstruction. Here's some background. (Examiner)

Edwards likes purple: Maryland's newest Congresswoman, Donna Edwards, places the Purple Line among her top priorities along with housing affordability.

"Digital public square": Apps for Democracy interviews DC CTO Vivek Kundra, who talks about DC's data feeds ready to be mashed up by sites such as EveryBlock.

Freako-discredited idea: Freakonomics resurrects the old and debunked canard that transit causes crime. Ryan Avent debunks.

10 comments

Tags: Brookland, crime, DC, Donna Edwards, economics, links, Purple Line, Saint Elizabeths, technology, transit, WMATA

Parking

Dinner links: Elected officials behaving badly edition

by David Alpert • August 6, 2008 9:48 pm

Jim Graham's illegally parked car (not related to today's episode). Photo by Justpowers on Flickr.

Don't they have better things to do? According to DC Wire, Council Chairman Gray found Dan Tangherlini parking in his spot, so he parked in Tangherlini's spot, and then the mayor's office threatened to tow Gray's car. Having a playground spat over parking spaces is unseemly enough, but when elected officials make parking space pecking orders a major perk (as they do in Congress), it warps their view of the world for those of us who don't have a reserved space everywhere we go.

LA is for lame: The LA Board of Supervisors voted not to place the proposed transit sales tax on the ballot. But it's still going to be voted on, just on a different ballot. Or something. LA is stuck in a cycle of car abuse dependence it doesn't know how to get out of. Ryan Avent talks more about LA's missed opportunities.

What's up in Ward 8: And Now, Anacostia attended community meetings for St. Elizabeth's and Poplar Point. Both seem to be on a good path, but with few details at this point.

12 comments