Month: June 2005

I’m on the Do Not Call registry for a reason. I don’t like to be bothered. I have gained the skill of getting off the phone with fire/police/vet “charities” quickly. I’m still working on annoying calls from my mortgage company trying to sell me a 2nd mortgage. So I don’t care to come home to find a message on my phone from Mr. Bobby Green from the Capitol Area Minority Contractors Assoc reading from a statement about the stadium.
A- I don’t even like baseball so I’m not too keen on paying for a new stadium for a team that just might up and leave before it’s all paid for
B- I already got the mailing you all sent, no I really don’t need a follow up call. If I didn’t really feel for you with the colorful mailer, the call ain’t gonna make me care more.
C- Don’t mention Vincent Orange. ‘Cause now I’m thinking he put you up to it to get his name out.

Well at least he didn’t call during dinner time.

I’m having evil thoughts.
Once upon a time, long time ago, when DC real estate prices were starting to go crazy, like 2001, I made my friends an offer. If they bought a house or condo in Shaw I would give them $1,000 to help with closing costs. Did I have $1,000 just to give away? Not really, but I could sell some precious tobacco stock if needed. I figured it was worth $1,000 to have the people I loved blocks from where I lived, instead of out in the burbs. I offered it to Liz, to Gn, and MH. Liz bought in Alexandria and the other guys never bought anything. After some time the tobacco stock got sold to pay for the new kitchen.
Now I’m thinking, if I’m willing to pay to have people come to DC, would I be willing to pay for people to go away? How much would you pay for the crack head a few doors down to just pack up and move? What is it worth to you? $500? $2,000? $10? Of course, half the problems don’t even live here, they just hang out.

Just got this message from Jim Berry:

Dear Neighbors,

At tonight’s ANC meeting, Mr. Thomas Gore, the Executive Director of Associates for Renewal in Education, is making a presentation about the above proposal to develop the Slater and Langston School buildings. After he concludes his presentation, he is likely to ask the Commission to support the proposal. I plan to strongly discourage the Commission from taking an action on this proposal at the present time, essentially, for the reasons that I shared with Mr.Gore when he and others made a recent request for the support of the Bates Area Civic Association, Inc.

That is, the DC Office of Property Management is currently developing a Request for Proposals to develop the Slater and Langston School buildings. Once that RFP is issued, Mr. Gore and ARE have an equal opportunity to respond to its elements in hopes of gaining the city’s final approval for their project. Similarly, other developers are likely to respond to the RFP and this will give us some measure of choice as to what uses we would prefer for those buildings in the future. The decision about the fate of these two buildings is a major one because whatever is developed at that location, we will have to live with for the next 30plus years.

As some of you know, we have been urging the city to develop those two buildings for a long time. And, now that we are in position to see what possibilities the market might bear, I think it would be unwise to pre-empt the RFP decision-making process by committing ourselves to a proposed project, without allowing ourselves any alternatives to consider and/or compare the ARE proposal with.

At this month’s BACA meeting, we referred the matter of ARE’s proposal to our Land Use, Planning and Economic Development Committee. In turn, this Committee is charged with the responsibility of examining and evaluating the details of the proposal to let us know what it really means for us and to make recommendations as to how we should respond to it.

It is also important to note that at the last meeting the BACA’s Land Use, Planning and Economic Development Committee made a recommendation that the civic association request a grant from ANC 5C to organize a “small area planning session” that would enable us to have a facilitated, community-wide conversation about the various assets that exist within our service area with an eye towards coming up with some recommendations that will reflect our vision of how we would like to see economic development evolve in our community over the next five to 10 years. Naturally, the Slater and Langston buildings would be two of the assets that we would be talking
about at this planning session to determine what we believe to be the most appropriate and productive future use of those buildings. The co-chairman of the Land Use, Planning and Economic Development Committee is scheduled to appear on the ANC agenda tonight to make the grant request. So, for this additional reason it would be highly premature to commit ourselves to any proposal at this time.

Specifically, at the BACA meeting, the gentleman from Chapman Associates talked about forming a partnership with ARE “to develop a state of the art early childhood education center and senior housing” at this location. In order to make the deal work, the developer said that he would propose to construct a nine story building of rental housing on the grounds in which the Slater and Langston buildings are presently situated. In addition, he plans to locate other rental housing in the Langston building. All of this to accommodate the business interests of ARE to operate an early childhood education program on the site. On these grounds, I am opposed to the proposal because I believe that the cost to the city and to us of,
basically, giving this valuable land to the developer to saturate the subject site with rental housing just to accommodate ARE’s business interests, is way too high a price for us to pay.
This morning, Mr. Gore circulate a flier around the community in an attempt to rally folks to attend the ANC meeting tonight in support of his proposal. He also urged residents to contact Council Member Vincent Orange’s office to “encourage me to vote in favor of” the ARE proposal. Be assured that I don’t take my direction on such matters from Council Member Orange and that tactics of this kind do not intimidate me. underlining by InShaw

If you support my position on this issue, please let me know and you can contact Council Member Orange’s office (202) 724-8028 to let him know as well.

Best,

Jim Berry
ANC 5C

Right now I’m too lazy to read between the lines or comment.

I’ve noticed the bright colored pots over on the tiny park on Florida and North Capitol NW and it has helped a bit. I also noticed the pointy additions to the metal work around the trees to keep people from sitting on them. However, I noticed the hanger outs have figured a way around the points. Plastic soda crates. Problem is it requires some balance. I noticed one fellow with equilibrium issues fall down. His buddies just leaned him against the tree box. Of course some just get a few milk crates and make a chair of those.

From today’s comments:

YooHooligan said…
Sadness alert: we discovered a grey Siamese-looking cat with dark grey tail and ear-tips lying dead in a tree box on 4th St. by R. It’s wearing a bright green collar, and looks to have been well-loved by someone. In the interest of safety, we called animal control to come pick it up, but I thought I’d say something just in case any Faithful Readers know who the poor baby belonged to.

Okay I’m going to use this space for my own personal gain. 1st. I have a mountain bike to sell, it is a red Trek, about 17 inches, very little rust and has a rack on the back. $50. Also red, but a giveaway, is a rain barrel to be hooked up to one’s gutter system. The barrel is too high for my current gutter system. Last but not least my old 20 gallon garbage can I used for compost is available to any who will take it. A co-worker gave me his old commercially made compost bin so now I’m composting in that and it has been a thrill. Well, as thrilling as composting can get.
So if you want to buy my bike or take my compost bin or rain barrel off my hands e-mail me at inshaw at att period net.

This started out as a garbage can fire and spread to the fence and almost to the overhanging tree. Yesterday, about 4-5pm I was out in the backyard collecting salad greens for dinner when I smelled smoke. At first I thought it was someone lighting up for a ciggy and went back to clipping. Later I looked up and saw smoke but no fire, thinking it could be someone firing up the grill. But something seemed wrong. So I grabbed my keys and went into the alley. At the area where there was smoke there were three boys on bikes between the ages of 9-13, one threw something in the smoky garbage can and they sauntered off very quickly as I headed up the alley. I saw fire in the garbage can. I went and alerted the authorities. The time it took the firetruck on NJ Ave to appear near the alley was about 5 minutes, but in that time the fire had engulfed the big green trash can, the trash near it and was on the fence and licking the tree. Problem. Alley too small for the fire truck to come down. So it took another minute to get the truck were they could bring the hose over to put out the fire. They didn’t seem particularly rushed. Not like the house was on fire or in danger of catching on fire.

It speaks volumes when you roll out of bed, put on some shoes then drag yourself outside to grab the paper and you see your neighbor and say ‘hi’ without a thought of how crappy you look. And then later, still no adjustment in the crap look, wander down a few doors to some other neighbors just getting over a hangover to chat over nothing much over breakfast. It is 10:30AM I have yet to brush, wash or anything and I’ve already carried on a conversation with several people on my block. Of course, come noon I will have no excuse and will need to clean up. But I just thought about how comfortable we are with each other, letting each other into our homes, and such and it is wonderful.
Yes, I normally don’t post on the weekends but I had to share.

Just to get a feel for rents in DC, I was looking at the rentals in the City Paper and found:

SHAW/ BATES ST. NW. Large, sunny apt. in 2nd floor of townhouse. W/D, CAC, $700/mo.+. Habitat Real Estate, 202/232-XXXX

Damned we’re cheap.
So people of Bates, if you have a poor college grad you want in your hood, see if s/he’ll take this.

I don’t have any particular project or property in mind. I’m just musing. But face it. For those of us in the transitional neighborhoods, when we hear the words “affordable housing” we get anxious, defensive and just plain angry. If you are currently living or have lived next door to a Section 8 crackhead and their little crack buddies that come by, I understand your anger.
Maybe you can get in affordable housing with a mixed income project or say it’s for seniors. ‘Cause really how much trouble is grandpa gonna give you? Yeah, old folks do drugs, but most of those drugs are illegals from Canada. Mixed income projects give hope that the non-poor residents will balance out the poor ones and that spaces are limited enough that crack heads and touble makers need not apply.
I know that the city is in desperate need for affordable housing and should have affordable housing. Yet, it seems like it may get in the way for the big reward that transitioning neighborhoods move towards. If big building is market rate then it brings people who can attract the businesses some of us want. But going the affordable housing route brings worry, worry that it may turn into a housing project where there is this pocket of poverty. Housing projects do not seem to attract coffeehouses or bookstores. They seem to attract explotive businesses like check cashing stores or liquor stores that only stock things that get you drunk or drunker.
But we must face the need (on moral or logicistical grounds) to provide affordable housing. Problem is, how to balance it with the desire to become a ‘nicer’ neighborhood.