Posts about Ward 5

Gallaudet University, a Metro station, an elementary school, homes and businesses line the 6-lane road. It has very narrow sidewalks which don't meet Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, and no parked cars or street trees to serve as buffers.

This road has seen many deaths over the past few years. Most recently, 71-year-old Ruby Whitfield was killed while walking across Florida Avenue NE in a marked crosswalk. The driver, a 32-year-old Annapolis man, was reportedly drunk and speeding, and fled the scene. MPD quickly apprehended him.

While the section of Florida Avenue from 2nd Street NE to West Virginia Avenue NE is 6 lanes wide, the block where Ms. Whitfield was killed has fewer driving lanes, with relatively wider sidewalks and street trees. The driver had just crossed West Virginia Avenue into this adjacent block.

At a vigil on Florida Avenue a few days after Ms. Whitfield died, Mayor Gray committed to quickly installing a new traffic signal at the intersection with 11th Street NE, and allowing parking at all times on this block to reduce the road to one lane per direction. This might have saved Ms. Whitfield's life, and is a positive first step, but it is not nearly enough.

Photograph by John Nelson reproduced with permission.

The road is not adequate for growing pedestrian usage

Pedestrian traffic has increased significantly in this area as the NoMa area grows and new attractions such as Union Market open. Florida Avenue is also home to Two Rivers Public Charter School and Gallaudet University. The NoMa-Gallaudet Metro station, which opened in 2004 one block from Florida Avenue, has the fastest growth rate of any in the system.

The sidewalks in many areas, especially on the south side of the street, are often only 2 feet wide. Numerous obstructions such as light poles and sign posts reduce the effective width even further. The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) repainted some of the crosswalks in 2011, but this is not as helpful as creating actual ADA-compliant sidewalks with proper widths and ramps.

Photos by Yancey Burns.

For the thousands of students, staff, and visitors to Gallaudet University, the narrow sidewalks are particularly hazardous because it's not possible to communicate in sign language while walking single-file down a narrow sidewalk.

Hansel Bauman, the University's Director of Campus Planning & Design (and a resident of the Trinidad neighborhood) has led an initiative called "DeafSpace" to create architectural design guidelines that quantify ways to enhance communication and livability. It is ironic and sad that the main street to campus does not provide for the needs of their community.

The volume of cars traveling on Florida Avenue NE does not justify the current road configuration, particularly because this street is already narrower for most of its length. DDOT & the Office of Planning have written numerous studies and reports over the past few years that recommend reducing the number of travel lanes and installing wider sidewalks on Florida Avenue.

Most recently, the NoMa Neighborhood Access Study & Transportation Management Plan included this project on its "Immediate Action List" for completion within 24 months. That study was published in early 2010, and to date DDOT has not put forth any preliminary plans or come close to starting construction.

Sam Zimbabwe, DDOT Associate Director for Policy, Planning, and Sustainability, said in an email that DDOT is "starting a planning study from New York to West Virginia with the goal of improving safety and operations, and that will explore the ability to reduce the number of travel lanes."

The planning study won't wrap up until the middle of 2014. Then, if funding is available, DDOT could potentially begin design and construction. However, all of this would take several years. Ms. Whitfield's neighbors and friends, and everyone else who uses this street, should not continue to wait.

Aerial view. Top: "Vertical/Civic" option. Bottom: "Horizontal/Podium" option.

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) showed earlier concept designs to HPRB and CFA in November. CFA recommended "a more urban and civic condition of a public building," while HPRB wanted it to be as small and unobtrosive as possible.

Therefore, DDOT has developed 2 concepts. One has more vertical architectural elements designed to give the building a "civic" look, while the other has a more horizontal feel dubbed "podium." Both are the same height, but the "horizontal/podium" design sets the 3rd floor back from the front façade, while "vertical/civic" does not.

View from Benning Road. Top: "Vertical/Civic" option. Bottom: "Horizontal/Podium" option.

These designs look much better than the previous ones. Historic Preservation Office staff, in their report, say that the architects have better related the building to Spingarn High School by using a brick veneer, preserving certain sight lines to Spingarn, and creating a border of green space around the perimeter.

It's too bad DDOT wasn't able to locate the building on the nearby RFK parking lots. Streetcar planners should have started pursuing this option with the federal government sooner, but there's no guarantee they ever could have gotten permission; the National Park Service is fairly jealous about keeping "recreational" land free of buildings even if that "recreation" right now is just empty parking space for a stadium.

At the MoveDC kickoff forum, Meg Maguire of the Committee of 100 made the sensible suggestion that DDOT plan locations for other car barns early, so that other communities have more chances to participate in designing them, and so that there's time to work more thoroughly to pursue the most appropriate sites.

26th Street elevation. Top: "Vertical/Civic" option. Bottom: "Horizontal/Podium" option.

HPRB members will be tempted to block the building because they wish it could be elsewhere, but that's not their standard. This building is compatible with the adjacent historic ones and should go forward, though if HPRB members have suggestions to improve the design, it's certainly worth getting the best example of a civic building that's practical to build here.

DDOT is holding a public meeting Tuesday to update the community on the streetcar's progress. It's 6:30-8 pm at Miner Elementary, 601 15th Street, NE.

When the ANCs were redrawn last year, I was part of the team that created the map for Ward 5 which the DC Council adopted.

We made a serious effort to push for geographically-smaller ANCs than the 3 large ones the ward had previously. One significant reason was to help residents reach meetings without driving long distances. We purposely drew what ultimately became ANC 5D to unite dense, urban, rowhouse neighborhoods in the southeastern part of the ward into a compact commission.

There are multiple community spaces that could house meetings within the ANC: Gallaudet University, churches, two recreation centers, multiple schools, and other locations open to the public. It would be easy to find a place where residents could walk a couple blocks to interact with their elected representatives.

Last month, the newly-seated ANC met for the first time at the Metropolitan Police Department's Fifth District headquarters, on Bladensburg Road in the Arboretum neighborhood. While located outside of the new ANC, this location is within the boundaries of the former ANC 5B, which included all of the new ANC 5D as well as more area to the north (Arboretum, Gateway, Brentwood, Langdon, and part of Brookland).

It made sense to hold the meeting at a familiar location, and I assumed this would be a temporary location until the commission chose a regular meeting space inside the new ANC's boundaries.

Unfortunately, at this meeting, the commission announced they would continue to meet regularly at the police station. They gave spurious reasons:

• Meetings would be held at the police station because people's emotions run high at these ANC events and it would be good to have the police nearby in case things get out of hand. If this were the case, why don't other ANCs all hold meetings in police stations?
  
• There is nowhere in the ANC that could hold the thousands of people who live in the ANC all at once. I have attended ANC meetings for years now, and I've never seen attendance higher than a couple dozen people. As noted above, there are many places in the neighborhoods that could hold ANC meetings.
  
• Everyone drives to these meetings anyway, so it doesn't matter if it's far from the homes in the constituent neighborhoods. This is the most facetious reasoning of all. It's a chicken-and-egg situation—people drive to the meetings now because there's no easier way to get to the meetings. Biking is difficult because the most direct route (Bladensburg Road) is a dangerous six-lane arterial with speeding commuters and a long, steep hill.

  Only one bus route (the B2) runs up to the police station from where most of the population lives, and it doesn't run frequently in the evenings when meetings are held. The end result is that those without cars have multiple reasons to not attend ANC meetings.

  According to the latest Census estimates, approximately 51% of the households in ANC 5D have a car. By holding the meetings in a place where driving an automobile is the most logical way to attend, the ANC is selecting for a certain type of resident, and not receiving the input of at least half of the community.

The ANC did announce that they would hold some meetings inside the commission boundaries at some point, but there's no reason not to hold them all there. They should rescind as soon as possible the decision to hold meetings at the police station. It's the smart, sensible, democratic thing to do.

Rob Pitingolo, NeighborhoodInfo DC, assisted with data for this post.

Fortunately, many organizations have had success developing affordable housing in Ward 5. One of the smallest is Open Arms Housing, which provides permanent housing and wrap-around services to 11 chronically homeless and mentally ill women.

Marilyn Kresky-Wolff is the Director of Open Arms, and she spoke at the Housing Town Hall about the success her program has had in the lives of these women: none of their residents have returned to homelessness. Two of the residents spoke about getting back on their feet and rebuilding their lives.

Open Arms Housing, like many other projects in Ward 5, have succeeded by paying attention to the needs of the community they serve. This was particularly important when they rehabilitated the 258 units at Edgewood Terrace VI, an extensive complex just across Rhode Island Avenue on 4th Street NE.

In the early 1990s, Edgewood Terrace served as one of the largest drug markets in Washington. Today it is a mixed income apartment community with on site services for residents including adult education, computer training, and day care programs for children. The key ingredient in the outstanding change was the commitment of the developers, Community Preservation and Development Corporation, to tenant engagement in every step of the revitalization process.

In 1995, when the Community Preservation and Development Corporation (CPDC) bought the first section of Edgewood Terrace from HUD, CPDC immediately sat down with tenant association leaders. The relationship between CPDC and the tenants resulted in renovated apartments, as well as common areas for youth programs, job training, computer classes, and community events.

With more people drawn to public spaces and a partnership between CPDC, the tenants, and the Metropolitan Police Department they were able to break up the drug trade. Residents who had once been afraid to venture outside after dark now had reclaimed their community.

Affordable housing developers continue to find solutions to meet the diverse housing needs of the community. Ward 5 residents can look forward to the opening of Metropolitan Overlook, a mixed income condominium on 2nd Street NE, just blocks off of Rhode Island Ave. Rehabbing a property that has sat vacant for 20 years, Metropolitan Overlook will be a 37-unit condominium with 11 permanently affordable units.

Ward 5 will continue to benefit from the investments in affordable housing that build vibrant spaces for current and future District residents.

Ward 5 has a famously-bitter political culture, with ward-wide and neighborhood listservs that draw more nasty, personal backbiting than perhaps any others in the city. In that toxic environment is a very loud chorus of voices shouting down almost any ideAFRHa.

The critics point to a lot of transportation storage facilities being planned or proposed for Ward 5:

• Ivy City is getting a parking lot for 65 charter buses displaced from Union Station. Ivy City already has very poor residents with many health problems, and don't need the added pollution. But Mayor Gray says it's also one of the most logical places to locate the buses, because it's along New York Avenue and there's ample city-owned vacant land there today.

• After long insisting the streetcar facility could be under the H Street overpass, DDOT suddenly moved it to the Spingarn campus. They said they had no alternative to Spingarn, because it was too late to try to work something out for the RFK parking lots or some other spot, any of which would be more complex and time-consuming.

• WMATA is now looking at relocating the Northern Bus Garage on 14th Street to a part of the Armed Forces Retirement Home property on North Capitol Street. WMATA sorely needs a more up-to-date facility, residents of 14th Street want to get rid of the bus garage, and AFRH wants to sell some of its land.

  However, WMATA initially wanted to build its garage at Walter Reed, where there was plenty of room to keep it away from surrounding houses. Councilmember Muriel Bowser staunchly opposed the plan, as did Mayor Gray. Was Ward 4 able to wield a lot of clout because it's a wealthier part of the city?

  According to sources familiar with the discussions, WMATA officials now think AFRH might work even better, as it's closer to the center of the city and North Capitol and Irving are now configured as high-speed near-freeways. It's not right next to any residential neighborhood, let alone inside one. Still, it will bring more deadheading bus traffic to some streets which don't have the buses now.

McDuffie has taken a firm stance against all of these facilities. He's responding to his constituents, and the fact that all 3 are going to Ward 5 does seem unfair.

But if all or some of them will go there anyway, are there opportunities to design them to be assets to the area?

The buses in Ivy City are pretty hard to make into a plus, but a streetcar barn is really not such a bad thing. If designed well, it could even contribute to the neighborhood.

AFRH might be the best spot for a bus garage that nobody really wants to live near (except people in Friendship Heights, like some who want to landmark the Western Bus Garage on the belief that a mid-rise building would be far worse).

It's hard to be very surprised that the District ends up suggesting locating transportation facilities in a ward that already has many transportation facilities, relatively low densities of residents, and many places without immediate opportunities for other types of development. In places far from Metro or high-frequency bus lines, large-scale residential or office development would be hard to attract and would bring lots of its own new traffic, likely stirring up vociferous opposition on the listservs as well.

That's why it's great that McDuffie is also moving beyond simply saying "hell, no" and trying to jump-start some planning for his ward. He is proposing an industrial land use task force to look at how to plan for the ward's many acres of industrial spaces.

At Wednesday's hearing on the bill, McDuffie suggested a MARC station at New York Avenue and Bladensburg Road. As Dan Malouff discussed, it's not a bad idea. McDuffie also wants to look into the potential for residential development, urban agriculture, and hubs for small businesses and nonprofits in Ward 5, he said.

If McDuffie can shepherd a vision for the future of Ward 5, and more importantly get something his loud neighborhood activists can say yes to, it will do a lot more to improve the quality of life than just blocking a few locally-undesirable transportation facilities. It will also create more reasons to spread those facilities out to other parts of the city as well.

Still, as long as Ward 5 is the most industrial of the wards, it'll attract things that tend to go in industrial places. A vision would also give residents something to ask for in exchange for these proposals.

Maybe, rather than stopping a bus garage on North Capitol, they can insist on money for other priorities for spots that are closer to more residents. Likewise, If a training facility at Spingarn doesn't mitigate the cost of having the car barn, what would residents like instead?

Ward 5 can ask for the city to really invest in what they want, when it also invests in what the rest of the city needs.

A bigger problem is that a new spur would decrease the capacity of the Red Line's existing Silver Spring leg. Operationally it just wouldn't make sense. And even if it did, a new Metro station would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

MARC could be a good solution, because MARC's Penn Line (the best one) does pass by just 1 block north of New York Avenue. An infill station there would be easy to build, and would provide about 60 trains per day. MARC stations are extremely simple, so this is something that could be accomplished relatively easily.

But 60 trains a day isn't actually very many, if your goal is to induce transit-oriented development. The relative simplicity of a MARC station makes it an attractive short-term goal, but in the long term a better solution may be needed.

One mode McDuffie didn't mention, but that maybe should be considered, is streetcar. None of DDOT's proposed streetcar lines pass through here, but the H Street line and the Florida Avenue / 8th Street line are both close. It wouldn't cost very much to add a spur from those lines that goes up West Virginia Avenue and ends at New York Avenue and Bladensburg Road, like this:

Potential new streetcar route, using portions of the H Street and 8th Street lines, with a spur up West Virginia Avenue.

Another option for a streetcar spur would be to go up Bladensburg Road itself, breaking off from H Street at the Starburst intersection. That would better serve the Carver Langston neighborhood and National Arboretum, but wouldn't be as good for Ivy City.

A third permutation could spur off of the Rhode Island Avenue streetcar, using Montana Avenue to cut south to New York Avenue. This might be the cheapest streetcar option, but it would also probably be the least useful, since it wouldn't go to many new places.

DC has so many great transit projects in the works that anything will likely be hard to budget. Metro is probably not realistic at all, and a MARC station is the best bet for something soon. But a streetcar on West Virginia Avenue, Bladensburg Road, or Montana Avenue may well be something to shoot for.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

Mathews isn't so enthusiastic about which stores will fill the space. He says:

Essentially, when Vornado is done with it, the bulk of the mall will have been converted into a couple big box stores that have all the charm and destination-appeal of Rockville Pike.

The biggest problem with Rockville Pike, though, is its urban form. Each shopping center has a giant parking lot between itself and the road, and there often aren't any connections at all between centers. That means it's very difficult to shop there any way other than driving to one center, parking, driving to another, and so on.

The fact of modern retail is that for most physical products, people want to go to a large store with a lot of selection. It'd be nice to have a small crafts store near my house, but the fact is that I don't go to such a store often enough to support having it, and the individual items don't cost that much (or if they do, it's cost-prohibitive for many people).

A small crafts store would not have very many different kinds of fabric, picture frames or Christmas ornaments. People don't want to travel from one small store to another in different neighborhoods to hunt for what they want; they'll either go to a superstore or shop online. I've tried the Paper Source in Georgetown several times for the types of items it has, and sometimes found great things there, but also sometimes made a trip without finding what I needed.

There's no Michaels in DC today. The nearest one is in Seven Corners, and the next closest in Rockville, on the Pike. Having one in Georgetown would let people fulfill their craft needs in a place where they could drive, take the Circulator or Metrobus, or bike or walk from many neighborhoods.

What's bad about many of the big box plans for Ward 5 is not that large stores are coming to Ward 5, but that they're building suburban format stores. That Home Depot could take up a tenth of the space if it had a garage and a multi-story building. The rest of the land could house people who can shop there and take the Metro to work. The Aldi doesn't contribute to the nearby walkable neighborhood, and the New York Avenue Walmart is the worst design of DC's 6 proposed stores.

Large discount stores may not be best for the tax base

On the other hand, some of these new stores may bring in less tax revenue per square foot than more upscale stores. At one point, DC was considering a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) deal to lure Bloomingdale's instead of TJ Maxx. It didn't seem to make sense at first: if Bloomingdale's would pay less rent, then how would a TIF pay for itself, but if it brings in more, why does Vornado need any kind of incentive?

Someone directly involved with TIFs, who wasn't authorized to speak on the record, explained that a store like Bloomingdale's actually would pay less rent, but generates more sales tax revenue. I wasn't able to see detailed numbers to know if that makes the TIF worthwhile, but it's certainly possible that one store could have a larger number of dollars in gross sales but lower profits.

Stores with cheaper goods not only make their profits by selling more, but also by having fewer staff and less elaborate merchandise displays. Those savings could help them afford higher rent but don't affect the sales taxes the city brings in (and cut down on potential jobs for residents).

That may or may not have made any kind of tax break worthwhile, but it does point out a paradox in retailing: what's best for a landlord may not be the same as what's best for the District budget. And as Mathews notes, what's best for a neighborhood may be different than either of those.

Letter makes several specious arguments

McDuffie's letter goes on to say that residents felt "disrespected" because more meetings weren't held in Ward 5. This is a straw man argument: Ward 6 meetings were held within blocks of Ward 5. A streetcar meeting at the Atlas Theater may have been outside of the ward, but it was close enough that anyone from the Trinidad or Carver Langston neighborhoods could walk to it.

A hypothetical meeting in North Michigan Park would be in Ward 5. While that would allow planners to say they held more meetings inside the ward, it wouldn't actually make it easier for neighbors voices to be heard.

The letter further says that residents are "dismayed that a major decision affecting our ward was made without the benefit of a Councilmember at the table to represent the community's interests." While this might be true about the apparent "final" decision to place the bar at Spingarn, Harry Thomas, Jr. was in office for years during the planning and construction along Benning Road. Perhaps he didn't reach out to members of the local neighborhoods for their input because he was busy stealing from them?

McDuffie used the term "dumping ground" as well. While he didn't say whether he feels this is an appropriate term to describe the ward, it's disappointing to see him giving the term credence by perpetuating its use. In debate and discussion during the election season, he distanced himself from the use of that term, but chose not to in this instance. Why?

Push DDOT to address real neighbor concerns

Finally, in his letter, McDuffie laid out five points that he classified as major concerns coming from neighbors. They include:

• Lack of material benefits to the Carver Langston neighborhood;
  
• Safety of students during and after the construction phase;
  
• Environmental impact;
  
• Level of noise from repairs and maintenance;
  
• Resources and job opportunities available at the training center for Spingarn students and Ward 5 residents.

On the first point, increased, reliable, safe, affordable transportation towards downtown is already a material benefit to the neighborhood. DC officials have frequently stated that streetcar pricing will be the same as Circulator service. That would be cheaper than taking the X2 bus along Benning Road and H Street.

The safety of students is an important concern. The streetcar project would be subject to the same safety requirements as any construction project in the city. After construction, when operations begin, the concern likely turns to students being hit by streetcars. It's worth noting that students stand a higher risk of being hit by cars speeding down Benning Road or 26th Street, yet neighbors are not seeking a ban on automobile traffic on those roadways.

The environmental impact of the construction can be mitigated with a green roof, solar panels, or other carbon-neutralizing accommodations.

The level of noise is a very valid concern, and DDOT should provide hard data showing the current decibel level at the site, and the expected future level, along with concrete plans to mitigate any increase in noise.

DDOT and DCPS also need to show plans for how a training program run through the school would work, how many spots would be available for students, etc. This is something these agencies should have worked on already, and it's certainly the city's fault for not having this information available by now.

Other options are not practical now, though it's worth pursuing them for the future

If all of these points still do not satisfy the residents of Carver-Langston, what options does the city have for alternate sites for the maintenance facility? Other locations were discussed at an April meeting at Spingarn High School. One of those is the RFK Stadium north parking lot area, across Benning Road from the Spingarn site.

However, the federal government owns this land, and leased it to DC with the limitation that it be used only for recreational purposes. Perhaps McDuffie could initiate a serious discussion with Eleanor Holmes Norton, for whom he interned before attending law school, about relaxing this requirement and allowing a car barn to be built on this land.

Another possibility was the site that is currently home to the Pepco plant just east of the Anacostia River. Unfortunately, that site is not under the control of the DC government either, and is much larger than what a streetcar facility would require.

If the District were able to get control of that site (which may require years of environmental mitigation), there would still likely need to be a small-area plan created for the entire site, which would take even more years of planning and meetings. Even if there were a way to fast track all of that, the line doesn't yet extend that far. DDOT plans to build the line there and beyond, but can't do that before next year, when they hope to open the line.

DC didn't plan adequately

The fact is that the District didn't plan well enough for the streetcar barn. DDOT officials long assumed that a space under the H Street "Hopscotch Bridge" would be available for a maintenance facility, and this never came to be. They should have put more time and effort into making sure that plans for the area under the bridge were solid, and should have planned for an alternate location in case the original plan fell through as it did.

As things stand now, the streetcar maintenance facility can't be built anywhere other than the area south of Spingarn High School without delaying the start of revenue service for at least another 5 years, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars, or both. If that happens, Ward 5 residents will definitely lose out.