Posts about Arts

Being in downtown Silver Spring less than a mile from the Metro, the 2½ acres the police station sits on are very valuable. Perhaps a better use for this site would be a mix of studio space and artist housing, not unlike Renaissance Square and the Mount Rainier Artist Lofts, two apartment buildings in the Gateway Arts District, or the Brookland Artspace Lofts, a building in Northeast Washington. All three buildings rent apartments and live-work units at subsidized rates to people who earn their living making art.

These buildings, which are each 100% occupied, offer artists who often have low incomes a quality place to live. According to the Census, the median rent in below-the-Beltway Silver Spring is $1206 a month, but actual apartment listings suggest that's only enough for a one-bedroom apartment. Meanwhile, a one-bedroom in the Brookland Artspace Lofts with studio space rents for $970, while a two-bedroom is just $1,205.

We could turn the police station into an arts center as proposed, but also build low-rise artist housing around it. A smaller community garden could be built, or it could instead be located in any of the 46 other parks in below-the-Beltway Silver Spring and Takoma Park. The lawn in front of the police station could still become a small public space for the neighborhood.

This proposal would cost more to build and may require public money. The Brookland Artspace Lofts in the District, developed by the same company that built the apartments in Mount Rainier, received $11 million in construction funding and tax credits from the DC Department of Housing and Community Development. If a funding source is found, however, artist housing could provide more customers for local businesses while developing a more substantial and diverse arts scene.

When I suggested this to Karen Roper and Steve Knight, two of the residents leading the push for the Station Arts Center, they were skeptical. "It's a little more unstructured and bohemian," Knight says. "I know one of the artists we talked to, she's married and has a house and a family." He wants to know "how strong of a need" there is for artist housing in Silver Spring.

"My neighbors ... bought their houses cheap" decades ago, says Roper. "They're looking for studio space." She notes that "two, possibly three" buildings with subsidized apartments will be built on Fenton Street in coming years, while a developer wants to renovate the Eagle Bank building at Sligo Avenue and Fenton Street into "microlofts," or small apartments geared at single adults.

One of the reasons the county may support the current Station Arts Center proposal is because of their experience with the new police station in White Oak. Plans to sell extra land around the station to build a mix of affordable and market-rate housing in 2009 were met with intense community opposition before they eventually backed down. Whether the county uses the old police station property to meet its affordable housing goals or make money by selling it to a private developer, dealing with angry neighbors will be inevitable.

That's why Roper and her neighbors are trying to start the conversation about development. "We wanted to get out there and make our pitch before somebody came in and did the same old, same old," she says. "I would like to see some imagination in this county. It's not about how much you develop, it's about how you develop."

Roper wants the Station Arts Center to distinguish Fenton Village from the rest of Silver Spring, calling it the "only thing that represents us and who we are."

As I've written before, having spaces for making art makes our community stronger. Even if I don't agree with every part of the Station Arts Center concept, I'm glad that neighbors are being proactive about what they'd like to see in their community.

That said, Karen Roper might be okay with a few more apartments if they allowed the neighborhood to keep its artistic flair. "I'd rather live in a dense, crowded place with artists and musicians," she says. "When you take that character away, you just have a bunch of crap next to each other."

Many of those neighbors were artists who lacked space to work. "[They] have outgrown working in their attics or basements and they're ready to move to something bigger or more serious," says Knight.

Roper worries that new development would make downtown Silver Spring "an audience district" by pushing them out. "We're an arts district that has no space for artists," says Roper. "East Silver Spring is full of artists. That's who we've always been."

One of those artists, Laurie Breen, located her studio in the Gateway Arts Center in Brentwood, which opened two years ago in a former government surplus warehouse. Run by the Gateway Community Development Corporation and the Prince George's County Department of Parks and Recreation, the center holds classes, has two galleries, along with studios for 13 artists.

Roper wanted to create a place like that in Silver Spring. Her group envisions turning the 1960's-era police station into the Station Arts Center, a place where local artists can make and display their work and residents take classes. The parking lot in back would be turned into a community garden with 44 plots and "plenty of parking," while the front lawn would become an outdoor hangout like "the Turf," the temporary green that stood where Veterans Plaza is today.

The station is located between downtown's high-rises and the porch-fronted bungalows of East Silver Spring, and both Roper and Knight refer to it as a good place for a "transition" or "buffer" between the two while reinforcing the community's character. A thousand units will be built in Fenton Village over the next few years, says Roper, but "there's no green space, there's no community gardens, and there's no space for artists."

Knight and Burditt introduced the Station Arts Center concept in a column for the Silver Spring Voice. To "prove a need and a desire" for the project, the group is circulating a petition.

Civic groups and the Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board have also been receptive. "When I pitched the idea of an arts center and community garden, people loved it," Roper says, adding that David Dise, director of the county's Department of General Services, called it the "best proposal he'd ever heard for Silver Spring."

Roper, Knight and Morales took a quick tour of the police station and found it wouldn't take much to turn it into an arts center.

"I think you could go in there on Day 1 and have a fairly reasonable artist space," says Knight, noting that the building and its mechanical systems were in good repair, but could be reconfigured easily. "I don't think there's anything sacred [architecturally] about the building. It provides a pretty good blank slate to start with." There are also more unusual features, like an underground shooting range beneath the parking lot, which Roper says would make a "cool darkroom" for photographers.

There are some issues, namely a lack of natural light. But "if the resources presented themselves," Knight says, "it wouldn't be really impinging the building's structural integrity if you wanted to punch some more windows into it."

Roper's excited about the building's aesthetic qualities. "The police station is funky and square and 60's in look ... it lends itself well to an arts center," she says.

The Parks Department is "extremely enthusiastic" about the community garden, she adds, because the site is already publicly owned and fenced off, requiring little additional work. Knight notes that there was a "pretty positive response" to one at Fenton Street Park, two blocks away.

Meanwhile, the lawn in front of the police station would become a "front yard" that Knight compares to "the Turf." It would be a "more casual outdoor space for people where you can just walk out, lay out a beach towel and get a tan."

"We're not going to blanket the police station in Astroturf," he jokes.

Though the design isn't finished, Roper estimates that it will cost $750,000 to renovate the police station. She is currently looking for a nonprofit group to operate the arts center, which would sustain itself by renting between 25 and 50 studios to working artists, offering classes to the public and some sort of "retail place."

"All we need from the county is a short-term lease," says Roper. "We don't need any funds from them."

Will the Station Arts Center plan work? We'll look at it in more detail tomorrow, along with one change I think could make it better.

According to Lange, Pinky Swear is renting the space from Spooky Action Theater, which has a lease for the basement. A resident who lives nearby notes that Spooky Action hasn't been holding productions in the church for a while, which is why this issue is just arising now. Also, he said that the theater groups have been using the narrow alley, adjacent to homes, as the entrance rather than the front door of the church on 16th Street.

The policy question here is, are our zoning rules too restrictive?

On the one hand, zoning creates some predictability. Residents right near the church know to expect a lot of activity on Sunday mornings but not nighttime performances. Audiences coming out of theaters can sometimes be noisy, and could disturb people. That's especially true if they're using a back door adjacent to homes rather than a front door.

On the other hand, having more arts events contributes to a much richer city. Groups like Pinky Swear are small, have little money, and can't afford spaces in places like downtown. Established theaters have theater companies that already use those spaces most of the time. If our zoning keeps the arts corralled into a very narrow range of opportunities, that limits it tremendously, especially for young and emerging artists.

Any zoning changes take tremendous time and money. A developer of a large building can afford to do this, but a small theater company or church can't possibly do it just to put on a play.

There are significant parallels between this case and the recent regulatory disputes around secondhand stores and the car service Uber.

Uber was doing something new and innovative which the existing regulations didn't precisely predict. Their model might or might not have been legal under the regulations, depending how you interpret it. The Taxicab Commission decided that they were breaking the rules, and came down hard.

Used bookstores, vintage clothing shops, and more operated for years under a general retail license, but recently DC officials determined that they actually have to use a different license that mainly covered pawn shops. That license is much more expensive, and requires far more detailed reporting requirements, which made sense for pawn shops to avoid stolen merchandise but is less applicable to stores which buy used goods from distant wholesalers.

In all 3 cases, one can make a case that DC needs to enforce the rules as written. Should we really turn a blind eye to unlawful behavior? If so, how do we decide which unlawful behavior to ignore?

On the other hand, bending zoning rules has sometimes brought tremendously positive results. In many of the warehouse districts of older industrial cities, for instance, revitalization began when people moved into the vacant spaces and started living there. Often, though, they weren't zoned for residential. As New York's Soho became a popular loft space, for many years all of the residents were breaking the zoning rules.

In this case, the zoning code could be more permissive toward arts uses. Arts performance could be one of the "corner store" type uses that can locate in residential zones subject to various restrictions, as I previously suggested. The new code could also allow arts uses in residential zones under a "special exception" rather than a variance, which still requires a long and complex process before the Board of Zoning Adjustment, but lets the BZA grant permission more easily.

For cities to thrive, neighborhoods need to evolve as the desires of their residents changes over time. Zoning can rarely keep up. The best thing we can do is err on the side of more flexibility and fewer regulations.

Current building needs changes

The brick building, on Church between 17th and 18th, was originally the gymnasium for the private all-girls Holton-Arms School, which was located in Kalorama until moving to Bethesda in 1963. In 1975, the building became a theater, and the Keegan became its full-time resident company in 2009.

It's a charming and intimate theater, and the Keegan has put on some great productions there, but the building poses some big obstacles. The front steps are not accessible for people with disabilities, and the front lobby is very small. There's a very limited backstage area and almost no space for building sets, creating costumes and props, or for actors to dress.

The bathrooms are tiny, squeezed into the basement, and not very nice. During intermission, there are long waits. I live on this particular block, and so when Greater Greater Wife and I go there for shows, we just go home to use the restroom between acts, but that's not an option for most people.

After seeing the condition of the bathrooms, an arts donor gave the Keegan money to renovate the space. They shared with neighbors and the ANC their proposed plans to dig out a basement, to create space for production and green rooms, opening up more space for the lobby and bathrooms.

The only externally-visible change would be a small new foyer in the current side yard, between the theater and the building next door. The new foyer would make space for an ADA-compliant elevator and new stairs between floors.

At a recent community meeting, one question from neighbors revolved around the design of the addition. The architect, Stoiber & Associates, has proposed a very modern look for the addition, with wavy lines and multi-colored glass.

Besides the theater, Church Street is filled with turn-of-the-century painted brick townhouses, with a few larger apartment buildings at the end of the block and one in the middle, across from the Keegan. Would a tiny addition just over 16 feet wide in this style look very strange tucked amid the rows of brick townhouses?

What do you think?

Preservationists differ on "compatibility"

This question raises a point of great debate in historic preservation. When a new building comes into a historic area, or a historic building gets an addition, the law says that the addition must be "compatible" with the historic district. But what is "compatible"?

Some preservationists feel that "compatible" means the new addition should resemble the old in style. This is the approach review boards take in some places, such as Georgetown. The Old Georgetown Board wanted the Georgetown Apple store to look like a Georgetown building and not a typical glassy or white Apple store.

There's some merit to this approach. Georgetown has a charm that comes from a consistent architectural style. Architects often want to make their buildings as flashy as possible, but rows of small buildings like those along a commercial strip shouldn't out-compete each other for dazzle; they should look like a row. They needn't all be identical, but shouldn't create a chaotic riot either.

In the rest of DC's historic districts, the Historic Preservation Office has generally taken a different approach. They argue that a new building should not try to look like old buildings, but exhibit a style and materials "of its time." In other words, a building built in 2012 should look to the observer like a 2012 building.

But not all 2012 buildings look alike. A 2012 building could use brick, like the rest of the street, only it could look like 2012 brick. Or, it could strive for a super-modern look that's totally opposite.

At a recent Historic Preservation Review Board meeting, board member Graham Davidson criticized a project on Florida Avenue, saying, "Your responsibility is not to create an icon... [but] to knit the neighborhood back together." Will the board want something iconic or something that seems to connect the fabric on both sides?

The theater is in the center of a residential block, and is a larger building than the adjacent row houses. That means it already serves as a focal point rather than a part of the row. By that logic, a prominent addition would make sense, to further punctuate the building's unique role among its neighbors.

On the other hand, the board might feel that a flashy design for a tiny addition detracts from the beautiful, old, historic main theater, and want something less conspicuous. They could ask Keegan to tone down the flash and dazzle in favor of either a more modest glass atrium or a brick addition that doesn't stand out.

As a resident of the block, I can see both sides of this one. As modern designs go, this is actually fairly attractive. However, always hard to know for sure how a project will look just from its renderings. Will the colors be as vibrant as they appear there? How much will it stand out, really? Plus, this isn't a large building in a distinctive architectural style; it will be 15 feet wide. Will such a small piece look too strange with such different materials from everything else?

Regardless of the approach Keegan and HPRB choose, a renovated theater that meets the needs of today will enhance the neighborhood and strengthen the arts in DC. The donor's contribution goes a long way, but the Keegan will need to raise more money from its audience and supporters to get the project built.

Keegan will present the latest draft of the plans to ANC 2B at next Wednesday's meeting, and the Historic Preservation Review Board will discuss the proposal later this month.

"Active recreation," like a climbing wall, zip line, and many activities for kids could improve health in a part of the city where many kids are not as healthy as they should be. Autumn Saxton-Ross from the Department of Health said that having spaces for play creates "whole children who develop into whole adults."

The bridge could contain community gardens that grow food, a place for food trucks to hold festivals like Truckeroo, or even trees; an avid community gardener who lives in the area emphasized that last one, as it gets quite hot in the summer and a bridge is exposed to the elements.

Then there is the streetcar. Problems between DDOT and the US Department of Transportation scuttled tracks on the new local bridge now under construction, at least for now, but perhaps that would open up a new opportunity to put the tracks on this "recreation bridge."

Making this bridge succeed might not be easy. A bridge is a very big space; this one is over 1000 feet long. It's in the middle of the river, and connects 2 neighborhoods of only moderate density. Even from them, there's a substantial walk to reach to the bridge itself.

Therefore, any use will have to attract people who are deliberately going to the bridge as a destination, rather than people just wandering by or popping over between work and dinner. It will need to have enough different activities to keep the bridge busy most of the day, every day, lest it turn into a dead space or a haven for crime.

Or maybe there is a way to mix active uses with people who are just passing through? If the streetcar traverses this bridge, and stops a few times along the way, it could make the bridge be more of a continuous connector between Capitol Hill and Anacostia. The bridge could get a cafe or two. It would create "eyes on the street" (or bridge), draw the bridge much closer to surrounding neighborhoods, and bring potential users of the bridge's activities passing right by every day.

The bridge would also get closer to surrounding areas if the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail could remain open more of the time. The Navy Yard now allows people to walk and bike past the base during the day every day, which is more than they initially promised. But can it be open all of the time?

A representative from DMPED was optimistic. He said that the Navy Yard now actually finds it somewhat of a burden to open and close the trail every day, and would like to avoid that responsibility. They've also added more security along that edge of the yard, making them more comfortable just allowing public access along that side. He gave no firm details, but it sounds like residents can hope for a 24-hour trail in the future.

As for the bridge, DDOT already gave out a contract to demolish the 2 old bridges. Tregoning said that while DC could try to renegotiate and keep the existing bridge structure, it's in very bad shape. Instead, they will just keep the piers, since those are very expensive to plant in the river, and remove the entire deck.

Another benefit of removing the deck is that a new one needn't be a simple rectangle. Maybe it will take a different shape. It could be thinner, or wider, or some of each in different places. Maybe it can connect in a few places to the new local road, bike, and pedestrian bridge that's being built right next to it.

OP is hoping to start a national design competition this summer, to find the most creative designs from anyone, anywhere.

The bridge project will probably cost around $25-35 million. That's only a tenth of the cost of the highway bridge project, but it's not pocket change, and DC has many other priorities as well. For this reason, they hope to attract private money, either from local organizations or national foundations. For a project which could become an icon for DC, many may be quite interested.

Getting the streetcar onto the bridge would take some creative thinking, too. The new bridges are using some of the space that's now approach ramps to the old bridge. That means there won't necessarily be a smooth and direct approach to the "recreation bridge" on each side. We'll have to wait for a later design phase to find out if there's even a way to get a streetcar on and off the bridge.

The residents in the room were overall either very eager at least open-minded. Some seemed to primarily come to the meeting to ensure that the vehicular bridge was going to open on time and that nothing was changing with that plan. Others were bursting with ideas.

Right now, this project largely seems to be taking advantage of an opportunity. I can imagine Tregoning sitting in a meeting, hearing a status update about the bridge, and suddenly saying, "Wait a minute! We have this bridge over the Anacostia and we're just going to rip it out? When the District is so concerned with figuratively bridging east and west of the river and there are so many needs especially on the east side?"

So far, all the government proposes to do is essentially preserve a bunch of piers to make it far cheaper to build a recreational bridge. Whether something ever gets built is up to residents, leaders, and designers to figure out a way to make it a great public space worthy of the investment.

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.

Portland is actively trying to "bring greater enthusiasm that we have transit in our city," says Art Pearce of the Portland New Rail~Volutionaries, which bills itself as "a group of folks who are very excited about Streetcar."

The video was featured in Rail~Volution Filmfest 2011, co-hosted by the DC New Rail~Volutionaries and Coalition for Smarter Growth in conjunction with the Rail~Volution conference held here October 16-19.