Memo to City: Plan Ahead

I was pleased to see my post about the redevelopment of the DC convention center received links from DCist and DCBlogs. As I expected it appears I am thoroughly out of the loop on the matter, however, and the developers held two public meetings in the past year to solicit public feedback on the redevelopment plan and issued formal master plan this past April. Details about all of this are on their website www.oldconventioncenter.com, which I somehow didn’t find in my research for the previous post. The final plan differs slightly from the hard-to-make-out sketch I posted yesterday. I’ll withhold my comments about the plan until I get a better look at them, but the real lesson here for DC government is to start planning ahead - this process could have been started much earlier, minimizing the city’s lost tax dollars while the land sits (nearly) empty.

The DC public libraries made a similar mistake when they closed four branch locations in 2004 (including my neighborhood library) and canceled the contract for their re-construction in order to fit them into the mayor’s blue-ribbon task force’s central-library oriented recommendations. Two years later the branches are still closed and there are no concrete plans for their re-opening. Unlike the convention center redevelopment, this case isn’t about lost tax revenue but fairness: city residents have been deprived access to a vital community resource. It’s simply an irresponsible and way to govern.

links for 2006-06-14

• Urban Trekker Blog: Hot Spot in PG County
  Big development under construction at the PG Plaza Metro station. The story doesn’t mention Mosaic at Metro, a residential project also located near the station.

A Modest Proposal For the Old Convention Center Site

I’ve been wondering recently what was going on with the old convention center site downtown. No, I’m not talking about the city’s sidewalk/public art display “Metamorphosis” that people have been grumbling about over at DCist, but the plans for the entire site. It turns out little has changed since just about one year ago when we reported on DCist the city had selected a team to redevelop the site with “300,000 square feet of retail space, 550,000 square feet of office space, 1,372 units of housing and at least 1,900 parking spaces,” in addition to a large public square and potentially both a new library and hotel. The DC city government webpage on the project contains some fact sheets apparently from one year ago. According to information we had then the project team hopes to begin construction in 2008. I’m stumped why it would take so long to break ground as I thought the site plan had been approved by the city, and I remember reading it’s fairly common practice to begin construction while the architects are still working on details. I wonder what’s causing the delay?

That matter aside comes the question of the redevelopment plans. The only illustration of the proposal I could find online is reproduced above. First, I like the plan’s goal to re-create I and 11th Streets. Whether or not you enjoy the public art the temporary walkway connecting 11th Street across the site is almost always being used. However, I still fear the infusion of “cataclysmic money” (to use Jane Jacob’s term) will erode any sense of genuine urbanism. What would my approach be? Keep the general parameters for development from the site master plan (a minimum height, balance of uses, planned sidewalk and public space, minimum number of housing units, and deadline for construction - even a requirment 30% of the stores have less than 6 branches in the U.S.) subdivide the property into typical lots for the section of city, and auction them off one-by-one for development by different companies. This approach just might spark some competition to finish first and result in a more varied and genuine urbanism.

Some Recent Photos

Here’s some recent photos. The latest stuff is always on Flickr.

PBS’s ‘History Detectives’ Not Half Bad

Last night I popped on the TV to stumble across the obscure PBS series History Detectives. The show features a team of scholars who tackle several historical mysteries in each episode, visiting experts and archives to find answers. Think “Antiques Road Show” on steroids. While I didn’t remember being very impressed when I caught an early episode in 2003, I thought the episode last night (episode 12 from season 2) was quite good. I decided they’d either improved since I’d seen it last, or 6 months of working as a historical research has racheted up my tolerance for this kind of thing. In the show I watched the team investigates a colonial-era skeleton unearthed in a routine archeological excavation in Maryland and checked out whether two brass propellers in Rhode Island are from a German U-Boat. In both cases they personalized the stories nicely - for the first the property owner’s son was the inquiring mind, and the second, two sons of a man who died on a ship sunk by the U-Boat. It turns out the Nazis were working on plans to attack New York City with V2 rockets launched from U-Boats, something I hadn’t heard before. I think the only change I’d like to see would be for the “clients” to be taken along with us to the various libraries and archives with the investigator.

I was also surprised to discover the host of the show is none other than Gwendolyn Wright, author of one of my favorite nonfiction books (no kidding) Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America. I think I’ll try to tune in to some of their 4th season, which starts next week.

links for 2006-06-12

• Riggs archives, now owned by PNC, hold two centuries of American treasures
  Former D.C. bank’s archives contain lots of history. Via H-DC list.

links for 2006-06-11

• IPDI : “NET NEUTRALITY: What’s at Stake - for the Internet, Politics and Consumers”
  What I’d be doing if I didn’t have to work.