Tag: Development

Empower DC

I’m in a good mood. I’ve got my hot cup of British blend tea and a warm bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on multi-grain toast. Life is good. So in this good mood I’m looking over the newsletter sent to me by Empower DC.
Normally, I’d just delete it as it is lefty activist stuff, but as I said, I’m in a very good mood.
According to their email “Empower DC seeks to enhance and improve self-advocacy efforts to improve the quality of life of low-and moderate-income people in DC.” And looking over their newsletter, which is not available via their website (as far as I can tell) and their website they are challenging developers and private uses for DC owned property. Their newsletter has a series they are documenting and they describe it as so:

This is the first in a series of regular reports, entitled “People’s Property Now”, to be released by Empower DC’s People’s Property Campaign, providing information and analysis about the fate of public property in DC.

Empower DC’s People’s Property Campaign asserts that:
• As long as community needs exist in DC, there is no such thing as “surplus” public property.
• Public property is the common trust of the residents of the District of Columbia and must be maintained as public for current and future generations, and used for the public, not private profit.
• DC’s current law only provides a process for disposing of public property. Legislative change is necessary to create a transparent, community-driven input process to determine new public uses for available public properties.

I’m near the end of my sandwich and tea, so let me add my gently to the right opinion. One, why so critical of charter schools? Kingman Park is listed as being an example of ‘currently threatened property’ because it is slated to be a charter school. In the TC part of Shaw, Armstrong School languished as a city owned property and finally (it seems to have taken forever) the school has been cleaned up by the charter school in charge of it now. I do applaud Empower DC recognizing that McMillan Reservoir is green space, however it isn’t accessible green space, except to Canada Geese. My last comment is on DC owned land. It is not that once land is sold that DC won’t or can’t get land ever again. The DC government, as many governments have the power of eminent domain, they can seize property for unpaid taxes or other wrongs against the city and add to the city’s catalog of properties. Also DC owns enough nuisance properties, and we can point to a dozen city owned problems in Shaw alone owned by the city. If the city can offload these problem properties, turning them into housing (luxury, rentals, mod-income, mixed-use, whatever), with people who pay income taxes, the city and the surrounding community benefits.

Do it for the old people

I swear there are certain promises and proposals that get hoisted up the flagpole that supposedly wave you through, “affordable housing”, “senior housing”, youth something or other. I gather you propose these things and certain rules no longer apply to you and thus you get away with all sorts of foolishness. Yesterday I wandered by a site that, according to the historic papers I had been going through (1985-1999), should have had housing and job training. That site has none of those things in 2008. I’ll have to look to find out what the heck happened or why things didn’t happen.
According to our friends in Mt. Vernon Square, someone is suggesting a boatload of foolishness under the flag of elderly housing. There are requests for zoning variances for 1238 and 1242 New Jersey Avenue. According to Si’s letter (seen here) the owner is suggesting that he going to building housing for the elderly, despite making the previous elderly tenant run for her life when 1242’s structure failed and collapsed. Take a read of Si’s letter, she’s a bit more clearer about this than I.

Addition: If you are here from the DC Blogs link a list of candidates is found in my comment here.

Let no one call you easy

Eckington, don’t go crazy and give away your right to demand things just because you want a new establishment. IMGoph over at Bloomingdale (for now) has a good post on the Baraki bar, pizza joint, whatever that is looking for an ABC license. Which is fine, but reports so far have not had the owners approaching the ANC or any of the people with an official voice in protesting the license. The protests are not so much from being against such an establishment but rather wanting the owners to talk to the community and selling neighbors on the concept. IMGoph states it best when he writes:

humbly coming before the neighbors, looking to become a neighbor yourself, would do them well here in bloomingdale. i hope the owners are listening.

A little neighborhood buy in wouldn’t hurt.
Another thing, according to the post Shiloh had spent $40K on protesting Queen of Sheeba. [bites tongue]

New Blog

My next door neighbor B. has a blog. It’s still new so he’s feeling his way around. Jimbo and I have been helping him grasp the concept and purpose of blogging, so when you visit be nice.
The main, and eventual purpose of Bohemian Yankee in the Capital: Salty dog author talks history, sports, queer imagery and urban development is to promote two books that he has coming out, one on GLBT Hollywood and the other on stadium development in the District of Columbia. Of the two I’m more interested in the stadium book, Capital Sporting Grounds as it tells of some of the wheeling and dealing of getting the RFK built, and the location of various other sporting venues in the city.

Useful tool? Good Government?

While on vacation, I did watch the news so yes, I’m aware of certain big national stories. However, I didn’t care. What did catch my eye was something the town of Winter Garden, FL was doing which made me wonder if DC is doing something similar, and if not, why not.
What the City of Winter Garden has is a website showing commercial properties available for lease or sale. Then when you find a property, it gives you the selling price, the lease per sq ft, and the contact agent should you actually want to set up shop. The demographic information is possibly where the city mixes in it’s info by showing what certain (I’m talking very specific like “Medical transcriptionists”) occupations make per hour and annually, where other businesses are in relation to the location you are looking at, and how much money per household and per $000s was spent on things like “Women’s Apparel” in a certain mile radius.
When I heard of that I thought, that would be great for parts of DC that need to attract businesses, like North Cap. However, that would require sharing information with the public, being pro-business, working with private entities, and pro-active. Yet considering that the District can be sloppy with information, anti-small business, and stubborn as a mule against change, I highly doubt the City would provide a tool like Winter Garden’s that would inspire someone to open that small boutique or that dentist’s office, or some other small business by seeing how much particular skilled labor and space will run them.
Another thing, looking at the long list of Winter Garden occupations and their average wages and salaries, got me to thinking about how that may be helpful for job seekers and people trying to become more valuable as workers. So not only would the tool help potential employers but employees as well.

Another BACA meeting missed

I’m so bad.
I was planing to just pop by the function at Vegetate for Roadside Developments‘ O Street Market. I figured I’d pop a few munchies and show up to the BACA meeting fashionably late. I wound up running into some neighbors from the street and well, time flew. I’m so sorry. Sorry that I can be so easily distracted by free wine and polenta bites.
Anyway they need community support Thursday before the Zoning people.
I swear I will make the next, BACA meeting…. well, unless a certain idiot finally asks me out that night.

PUD

I’ve thrown away the paper now. I was holding on to it for a proposed paper until I hit the “paper that was supposed to write itself.” But the tossed paper was testimony or a chapter of an academic piece located in the Zoning Files for the National Capital and Planning Commission on the problem with PUDs. A PUD is a Planned Unit Development, usually for something taking up a lot of space, like 1/2 a block or more. On ANC Kevin Chapple’s site there is more information about the PUD for the O Street Market.
What I remember from going through the different PUDs filed from the late 1980s to the 1990s, is that the longer these things drag out, some concessions get lost in the process and the PUDs kept reappearing as something new as changes (due to something…engineering/ community wants/ government fickleness) were applied. If the O Street Market project stays on schedule and no other stakeholders or late comers add anything, then all should be well.

Yes, it is ugly


100_0787.JPG
Originally uploaded by In Shaw

Prince of Pentworth has a more up to date picture and others are calling for the mighty hammer of HDs to come in and save the day. I say there is another way, but the problem is more than this one property. This is a unit block of ugly, historic ugly, plain ugly, and cheap modern fugly. Let’s start with the fugly shall we?
If I have identified the house right the place is 26 P St NE, owned by Payam Mobin of Hollowerind Court, Reston, VA. Mobin bought the property 11/17/05 for $363,000 and should have known better, but some people want to make things hard on themselves. Anyway, Mobin decided to throw an ugly monster pop up on the thin property. I can imagine a nicer looking pop-up but it would have been pointless because of all the other stuff to consider.
Next door is historically ugly. The two houses to the left of 26 P is 22 & 24 P, both burned out shells. Owned by DM McCoy (24 P) and the 22 P St LLC at 137 R ST SW. Nicely, both are being taxed at the vacant property rate, and their assessment seemed to have jumped up by 2X. Next to those shells is a ‘parking lot’, whose assessment for 2008 is about 5x what it was for 2007. Next to the parking lot are Refuge of Hope Disciple Center’s (Capitol Heights, MD) vacant lots, and those lots have not been taxed. No taxes apparently have been collected for 2007 for any of RoHDC’s properties on P. Zip. Nada. And they’ve owned those lots for over a decade. What’s up with that? How is it charitable, when there is no building to dispense the charity?
Next door to fugly is 28 P a vacant house owned by Sang Lee of Oakton, VA paying over $8K in taxes for 2007. On the end of the block, where P meets Florida, there is a gas station. Not terribly bad, not terribly pretty. There seems to be 3 households living on this unit block of P. Everything else is vacant or commercial or crap, or all three.
Going back to modern fugly, I looked at DCRA’s permit list but sadly, it is only for those issued in the past couple of months (OCT07-FEB08). Might actually have to walk up to the damned thing and see if the permit is valid. Heighwise, it may be a matter of right because the area is zoned to allow that high because it is a commercial area. Across the street from this is the DDOT parking lot. Conceviably, one could knock down the shells, the lots, and the monstrosity and build a decent looking 4-5 level building that complements the Peoples Drug Building that DDOT occupies. But this thing is so skinny and so badly designed that it is ugly.
So ugly I can’t imagine it being a sound investment, short of a halfway house. Then if, that, I’m sure it will go well nicely with whatever the Refuge of Hope might be planning.
Seriously, this side of the block would be better off razed, the three resident households compensated for their trouble and turned into a huge community garden. ‘Cause it’s just that F*ed up.

UPDATE:
Wrong about 3 households, make it 2. One household, 32 P St NE, owned by “HENRIETTA BERRIN” and taxed at the senior citizen rate of $0 for all of 2007 and $35.22 for 2005 is DEAD. Dead, dead, dead, dead. Deady-dead dead. Well according to the Social Security Death Index. Apparently she died May 20, 2005. Well, she’s now the second dead person paying taxes I know of, wait, no, she hasn’t paid taxes, ’cause she didn’t owe any. Ain’t DC Gov generous with the departed?