Posts about Curb Cuts
Parking
Congo withdraws curb cut requests
The Republic of the Congo has withdrawn its request to build a circular driveway or a shorter one-way driveway in front of the property at 16th and Riggs where it hopes to move its embassy from Crestwood.
Image from Wikimedia.
At a hearing Tuesday before the Foreign Missions Board of Zoning Adjustment, the ambassador from the Republic of the Congo and his DC attorneys said they would modify their request to only include one curb cut, off Riggs Place, and a short "one-way" driveway (a driveway with only one entrance) instead of a full circular driveway.
They also offered to remove the existing curb cut to the garage toward the rear of the property, and promised that while the ambassador would use the driveway to arrive and depart, his car would not stay parked during the day.
Republic of the Congo request as of Tuesday morning, now withdrawn.
However, DC agencies and neighbors continued to oppose the driveway plan. It violates DDOT's and historic preservation policies against approving new curb cuts, and several pointed out that there would be no way to enforce the rules against parking there once the property became a chancery.
The representative from the State Department, in announcing support for locating the chancery in this building, also said that there was no specific security issue that would require new curb cuts for either a circular or one-way driveway.
Yesterday, the Republic of the Congo withdrew its driveway request entirely. Presumably they will use the existing curb cut and garage for pick-up and drop-off for the ambassador.
They are eager to get approval because they are purchasing the property on short sale, and approval expires in early March. They announced the one-way driveway proposal the morning of the FMBZA hearing, and that board continued the hearing to March 8 to get ANC, historic preservation, DDOT and other comments on the modification.
Without this driveway, there is little standing in the way of gaining approval.
Preservation
Congo wants circular driveway at 16th and Riggs
The Republic of the Congo has purchased the historic Toutorsky Mansion at 16th and Riggs, NW, and is requesting permission to replace much of the front yard with a circular driveway. The embassy can function in the space without the driveway, and DC should deny that element.
Photo by Mr. T in DC on Flickr.
The 18-room house, built in 1894 for for Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brown, writer of the famous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision upholding segregation until a later decision ironically bearing the name of Brown in 1954.
Since then the building has been used by the Persian government; the US nonprofit that pushed for the creation of Israel; a music academy run by Russian nobleman Basil Peter Toutorsky; Johns Hopkins University; and most recently as a bed and breakfast which drew neighborhood opposition. The BZA limited the B&B to 6 rooms instead of 10 in 2001.
The Republic of the Congo should not be confused with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly known as Zaire), which owns a different mansion at 18th and New Hampshire. That building was the subject of a different historic preservation debate after neglect threatened to destroy the building. Local and citywide preservation groups successfully pushed the DRC government to restore the building.
As Borderstan reports, the Congo government plans to house the ambassador and employ 10 staff as well as "one small scale social function each month." They are not proposing any changes to the building itself, but want to make two changes to add vehicular capacity.
One change would turn a courtyard in the rear, facing a public alley, into a parking lot for 4 cars. That would remove part of the "historic" brick wall at the rear of the courtyard but seems generally unobjectionable, though a few neighbors are also opposing that because of concerns about adding traffic in the alley. There is also already a garage in the rear which can hold 2 cars.
The other would pave over most of the front yard and replace portions of the existing iron fence with motorized gates to create a circular driveway entering off 16th and exiting onto Riggs.
The Congo proposal for the Toutorsky Mansion. Click to enlarge (PDF).
These driveways interrupt the pedestrian realm and embassies typically use them for extra parking. In fact, an attorney for the Congo said yesterday that the embassy intends to have the ambassador park his car there each day and leave it there all day.
This happens despite the law prohibiting parking in public space. The entire front yard is public space, as the property line itself is beyond the top of the front stairs leading into the building. This would turn a beautiful yard and fence into a space that's just more roadway.
The 16th Street curb cut also would intersect part of a bus stop used by the S bus lines, and the attorney said he expected the bus stop would have to be moved. These curb cut locations clearly violate the DDOT policies about the placement of curb cuts needing to be 50 feet from an intersection.
Finally, while the drawing shows the existing trees remaining, people have pointed out that construction in the root zone of oak trees almost always kills the trees. Also, I went by the property, and the driveway appears to intersect at least one tree, whose actual location doesn't quite match what's shown on this plan.
Zoning decisions about chanceries are handled by the Foreign Mission Board of Zoning Adjustment, which includes the regular Board of Zoning Adjustment as well as members from NCPC and the National Park Service. The FMBZA is traditionally very deferential to embassies, sometimes gently encouraging changes but not actually disapproving applications.
The FMBZA also gets to make some decisions ordinarily given to other boards. For example, changes to a historic building (as this is) normally also go through the HPRB, but according to the Congo attorney, for foreign missions the FMBZA makes that call as well instead of the HPRB.
Parking
3577 Warder gets free curb cut despite policy, bad acts
There are days when I'm reminded that I live in the Wild, Wild West. Wednesday was one of those days as I received a phone call alerting me that 3577 Warder Street was getting a curb cut.
Yes, they had permits, and plans, and everything appears to be on the up-and-up. The existence of such documents in this case makes me scratch my head and wonder why developers are afforded permissions that the average resident is not.
The issue of a curb cut at this property was first brought before ANC 1A in September, 2009. At that time, their request was denied due to there being no room for a driveway on the property, the close proximity of a street light, and the loss of two public street parking spaces in the community.
Newly poured curb cut at 3577 Warder.
After waiting a few months, the builder next proceeded to raze the home that was originally on the site. Being a singe family wood-frame home, it was one of the earliest homes in Park View.
DDOT Public Space/Parking Permit
The destruction of the property was done without a raze permit, the subsequent work was halted due to lack of permits and inspections, and the announcement of the building clearly stated that parking would be available. Though the City was alerted, clearly no one cared. The voice of concerned neighbors and the ruling of the ANC 1A commissioners certainly don't seem to have been considered.
So now, after the developer has been denied his curb cut, inappropriately razed a building, and is in process of building new condos without community input, he's able to go to the city and claim economic hardship because his project lacks parking and this will make his property less valuable... and he get a permit.
What's worse, the permit clearly shows that the developer didn't have to pay a "public inconvenience fee" and DDOT waived the $11,122.21 deposit.
All I can say is WOW. I hope DDOT will waive the deposit of each and every Park View resident that needs to repair a stone wall or get any other type of permit from DDOT. Allowing this project to get a curb cut is a travesty and only encourages other developers to flout the law and build whatever they want.
Parking
Modern condo building proposed for Park View
The developers of the property at 3577 Warder Street have posted a rendering and details of their project, which will contain five 2-bedroom units and parking.
This replaces a previous single-family home that was razed without a permit, and construction begun until a stop work order forced a temporary halt early this year.
3577 Warder Street, NW. Image from the developer.
To support on-site parking, this property will need a curb cut from the street. In September 2009, ANC 1A declined to endorse parking. At the time, however, the current building was not being proposed, and a single family home was then located on the site.
DDOT has affirmed that a curb cut is unlikely to win approval. DDOT considers curb cuts as mini-intersections, and for this one to be installed a street light would need to be relocated. Still, without this approval, the builder has forged ahead with a plan including a driveway.
Construction so far, designed to support a driveway and parking.
Is this design compatible with residential Park View? Its located directly across from the historic Park View school and between the only other "contemporary" structures off of Georgia Avenue.
Parking
Lunch links: Protect yourself
Live chat at 1: Our first of what will hopefully become a series of live chats is today at 1 pm. This time, it will feature Greater Greater Washington contributors. Bring your questions!
"NIMBY insurance"? Ryan Avent suggests a clever economic solution to resident opposition to change. If some residents, like the vocal folks in Brookland, are so worried that future development in their neighborhood will reduce their property values, and if having most of your net worth in a home makes people extra nervous about changes that might impact property values, how about allowing people to hedge that risk? Many of us believe the development would actually enhance the neighborhood and drive values up. The city or developers could even pay the premiums in exchange for smoother approvals.
Curb cuts are bad for many reasons: Georgetown's ANC rejected a curb cut because, rightly, it takes away on-street parking to give people off-street parking. But, Georgetown Metropolitan explains, it's also bad a for a host of other reason having nothing to do with other people's parking.
Bus driver assault spree? Yesterday, a number 53 bus driver assaulted a cyclist. It turns out that on Saturday, a number 52 bus driver punched McGruff the crime dog in the head. The MPD definitely takes bus driver assaults seriously when committed against their own officers. Same driver? Or is there something in the air on the 14th Street bus corridor?
From DC CTO to federal CIO: Vivek Kundra will be the new federal Chief Information Officer, everyone is reporting. He did a good job making DC much more open and accessible, through better systems, posting data feeds and encouraging mashups. It'd be great if he can do the same at the federal level.
Roads
Weekend reading: someone is wrong on the Internet
Photo by Prince of Petworth.
No Facebook for Annapolis: The Maryland General Assembly will block Facebook and MySpace for members and staff at their office computers. They claim that viruses prompted this, but the Baltimore Sun says Republicans think there were political reasons. Either way, legislators who use Facebook to communicate with the public will lose this valuable tool.
Tobago, DC? цarьchitect figured, if DC has a Trinidad, it needs a Tobago. He suggests the area between Van Ness and Tenleytown sometimes called Wakefield or North Cleveland Park.
Why can't we be like leafcutter ants? Leafcutter ants don't get into traffic jams, even on narrow paths like tree branches. That's because they patiently wait behind slower-moving ants instead of going around them, Wired explains. If cars behaved that way, say scientists, traffic would move more smoothly too. Via Planetizen.
Parking
Dinner links: cheap, plentiful parking spaces are like clean coal
Photo via WebUrbanist.
Just say no: Bloomingdale's ANC will consider a curb cut request on First Street, for a row house without alley access. All of the houses in the row have regular stoops; a front garage will seriously defile the house. Yet another reason for some level of historic preservation? Or will the new "no curb cuts" policy nip this one in the bud? Update: the curb cut will connect to the back, not the front, to add only two private spaces while removing one shared public one.
A performance park? A letter writer asks, how about paying for the Mall's needed improvements by charging for parking on Mall roads? (tip: Michael); NPS wants a National Mall iPhone app; Arlington's CommuterPageBlog agrees with GGW on the message we should take away from the inauguration.
And: Another Georgetown corner store might go residential; NYC ponders cab sharing (which DC abolished with meters (tip: Bryan); Prince George's closes inside-the-Beltway schools while building new ones in sprawling greenfield areas.
This page is a mermaid: Bloomingdale, For Now notices clever ads on the Washington Post's "page not found" error pages. It's part of the same ad campaign as the mermaid, alien, and sasquatch posters in the Metro Center station.
Bicycling
Breakfast links: Unexpected consequences
Barcelona. Photo by John Norquist via Richard Layman.
Cyclist sexually assaulted: Reader M.W. writes, "I was just riding my bike home from work and at 11th and W st NW someone rode by me on their bike and actually stuck their hand between my legs and groped me. All while I was on my bike Sule not a reformer after all? In November, Theresa Sule unseated old guard Barbara Curtis for one of the four seats on Shaw, Mount Vernon Square, and the Penn Quarter's ANC 2C. The ANC had been deadlocked 2-2 for two years over the leadership of Chair Doris Brooks, who rarely distributed meeting agendas, abruptly canceled meetings, and more. Yesterday, Sule supported Brooks anyway, once again deadlocking ANC 2C. Life in Mount Vernon Square feels betrayed.
Two curb cuts for Social Safeway? Safeway is renovating their Georgetown store to front Wisconsin Avenue instead of sitting behind a large parking lot. They do want to keep their two curb cuts onto Wisconsin. Georgetown Metropolitan looks at whether this is wise.
Science fight in Gaithersburg: Johns Hopkins owns a large, sprawling farm in Gaithersburg, and wants to build a large, auto-dependent, sprawling campus. Environmental and citizens groups have asked the Planning Board to limit the development to a more compact area near a future Corridor Cities transitway stop, away from homes, and to limit building heights. How about keeping the heights but also limiting the sprawling form, and making sure we build the transit before the development?
DC GOP dumb on parking: The DC Republican Party responded to the meter rate hike with a knee-jerk response "saying the new rates will hurt businesses that depend on customers who drive to their stores." Apparently the DC GOP hasn't ever tried to find a downtown spot either.
Development
Whitman-Walker project has positive impacts, too
Yesterday, developer JBG Companies, opposing neighbors, and advocates faced off before the Board of Zoning Adjustment for a hearing about the proposed development on the Whitman-Walker site on 14th between S and Swann.
Drawing by JBG Companies.
Streets surround the project on three sides along with an alley along the entire back side, spanning from S to Swann. Tom Coumaris owns a property across the alley, and seven years ago moved into the carriage house facing the alley to rent out the main house. He opposes locating the proposed loading and parking entrances off the alley because they will create noise next to his front door, and argues that the building will impede his light and air.
Joseph Freeman, owner of an 8-unit half-condo, half-rental building on Swann, also spoke against the project, along with several other neighbors. Freeman said, "The developer wants to kill neighborhood peace, light and access because it just wants to fatten its wallet. There is no compelling public interest in that."
I disagree. There is a significant public interest in seeing this project built. A new project impacts not only the nearby residents, but every other person who walks, bikes, rides the bus, shops, eats, or works in the area. The BZA must consider the impacts of a project when considering variances and special exceptions. The immediate neighbors do feel the impact more acutely and their needs should receive greater consideration, but we must balance their needs against the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of other people who use this area as well.
More housing on this block positively impacts residents of the surrounding area. More housing increases the Metro ridership, enabling more service, lower fares, or lower taxes. It increases patronage for the businesses we like to enjoy. It lowers housing costs. It reduces our environmental footprint. And it lessens development pressure far out at the edge of the region, reducing traffic in the area.
Less parking also positively impacts residents of the area. The developer wants to build 90 spaces instead of the required 108, to limit the underground garage to two levels. If forced to build the full amount of parking, this project will create more traffic, reduce future Metro ridership and revenue, increase conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians or bicycles, and make the new housing more expensive.
Having the parking and loading face the alley positively impacts area residents. If forced to open onto 14th Street, the garage would increase pedestrian-vehicular conflicts on the much-busier 14th Street, conflict with the 14th Street bike lane, and reduce the street frontage available for retail.
The Utopia project curb cut was a very extraordinary circumstance. This is not. DC's policy calls for garage entrances and loading docks in alleys. Sure, almost anyone would like to push negative impacts away from their own alley and onto the public realm. But alleys are the proper places for parking and loading.
As for light and air, the developer submitted studies showing that the building will only minimally overshadow the adjacent townhouses. And alternate designs they could have built as-of-right would have cast the same shadows. My three story townhouse is right across a narrower alley from a nine-story building, which doesn't step back at all on higher floors. Having buildings of different sizes near each other is the reality of living in a city.
Fortunately, members of the BZA seemed to be appropriately balancing neighbors' needs with those of the broader community. Zoning Commission member Gregory Jeffries talked about the value of density near Metro stations, and the role of alleys as the proper place for loading and parking in DC. (One rotating Zoning Commission member participates in many BZA cases.) Board members repeatedly pressed neighbors for suggestions about workable alternatives, but they presented none. DDOT and the Office of Planning did make some specific suggestions, which I'll cover in an upcoming post, and which I hope the BZA will adopt when they rule on the case in January.
Parking
This alternative is technically impossible because neighbors would complain
Do transportation consulting companies really provide unbiased analysis, or do they simply conclude whatever their paying client wants to hear?
Alley entrance on T Street near 14th. Photo from Google Street View.
We already know that "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz of New York is unafraid to tell NYC's teachers that they don't deserve special parking rights, but will twist ridership figures to please the Town of Chevy Chase and earn his $374,000 fee. Schwartz cobbled together the report they wanted, concluding that the Purple Line should run past other people's schools instead of their golf courses (and slower).
I smell some similar twisting in Gorove/Slade's report on where to put the garage entrance for the Utopia project at 14th and U. I've already written multiple times about this particular curb cut fight, where I come down (barely) on the side of the 14th Street entrance. But we may end up with the right decision for all the wrong reasons.
Some of these wrong reasons appear in the report. In the scoping process, DDOT asked Gorove/ The bulk of the report focuses on vehicular Level of Service. It uses terms like "[this] intersection would fail" to describe an intersection with high traffic volume, reinforcing the outdated traffic engineer framing that success means moving large numbers of vehicles through an area. All of this LOS analysis (which takes up most of the space in the report) simply verifies that the front garage entrance won't worsen vehicle traffic. It's not nececssarily better; it's simply no worse. The consulting team spent a lot of time counting the numbers of vehicles going through each intersection, but published no comparable statistics for pedestrians.
The interior alleys at the site are very wide (30 feet), with plenty of room for cars or even to add sidewalks. The alleys connecting to U and T Streets, however, are only 10 feet (5 and 6 above). Two-way traffic on both of these alleys force cars and trucks to maneuver gingerly. Making both of these alleys one-way, with all traffic entering on U and exiting on T, could address this problem. The Gorove/Slade report analyzes this option, but dismisses it because residents won't like it: Gorove/Slade's report does make some valid points. They also, and more validly, criticize the one-way option for its effect on the Reeves Center, whose garage entrance faces U Street across from the alley. According to the report, having traffic turn into the alley from U and also into and out of Reeves at the same spot could create more vehicular problems.
The report also makes the very good point that the U Street sidewalk is much narrower than the one at 14th. Having vehicles exit there could be much more dangerous than on 14th. Even the one-way option creates more pedestrian conflicts at this tight spot.
Unfortunately, I simply don't find this report persuasive. It makes a few good points amid a plethora of lousy ones. To conclude, as this report does, that a 14th Street entrance is "the better option", it's important to consider all the impacts. Instead, Gorove/ Plus, "better" isn't the standard for a curb cut; the development must be impractical without one. And by impractical, that means for pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders and cars, not just for cars. It also doesn't mean politically impractical. I do believe this development may indeed meet this burden. But this report fails to show that, and does a disservice to everyone trying to rationally decide this issue. On persuasiveness Level of Service, it gets an F.
Alley diagram at 14th and U.
Image from Gorove-Slade Associates.Capacity analysis results indicate that the alley would operate efficiently with the one-way southbound restrictions. However, ... the southbound restriction would increase truck traffic along T Street between the alleyway and 14th Street, which is now striped with a bike lane. These impacts would be objectionable to the adjacent community, and the prospective residential and retail users of the proposed development.
The report glosses over mention of impacts, objectionable or otherwise, to the many people who will take Metro to this area, or who live nearby on other streets besides T, and will walk around here. They will feel the impact of a front garage entrance. It also dismisses the impact on the bicycle commuters who ride down 14th to work every day. They weren't counted, and their objections unheard. Instead, the authors simply dismiss an alternative which would "be objectionable to the adjacent community".
@ggwash
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