Posted: March 31st, 2006 | Author: Rob Goodspeed | Filed under: Justice, Michigan, Politics, Public Policy | 5 Comments »
Blogger Chetly Zarko wrote to me earlier this week to point out the so-called “Michigan Civil Rights Initiative,” which would ban affirmative action in Michigan, will appear on the ballot in November in that state.
Another friend reminded me of this story which the Detroit Metrotimes printed in January, but I forgot to post here, where I’m quoted talking about BAM-N.
See all my BAM-N posts
Posted: March 31st, 2006 | Author: Rob Goodspeed | Filed under: DC Shaw Neighborhood, District of Columbia, Urban Development | No Comments »
Wow. This proposed bar would be just down the street from me, and is having license troubles thanks to the minister across the street:
“A church leader in the Shaw neighborhood who has described homosexuality as a biblical curse has convinced local commissioners to protest the liquor license for a proposed gay bar he claims will exclude District residents, one of the commissioners said last week.
The liquor license for Be Bar, a gay-owned and operated neighborhood tavern scheduled to open in June at 1318 9th St., NW, was not on the agenda for the March 8 meeting of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2-C. In fact, the bar’s property actually sits in the adjacent 2-F district.” (Wash. Blade)
Posted: March 31st, 2006 | Author: Rob Goodspeed | Filed under: Urban Development | No Comments »
There’s a couple big projects around Metro stations on my radar lately. First, after a groundbreaking in October construction is well underway at the Mosaic At Metro project at the Prince George’s Plaza station. I don’t know much about the project, but found this interesting blurb on the website of AGM Financial Services, who is underwriting the project:
Mosaic at Metro Apartments is a luxury Class A 260-unit, four and five-story apartment complex to be newly constructed in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Using HUD’s 221(d)(4) program AGM Financial Services, Inc. provided a $46,233,700 insured mortgage at 5.14% interest rate with a 40-year term after a 30-month construction period. Financing includes a ground lease with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. This is the FIRST private development at a WMATA/METRO facility in Prince George’s County and is the first HUD financing of luxury housing at a transit center in the Mid-Atlantic Region. Mosaic at Metro is part of a mixed-use development at the Prince George’s Plaza METRO Transit Center; there will also be 160,000 square feet of retail and 250,000 square feet of office. The two building complex will include six studio units, 108 1-BR units, 133 2-BR units and 13 3-BR units with 366 parking spaces.
Despite having four segments of Metro, Prince George’s county has seen little of the transit-based development seen in Arlington and Montgomery county. My intuition says it’s probably because the Metro stations in the county were built later, and also because the local governments haven’t engaged in the same type of proactive planning as D.C. or Montgomery and Arlington. Thus, I was interested to read about a new condo development at the Largo Town Center last fall and the Mosaic project.
Also, at the other end of things, the much larger and more controversial MetroWest project was approved out in Vienna, a longtime holdout against dense, transit-oriented development.
Posted: March 30th, 2006 | Author: Rob Goodspeed | Filed under: University of Michigan | 1 Comment »
I was recently emailed by someone looking for the newest University of Michigan employee salary data, as this website was the first place to post the data in an electronic format. (The Michigan Daily has for years published a special print “supplement” at the end of the school year.) I noticed the Daily has posted the data for 2005-2006, but unfortunately they’ve just uploaded the huge, 8 megabyte spreadsheet in apparently the same format it was provided them by the university. I remember seeing a website somewhere where someone had made this data searchable, but don’t have the link handy - if someone else does please leave a comment.
Here’s the data:
Posted: March 28th, 2006 | Author: Rob Goodspeed | Filed under: College Park | 1 Comment »
So, the second piece of correspondence coming my direction from the College Park area behind the admissions letter notifying my acceptance to grad school was a letter from the “Graduate Hils & Graduate Gardens Apartment Homes” at 3424 Tulane Drive in nearby Hyattsville, Maryland. The letter congratulated me on my admissions to the university urging me to submit an application and “$100 holding charge to obtain a position on the waitlist” for a shot at living in Maryland’s “only graduate housing community.” The letter also contained a copy of a letter they apparently received from University of Maryland Assistant Dean John M. Mollish providing them with my name and address and urging them to assist me to “move expeditiously through your application process for off-campus housing.”
I’m not sure where to start with this one. First, are the names of students at public universities public? Second, if they are, are their home addresses? And third, if those are as well, why does the university choose to send private companies my name with such panache? Perhaps they think they’re doing out-of-town students a favor. The irony in all this is that I’ve been riding the bus past the rather banal apartment complex for months now on the R3 to the National Archives’ College Park facility.