Posts about U Street

Capital Bikeshare can't meet everyone's commute needs, and shouldn't

Other riders have stopped using Capital Bikeshare for commuting because there isn't enough capacity at the peak. Ravindranath interviews Aaron Ordower, who gave up trying to CaBi from 16th and U to the World Bank because he couldn't count on finding a bike. But in this case, while it would be nice for CaBi to be able to serve his needs, it's less reasonable to expect that.

Officials point out that Capital Bikeshare isn't really meant to be a commuting tool for large numbers of people. Jim Sebastian said, "This is why many members buy/use their own bike if they know they are going to work and back, or on a similar round trip." Ordower decided to walk to work instead. And that's fine.

One follow-up question for Ordower might be, why not bike using a private bicycle? Does he just not have one? Does the World Bank not provide good enough bike parking?

Capital Bikeshare leads to more private bicycling

I personally started biking a lot more often around DC once Capital Bikeshare launched, since it provided an easy way to take a spontaneous or one-way trip and not have to feel forced to then bike home. In later years, while I've kept my membership (it's still cheap and useful on occasion), I hardly use it. Instead, I use my own bike.

I'm not the only one. Chris Eatough, Arlington's bicycle program manager, says that according to a survey of Capital Bikeshare users last year, "82% of respondents reported increased use [of their personal bikes] since joining Capital Bikeshare, and 70% said that Capital Bikeshare was an important reason."

Bikeshare serves as an introduction to bicycling for many people. That's why it's a shame that Simon Pak, who manages The Bike Rack at 14th and Q, had more critical words for bikeshare riders. "Since Capital Bikeshare started, any incident [I've witnessed] in bike-to-bike collisions have been with Capital Bikeshare riders. They're the most inexperienced riders emulating more experienced riders," he told Ravindrath.

Though Pak also says 1 in 10 of his customers are looking to move from Capital Bikeshare's heavy bikes to a lighter and faster personal bike. It sounds like bikeshare is a great source of potential business for bike shops.

Bikeshare's strengths complement transit

Still, bike sharing is not the same as bicycling. This is why a lot of people get confused about bikeshare if they aren't familiar with it. Some New Yorkers expressed shock that a 4-hour ride would rack up $77 in late fees on their Citibike system. As those of us who've used bikeshare know, people don't ride a bikeshare bike for 4 hours, or if they do, they just return it every half hour and reset the clock.

Bike sharing is, in many ways, more like transit: it transports you from fixed stations to other fixed stations. However, it's also different from transit. Transit has more capacity at peak times when there are more vehicles. It costs money to run a vehicle, so you run it when there's demand. Therefore, bus lines in particular are far more useful at times when there are a lot of buses. At some times of day, they don't run at all.

Bike sharing is the opposite. It has a fixed capacity that fills up quickly, but is always available. Bike sharing is most useful off-peak, when the stations aren't filling up or emptying out so fast. It's always available at night.

For this reason, we can think of it actually as a complement to short-distance buses. Someone who lives on a bus line might find that the bus is a better choice during rush, but bikeshare is better middays. Bikeshare also offers more flexibility, since you can ride to any other station, but isn't as good to travel long distances, because it takes physical effort.

New York's Citibike will launch next weekend, and many observers predict the silly arguments against it will mainly evaporate, as they did here in DC when Capital Bikeshare launched. Even so, some people will always be adjusting to what kinds of travel bikeshare works well for, and where it's less ideal. That's the case for every mode of travel.

Thanks to Capital Bikeshare, we have another mode, one that neatly fills in some needs that transit and walking don't perfectly serve. It happens to be a mode that's been especially cheap to deploy. Personal bikes, Zipcar, car2go, street hailed taxis, Uber, buses, trains, and walking all meet some people's needs and not others, and that's natural.

The crowd was as diverse as the community, with life-long residents and newcomers alike speaking in opposition to the moratorium. Fewer than 10 people spoke in support of the moratorium. Comments were impassioned, but civil.

According to the meeting announcement from the ANCs,

The moratorium, as proposed, would seek to prohibit all future liquor licenses with the exception of full service grocery stores, it seeks to cap CT and CN licenses as well, and has been requested to be a 5-year moratorium. The boundaries of the moratorium as proposed and filed with ABRA, extend 1800 feet in either direction from Ben's Chili Bowl. This goes north to Clifton Street, south to R Street, east to just before Georgia Avenue. between 7th and 8th streets, and west to just west of 16th Street. overlapping New Hampshire Avenue. NW.

The community discussed a liquor license moratorium for the neighborhood in 2009, when a committee of residents studied the "ARTS" zoning overlay for 14th and U streets and made recommendations to modify it. There were 8 public meetings, and the 27 area ANC commissioners advised increasing the number of liquor licenses in the area.

Moratorium brings harm in Adams Morgan

Business leaders in Adams Morgan are now preparing for an upcoming March 2014 review of the moratorium in their community. A major nightlife destination, Adams Morgan is often invoked as a sort of boogeyman for policy impacting commercial districts, a warning of what might happen on U Street if something is not done to curb issues of noise, trash and crime.

But along 18th Street, the heart of Adams Morgan, a moratorium means that the kinds of businesses that might actually mitigate some of these issues—like higher end restaurants—aren't able to move into vacant spaces unless they wish to purchase an existing liquor license, something that can cost up to $75,000 in the market the moratorium has created. In 2010, the Alcoholic Beverage Control board unanimously lifted a similar moratorium in Georgetown.

There are better solutions than a moratorium

Those of us who have served the U Street community understand that there are serious issues that need to be addressed as our commercial district continues to thrive. But a liquor license moratorium serves as a blunt instrument in a situation where more precision is needed.

There will certainly be cases when a proposed liquor establishment is not the right fit for the space it wishes to occupy. The community will often support an establishment but with certain caveats that can go in a legally-binding "settlement agreement," which serves as a rider to the liquor license. We already have tools to address these issues. But we also need to pursue long-term solutions to the other impacts when residents and businesses are situated so closely.

We should seek funding for hospitality initiatives that train and support business owners. We should support opportunities to create more daytime foot traffic that would support retailers such as offices or hotels. And we should come together around green initiatives that would reduce trash, noise and pollution.

A liquor license moratorium is not the solution to all of our problems. The community has spoken on this issue in the past as it did last night, and it's time to put it to rest so we can focus our attention on real solutions.

Real collaboration is what helped U Street begin to thrive more than 10 years ago and it is what will help us continue to grow in a way that fosters business growth while also making our neighborhood a great place to live.

The composition has been organized with three vertically-oriented towers so that it doesn't look squat or horizontal; the corner balconies and paired windows help reinforce the vertical emphasis. The rhythm and proportions of fenestration on the residential floors is consistent with historic apartment buildings, while the first floor is designed and articulated to reinforce the street's pedestrian scale and retail character.

A number of nearby residents, however, objected that it was too large compared to nearby townhouses. The board split fairly evenly, with a number of members suggesting deleting a floor. Graham Davidson, who calls buildings "too tall" with great frequency, praised the building as beautifully designed, but still felt compelled to come down on the side of lopping a floor off despite the fact that it would disrupt the elegant proportions.

Chair Gretchen Pfaehler convinced the board to simply ask JBG and Schwartz to try to do something on the 13th Street side, farthest from other large buildings. This week, they will go back to the board with a revised design that makes some small tweaks, but ones that staff believe have addressed the board's concerns.

The rounded corner at 13th and U is one story shorter, and there is a more pronounced cornice line at 7 stories that runs along the whole side of the building. Balconies along the top floor in "hyphen" spaces between the center, left and right "tower" elements are deeper as well, and on the back side facing Wallach Place, there are more balconies to break up the solid mass of the building.

The staff report says:

The revisions illustrate how relatively small changes in massing can substantially change the perceived height, weight and bulk of a large scale building. While harder to appreciate in photographs of the model ... these changes result in a very different reading of the building. ... The result is a building which reads lower, lighter and more varied at its roofline, and which relates more compatibly with its surrounding context.

I thought the last design related compatibly enough, but this design ought to placate the board, if members can look beyond the simple number of floors.

This change also clearly illustrates how developers and architects can address concerns without actually shrinking the building very much. Neighbors unhappy with a proposal often focus on its total height, but a fairly short building can look imposing while a much taller one does not (just look at some of the beautiful apartment buildings on Connecticut Avenue, for instance).

Rather than pushing for fewer floors, neighbors should push for better design and small changes at the corners that can make a difference in a neighborhood's look and feel. HPRB, meanwhile, should praise the architect for these changes and get the project on its way to being built as soon as possible.

Update: HPRB voted unanimously to support the revised design.

Any discussion of a local ban on any particular use needs to consider where that use is most appropriate. It's not enough to just say "I don't want more of X in my neighborhood." We have to plan where we do want that use, make sure it can happen there, and then plan what we want in the banned location instead.

Malls can use their control in ways neighborhoods can't

One of the advantages suburban malls have over urban neighborhoods is total control of the merchant mix. Mall owners know that it's important to have a wide variety of stores, so the best malls typically lease spaces to shops that will improve their mix, rather than those that will pay the highest rent.

When you're at a mall and Verizon has a big luxurious shop, but AT&T and T-Mobile only have little carts, it isn't because AT&T and T-Mobile can't afford to outbid that shoe store down the hall; it's because the mall owner will only lease out one big space to cell phone providers.

That isn't limiting the free market. On the contrary, it's taking a broad long term view of the market.

Urban neighborhoods usually can't be as selective, because every building has a unique owner. Mall owners are concerned about the overall profit of the entire mall, so they can turn down high leases on individual storefronts if they think it will pay off with a little more business everywhere else. But if you only own one individual storefront, you're going to maximize it with the highest-paying tenant you can find.

That sometimes results in neighborhoods with a bad mix of stores. We certainly see that in DC, where many of our retail strips have a glut of bank branches, cell phone stores, or pharmacies.

If used carefully, a moratorium can help level the playing field for urban neighborhoods with a lot of small land owners. That only works if the neighborhood is desirable enough to fill all its storefronts even with limits, and if the moratorium is more a way to promote something new rather than limit something old.

But moratoriums shouldn't be tossed around lightly. The key is to plan for what you do want and then make it happen. Moratoriums fail when they're used without a master plan guiding them towards a specific goal.

And sometimes, it's worth having a high ratio of certain things. For example, as a regionally-significant nightlife district, it's acceptable for U Street to have a lot of bars.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

The 8-story building would replace the one-story Rite Aid-anchored strip mall at the corner of 13th and U. JBG, the property's owner, wants to build a distinctive residential building in a classic style that evokes many of the large buildings on streets like Connecticut Avenue.

JBG had originally proposed a hotel for the corner, but changed it to residences based on neighborhood pushback against a hotel. They also made the building slightly shorter and set back the top 2 floors. They also stepped the building down in the rear, toward the Wallach Place row houses across the alley to the south.

Based on these changes, ANC 1B approved the design, and Historic Preservation Office staff also were satisfied with the design, after working extensively with the architect. Preservation officer Steve Callcott explained at yesterday's hearing that since the U Street historic district was created, there has been debate over whether tall buildings belong on U Street at all, given the shorter row houses.

Ultimately, he said, most preservation staff and board members concluded that taller buildings did belong. After all, there are 100-year-old buildings of such heights near row houses in many other parts of the city today.

We don't tend to think of [the tall buildings] as incompatible with the row houses. We think of them as simply a different building type that relates very well and creates a dynamic urban environment, and I think our feeling is that this proposal would do the same thing. It's without a doubt larger than the buildings around it. It's unabashedly an apartment building. But the way the design has been detailed and organized and articulated, despite the disparity in scale and height, it could be a very appropriate neighbor and addition to the U Street historic district.

Some residents of Wallach Place, however, continued to argue that the building should lose one or two more floors. The site is not very deep, and there are smaller row houses immediately across. Since the building is to the north, it won't actually affect the light on their yards, but they objected to the scale of this building compared to others nearby.

Most preservation board members, while they roundly complimented architect David Schwarz on the design, verbally struggled with their decisions but ultimately couldn't agree with the building's size. Architect Graham Davidson, who frequently suggests removing one more floor from buildings that come before him, continued this pattern, but with trepidation.

The building would be a lot better if it were a story lower. The reason I'm conflicted about this is that there are other buildings in the neighborhood which are as high as this building, and have been approved, and have been built, and they're not nearly as good. And it pains me to have to consider penalizing this building, which has been designed so carefully and will be a much more successful building, and to require that it be reduced in size when there are other bldgs that are this height and aren't as succcessful.

Davidson also talked about how the overall proportions of the building were so elegant that any reduction would disrupt the overall look of the building. Likewise, just cutting it down on 13th Street, which is the most residential end, would make it unbalanced and asymmetric.

Nancy Metzger noted that the Ellington, a building of similar height, has greater setbacks. Where it borders townhouses, HPRB forced it to have a smaller end piece. But here, Davidson noted, it's difficult to make one end look like a separate building. (Personally, that end piece has always looked awkward to me, like we almost built a whole building but not quite.)

Metzger seemed to feel she needed to support residents in asking the architect to remove more from the building, but couldn't figure out what. "It is a very elegant building," she said, "And it is very hard as I've been sitting here to say, okay, what is out of it? And I guess I would come down to the point where I think maybe a story needs to come off maybe because it is so big."

Bob Sonderman, the archaeologist member on the board, said,

I just feel like the little country boy from Capitol Hill. We're just not used to big buildings,and this is a really big building. I am fully in support of the architectural design. It's fantastic, it's gorgeous, the proportions are wonderful. It's just a really attractive building, and I think the U Street corridor should be pleased to have an architect of this quality to design a building in this corridor.

It's a huge improvement over many other buildings that this board, and me, have approved in the past. I'm loathe to suggest a reduction in height, but I think that would help a bit. The 13th st facade is great, I love the curves and the corners, but that is a long facade of work there. It's big; but it's pretty... big.

Andrew Aurbach, on the other hand, raised a question of whether it was appropriate for the board to be trying to decide the overall size. "Maybe these are more zoning concerns than they are preservation concerns," he said, referring to a frequent statement by board members that they only consider what's historic and don't get into zoning matters. Aurbach suggested finding a way to adjust the 13th Street end to reduce the impression of height without actually shrinking the building.

Newly-elected board chair Gretchen Pfaehler also wasn't disturbed by the overall density, but wanted some significant changes. She suggested the architect add more of a "reveal" which conceals some of the mass and girth of the building from some angles.

The traditional style of the building draws upon the critical details, the proportions, the window openings [of precedent in the area]. it's a beautiful building. I think that to me it's a matter of the height along the edge which gets into scaling and massing.

I would push to go just a little bit farther in terms of reveal and pulling away, not only from the pedestrian perception. One thing that makes the Ellington, the Mayflower, the hotel on 14th and K that we just landmarked, even though very large buildings, do have this reveal.

I would propose to my colleagues on the board that I don't think it's an issue of the height as much the proximity of the height along the length of the street. I'm comfortable with the height and I wouldn't direct the applicants to remove a story, but there needs to be more variation in the proximity of the heights to the street. That would give you relief but allow you to have the density that you need.

Pfaehler also acknowledged how the board has to balance "preservation" concerns with the needs of a growing city, especially in this rapidly changing neighborhood.

It's not just the preservation of the heritage that's there, but there needs to be viable infill that provides the affordable vitality that these communities need in order to keep them moving & living. Otherwise we have a museum set, and that's not what DC is about.

Pfaehler proposed a resolution to give the applicant the direction she had outlined, which passed unanimously. It's not entirely clear, but that seems to mean that they don't have to take off any floors, but should look for ways to give the 13th Street end some architectural features which break up its height a bit and let the view people see evolve as they approach on 13th Street from the south.

Ultimately, this case highlighted very starkly the different pressures within preservation for large-scale new construction. How much of it is about a good architectural design that respects the historic context? How much is HPRB just another hurdle which forces projects to shrink down a little more from what they already had in negotiating with the ANC? How much do board members want to actually be making zoning decisions even though they supposedly aren't?

Here, we had a building which the neighborhood generally approved of, the preservation office supported, and for which board members had nothing but the highest praise for the design. Yet 4 members still felt an irresistable pressure to make the building smaller.

Pfaehler might have turned them away from that course for now, and perhaps the architect can accommodate their concerns in a way that doesn't disrupt the opportunity to create a building that future residents will cherish as a highlight of the neighborhood rather than another chimeric compromise.

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, 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."

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."

The 29-year-old Parisian is known around the world for his unique style, a mixture of photography and graffiti that involves blowing up photographs and pasting them on street corners and buildings.

The mural uses Ernest Wither's photo of the 1968 Memphis strike. The black-and-white image depicts dozens of striking workers and civil rights activists holding up signs that read "I Am a Man."

"This says it all: 'I am a man,'" JR told the Washington Post on Wednesday. "They created such a strong and powerful image that still resonates today, but in another context. Still, people say, 'I am a man,' but they care less about the color [of their skin]. It's 'we are humans, we are here, we want to exist.' And I like that, I think that's pretty powerful."

JR and 3 assistants began work on the mural early Tuesday morning using globs of white paste and rolling out strips of the massive photo. In the past, the semi-anonymous artist has worked both legally and illegally.

This time, he stayed within legal boundaries, with the help of Lauren Gentile, who founded the 14th Street art gallery Contemporary Wing. Gentile facilitated JR's work, with the permission of the unoccupied building's owner, Lori Graham.

"In the right context, street art can start a dialogue about important issues; this one to me is dignity," Gentile said. "The image is installed on a building just two doors down from the historic Post Office for African-Americans and on a street corner just below the center of the 1968 Washington, D.C. riots."

The context has more than historical meaning, as Gentile noted: "You could even go beyond the history and see the image in its new life, now currently in the center of many major developments on 14th street with all of the hundreds of real-time labors working hard nearby. The image, in its new context, has the power to reshape public experience, but how it is reshaped can only be personally decided by its audience."

The mural has already drawn rave reviews from local residents. Its black-and-white faces have turned heads and brought life to a normally dingy and run-down façade. Regular passersby may appreciate having a beautiful piece of art to look at, but a handful of dedicated JR followers have made pilgrimages to U Street just to see the piece.

When one fan arrived at the building on Wednesday and introduced herself to JR, the artist told her to pick up a brush and start painting, according to the Post.

"When you're in New York, people don't say, 'we're happy you came to New York.' In DC, people thank you for coming here and bringing art here," JR told a reporter.

JR's art has graced streets from China and Kenya to Europe and New York City. He has even worked on the wall that separates Israel and Palestine.

JR has long called city streets "the largest art gallery in the world." Notably, the new installation is one of only a handful JR has ever done in the United States.

Because his murals are held together with paste and subject to the wear and tear of weather, there's no telling how long JR's mural at 14th and T will last. It could begin peeling tomorrow or stay in pristine condition for months.

No matter how long the mural survives, it has already done its job: making passersby stop and think, and reminding them how lucky we all are to live in such a vibrant city.