Posts about Upper 14th

The plan covers the 20-block stretch of 14th Street NW from Spring Road to Longfellow Street. It includes three distinct commercial nodes: Spring Road to Shepherd Street, Webster to Decatur Street, and Jefferson to Longfellow Street. (This portion of 14th Street has been referred to as "upper" 14th Street for as long as I can remember, but the Office of Planning is now referring to it as "central" 14th Street.)

The 2010 population of the study area was 14,370, showing an increase of about 300 people since the 2000 census. The population growth is encouraging, but the plan notes that because the population hasn't reached the level of the mid-20th century (the high population was 16,736 in 1960), the corridor has too much commercial space for the number of people that the spaces are meant to serve. That means greater density is necessary to make new businesses viable.

The plan points to Longfellow Flats, a newly renovated 14 unit condominium at 14th and Longfellow Streets, as one of a few projects that will help to attract more residents to the corridor. The site of the CK Motel, and 14th and Quincy Streets, is also slated for residential redevelopment.

Can the bus barn move?

The site with the largest potential for both commercial and residential redevelopment is the WMATA bus barn, along the eastern side of 14th Street from Buchanan to Decatur Street. Redeveloping the bus barn as a mixed-use project would likely catalyze the rest of that node and perhaps the rest of the corridor, but to redevelop the barn, WMATA has to find another location for the 175 buses that are currently housed there.

One idea, to construct a new bus barn on the site of the old Walter Reed hospital, has been an issue of much contention between residents of Ward 4's 14th Street and Georgia Avenue corridors. Both Mayor Gray and Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser have voiced opposition to that idea. As an alternative, the plan recommends excavating a level beneath the existing bus barn to house the buses, allowing for the above-ground structure to be redeveloped.

Another complication is that the bus barn is quite an attractive structure. Constructed in 1907 and designed by the prominent Washington architect Waddy Wood, the building is likely eligible for historic designation. Between this and the dilemma of finding an alternative for WMATA, the bus barn is likely to stay for at least the next decade.

In lieu of redeveloping the bus barn, the plan identifies 3 sites in the Webster-Decatur node that could serve as catalysts.

• The WMATA bus barn parking structure on the northern end of the bus barn property. This is not eligible for historic designation and therefore could be redeveloped for mixed-use within the next 5 years.

• DSK Mariam Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which owns the entire 4500 block of 14th Street with the exception of the Exxon gas station, has plans to construct a new sanctuary that will face 14th Street. It will include an Ethiopian cultural center on the Buchanan Street side.

• The Value Furniture store, the former home of the Park Theater, which opened in 1924 but shut its doors just four years later. As the second largest site (75,000 square feet) in the study area with single ownership, it has the best potential for redevelopment within the next 5 years. It could easily become 2 or 3 floors of residential space above ground floor retail, an ideal spot for a neighborhood-serving grocery store.

The plan recommends focusing on attracting unique retail, such as second hand shops, specialty food shops, and culinary incubators (the plan includes a photo of Boston's Crop Circle Kitchen culinary incubator as an example of what could be). The goal is to fill niches between the chain stores to the south in Columbia Heights and the proposed Walmart to the north in Brightwood.

Affordable space for artists?

The Jefferson-Longfellow Street node has its wide sidewalks, some as wide as 20 feet, that are perfect for pedestrian-oriented activities, such as a farmers' market. However, there's also a high commercial vacancy rate, which the proposed Walmart store on nearby Georgia Avenue will likely exacerbate.

The plan recommends focusing on arts-related uses in this area, with a focus on artists who have been priced out of other neighborhoods and who might be attracted to the area's relatively large spaces. OP recommends designating this area as an Arts Cluster and listing the node's vacant commercial spaces in the DC Creative Retail Space Bank in order to advertise their availability.

The area can build on its existing positive features, such as the mature tree canopy, attractive housing stock, and walkable neighborhood atmosphere. The plan makes several recommendations for improving the area's aesthetics while strengthening pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, as well as connectivity between the three commercial nodes.

Better transportation

A number of recommendations would improve mobility, including:

• Upgrade bus service. 14th Street is one of WMATA's Priority Corridors. Improvements like making traffic signals adapt to the buses, having people pay before boarding the bus, and more could speed up travel and make buses more reliable and productive.

• Add Capital Bikeshare stations. OP recommends placing a Capital Bikeshare station at or near the intersection of 14th and Kennedy Street during DDOT's next round of station installations.

• Increase car sharing options. To give residents a choice not to have to own or drive personal vehicles, OP recommends collaborating with DDOT to target off-street locations for car sharing companies. Two possible locations are the parking lot of DSK Mariam Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the parking lot of the Children's Medical Care Center (14th and Kennedy Street).

OP plans to create a task force of community residents and stakeholders who will help determine which recommendations are the highest priority. Community and business associations can also help find resources, programs, and grants to bring specific recommendations to fruition.

To give your comments on the plan, mail them to OP or (more likely) email Gizachew.Andargeh@dc.gov by February 3, 2012.

Cross-posted at The Brightwoodian.

Hopefully bike planner Jim Sebastian will be able to explain the value of this project to the commissioners. This recommendation was part of the Glover Park Transportation Study. Glover Park is in the adjacent ANC 3B, but the lanes would extend into 3D.

If you live in the area, it would be helpful to go voice your opinions about this topic. ANC commissioners listen more to individual local residents than you might think. One person who lives in the neighborhood participating on a semi-regular basis can change a lot of minds.

The meeting starts at 7 at Sibley Hospital, in the new Medical Building, 5215 Loughboro Road, NW.

Speaking of bike lanes, WABA is responding to Jack Evans' criticisms of the 15th Street bike lane by going to enjoy and appreciate it on Friday.

In Arlington, the Bicycle Advisory Council is hosting a film screening about European bicycle facilities, followed by a public discussion. That's Monday, March 7, in the auditorium of the Arlington central library, 1015 N. Quincy St. Doors open at 6:30 and the film starts at 7.

Montgomery County planning director Rollin Stanley is speaking about their zoning rewrite at Tuesday's monthly meeting of the Action Committee for Transit. The meeting is March 8, 7:30 pm at the Silver Spring Center, 8818 Georgia Ave.

Next Thursday, March 10, is the latest meeting for the Office of Planning's study of revitalizing retail in the Ward 4 portion of 14th Street, above Spring Road. That meeting is 6:30-8:30 pm at West Education Campus, 1338 Farragut St, NW.

Finally, that Saturday, Tommy Wells will speak to residents of Ward 7 about ways to improve bus service in the area. GGW contributors Veronica Davis and Kelsi Bracmort have written about the issues before, and are involved in organizing this event.

The meeting is March 12th, 11 am-12:30 pm at the Department of Employment Services, 4058 Minnesota Ave NE, in the large conference room on the 5th floor. DOES is very close to the Minnesota Avenue Metro.

14th Street between Spring Road and Longfellow Street contains three main retail nodes identified in the study. From the south, the first is between Spring Road and Shepherd Street; the second, centered on WMATA's bus barn, is between Webster and Decatur streets; and the third, between Jefferson and Longfellow streets, is centered on the intersection with Colorado Avenue.

Project consultants presented on residential and non-retail potential, retail conditions and concepts for streetscape possibilities.

Streetsense's Heather Arnold talked about retail strategies for the corridor. She performed an inventory of existing retail services in the corridor and analyzed spending habits by residents, area employees, and visitors to see what types of purchases currently being made outside the neighborhood could instead be made on 14th Street.

Arnold noted that retail along the corridor should serve a different purpose than Walmart or Target. Instead of competing on price or selection, retailers must serve a different need by being representative of the neighborhood and offering convenience and quality service. There is little market demand to construct new retail space in the area, Arnold said, but there will be normal retail turnover in the next decade.

The retail node near the WMATA bus barn seems strongly positioned to fill neighborhood needs. A small grocery could serve as an anchor for the area to keep more retail dollars in the neighborhood.

Because it is a local-serving retail strip not far from big-box retailers, this node shares many parallels with Mt. Pleasant Street, a revitalization project Arnold and Ferretti are also working on with DC Office of Planning. Arnold noted that attempting to attract customers from across the city "would cause more problems than it would solve," leading to potential parking and noise issues. In addition to neighborhood residents, employees at the bus barn already form a base of customers for retail in this area.

Analysis for the northernmost node, centered on Colorado Avenue, had to be reset after the plans for Walmart were announced. Because proximity to Walmart would significantly impact what kind of retail could be successful at this end of the corridor, Arnold recommended that the area build upon the relocation of renowned artist Sam Gilliam to the neighborhood and build an arts cluster, creating a destination for unique products that have no overlap with Walmart's offerings.

This concept for this type of arts cluster is consistent with Office of Planning's own Creative Action Agenda, which seeks to foster artistic and creative industries within the District.

Abby Ferretti of Partners for Economic Solutions presented a study on the market in the corridor. Her analysis examined supply and demand for residential and non-retail commercial space within the corridor.

Ferretti identified three market demographics that might play an increasingly important role in the neighborhood: millennials drawn to walkable urban neighborhoods; Latino families that expect to see increased income in the coming years; and single women looking to purchase residential units.

In the next decade, Ferretti forecast that the 14th Street corridor would see 300 new rental units and 120 new for-sale residential units, created through either new construction or conversion. Because the area is not a regional office or retail destination, Ferretti expects that the corridor would see modest growth in the amount of non-retail commercial space, growing by 18,960 square feet over the next decade.

Since the area is a quieter residential neighborhood that is convenient to downtown but off the beaten path for tourists, one possibility for new non-retail businesses is bed and breakfasts. Ferretti cited a cluster of B&B's along 12th Street NE in Brookland as an example for the corridor.

Otto Condon of ZGF Architects & Planners also presented at the meeting. Noting that neighborhoods in this area are generally oriented north-south along major streets such as 14th Street and Georgia Avenue, he raised some possibilities for strengthening east-west connections between these corridors.

There are specific sites within the three retail nodes that offer opportunities for streetscape improvements, such as parking lots near the WMATA bus barn, surface parking and traffic islands near Colorado Avenue and some building facades north of Spring Road. Specific streetscape recommendations will be made later in the study process.

The study's southern boundary is Spring Road. The commercial zone in this area—of Tivoli North controversy fame—extends south to Monroe Street in Columbia Heights. This plan will address the connection to Columbia Heights, even though it is officially focused on an area entirely within Ward 4.

Heather Arnold noted that the commercial area south of Shepherd Street attracts customers from Columbia Heights. "While we aren't suggesting that this area becomes some kind of Columbia Heights North, we are suggesting it would be foolish...not to benefit from that customer draw a couple blocks to the south," she said. The major challenge to drawing customers northward, she noted, is the derelict block between Meridian Place and Oak Street.

Despite stopping short at the Ward 4 boundary, the 14th Street Revitalization Strategy is taking a holistic approach to revitalizing retail nodes that are not usually in the spotlight of the city's economic development agenda.

If you are interested in getting involved as this plan progresses, contact Giz Andargeh, Project Manager, at (202) 724-4314 or Malaika Abernathy, Ward 4 Neighborhood Planner, at (202) 442-7600.

The streetcar has widespread public support, and despite being a midday meeting, the tenor of the hearing will send a strong signal to Chairman and Mayor-Elect Vince Gray as he makes tough budget decisions. You don't need to say anything profound or fact-laden; just say why you want the streetcar built. To get on the list, contact April Hawkins-Mason by at ahawkinsmason@dccouncil.us or 202-724-8195 no later than Monday at 5.

The other place we need a strong turnout is for the parking zoning hearing. The Office of Planning and DDOT have worked hard to find reasonable parking regulations that still respect businesses' and residents' desires, but also to remove the dangerous incentives in zoning to build too much parking and lock newly developed areas into excessive car-dependence.

You can say whatever you want, but I'm going to say I encourage the Zoning Commission to support the recommendation and choose DDOT's revised proposal for maximums, which lies between their original suggestion and OP's. That hearing is 6:30 pm Monday at 441 4th Street, NW (One Judiciary Square), 2nd floor. To sign up to testify, call 202-727-6311.

Tomorrow are two meetings on transportation east of the river. At 10 am is a meeting for the Far Northeast Livability Study, one of DDOT's projects around the city to examine streets in a multimodal way and improve performance and safety for all modes. This one encompasses the part of Ward 7 north of East Capitol Street and takes place at Kelly Miller Middle School, 301 49th Street, NE.

Then at 1, DDOT will hold the second of its two Circulator meetings, where it will talk to residents about the Circulator expansion study. That will occur at the Benning Library, 3935 Benning Rd, NE.

In DC's northern section, the second community meeting on revitalizing upper 14th (north of Spring Road) is Wednesday, November 17, 6:30-8 pm at Kingsbury Day School, 5000 14th Street, NW in the Great Room.

If you live west of both rivers, don't feel left out. There are meetings on plans in Arlington and Falls Church involving parking, streetcars, and buses too.

Arlington is holding two open houses on the East Falls Church Area Plan. This plan was the result of years of staff and task force input, and was officially presented to the Arlington County Board back in July 2010.

The board asked staff to address some specific points and seek community input and then return for final approval. How much parking to build, and how much to design the area around walking (as Arlington wants) versus automobility (as VDOT wants), are some of the key questions.

The open houses are Monday, November 15, 7 pm at Tuckahoe Elementary School, 6550 North 26th Street in the Multi-Purpose Room, and Saturday, November 20, 1 pm at Resurrection Evangelical Lutheran Church, 6201 Washington Boulevard in the Parish Hall.

If you'd rather talk streetcars, there are also two public meetings on the Columbia Pike streetcar. One is also Monday, November 15, 7 pm at Goodwin House at Bailey's Crossroads, 3440 S. Jefferson Street, Falls Church in the auditorium. The other is Thursday, November 18, 7 pm at Walter Reed Community Center, 2909 16th Street S., Arlington in the Multipurpose Room.

Then there's buses. WMATA is studying improvements to the 23A/C (McLean-Crystal City) and 25A/C/D (Ballston-Bradlee-Pentagon) lines. The next public meeting is 6:30-8:30 pm at Shirlington Public Library, 4200 Campbell Avenue in Arlington.

Finally, NCPC is starting the process to update the federal part of the Comprehensive Plan, which influences federal land use choices and transportation options for federal workers. The first part to discuss is transportation, and NCPC is holding a public forum Tuesday, 5:30-7:30 pm at their offices, 401 9th Street, NW, Suite 500. We'll also be having a live chat with NCPC planners at noon on Tuesday, so stay tuned.

The Arts Coalition for Dupont Underground will discuss their plans to turn the old trolley tunnels under Dupont Circle into a performance and exhibition space. Up the Red Line, DDOT will discuss pedestrian and bicycle safety in their Rock Creek West II Livability study.

In the aforementioned hard-to-name 14th Street neighborhood, the Office of Planning will talk about revitalizing retail. And farther east, the Historic Preservation Office, HPO, and Councilmember Muriel Bowser will discuss the Takoma Theatre, a landmark that's become a controversial flashpoint on historic preservation versus development debates.

If the federal sphere is more your thing, NCPC is hosting White House officials to talk about how agencies are responding to President Obama's directive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. GSA has done a lot; I'd like someone to ask why the Park Service, which ought to be one of the greenest agencies, isn't pulling its weight.

Finally, planners will present their final concepts for reusing much of the Walter Reed site. The details have already been reported, including a number of nonprofits and a good amount of retail which the local ANC nonetheless opposes. The Post has a map. And how much parking will it need?

Meanwhile, planning for another large parcel of land in DC's northern section is just getting started: the McMillan Sand Filtration Site at North Capitol and Irving. Stalled for a while due to the economy, the developers are starting a series of public meetings Saturday at 10 am. I'd expect the community opposition to building anything to come roaring back in force, so if you live nearby, stop by to weigh in.

Speaking of community controversy, the debate over a Lincoln Park CaBi station will feature prominently at the local ANC's meeting on Monday. A lot of us were unhappy DDOT's bike planners simply deleted the station from the map after a few people complained instead of soliciting input from others, many of whom were excited about the station.

Now, the ANC is giving everyone that chance, at 7 pm Monday at Capitol Hill Towers, 900 G Street, NE. If you support the bike sharing station (or if you don't), show up to make your voice heard. Otherwise, DDOT will likely decide based on the opinions of others.

Wednesday is another bevy of community presentations on local projects for residents of the upper half of DC, this time about streets in upper Northwest and upper 14th. West of Rock Creek, DDOT will present its findings on its Rock Creek West II Livability Study, which looks at transportation safety on key streets. East of the park, the Office of Planning will discuss retail revitalization on 14th north of Spring Road.

There's also a public forum on Maryland transportation priorities at 2:30 pm at SHA's headquarters district office in Prince George's, but based on the time of the meeting, SHA doesn't seem to really want you to go.

After all those meetings, it's time for some fun. The NoMA BID and Dandies & Quaintrelles (who ran the Seersucker Social) are holding a Retro Day as part of NoMA's three-week public festival Zestfest. Retro Day, on Friday, October 22, features a classic bike show, badminton, and a Beatles rock band at the Loree Grand, 2nd and L Streets, NE. We hear Tommy Wells is going to be one of the judges of the retro bike show.

And the next day, tour DC's West End neighborhood in the lastest CSG walking tour. It's Saturday, October 23, 10 am at the Trader Joe's. The tour will show off a number of exciting developments, a gas station with a green roof, and even the place Michael Jordan once lived.

If you live in Northern Virginia and are wondering why there aren't more events in your areas on the calendar, you've got one: the Northern Virginia Streetcar Coalition annual meeting, Thursday, October 28 at 7 pm at NVCC Alexandria.

But if you'd like to see more Northern Virginia events on our calendar, or more of anything, submit them as tips or email tips@ggwash.org and we'll add them.