Big GDS news

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Aces advised GDS but never committed to the project. Meanwhile JBG's governance structure and portfolio has changed dramatically, the development pipeline for multifamily in upper NW is threatening to glut the market before GDS gets zoning approval, and Sidwell will not only consolidate before GDS but will do so on a much larger campus than GDS's and with room for growth.

So every assumption GDS made has proven wrong -- no partner, no scarcity of new multifamily units, and no comparative advantage over Sidwell.

Glut? I think you know not the meaning of the word. There is huge demand for multifamily housing in upper NW. The 5333 CT Ave is mostly leased, well ahead of schedule, and every other residential building is fully rented or sold, except for a couple of the flip condos near Nebraska and Conn. Aves.

You could line Wisconsin Avenue with 10 story buildings from Glover Park to Western Ave and they would all rent out.

Or we can continue to line the street with single story Chik Fil A's and then blame Wilson kids for how crappy our neighborhood looks with our lineup of franchises.

The upscale shops at The Spanish Steps at GDS Harvard Square will be yuge and amazing, believe me!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The way to figure it out in the big city is to ensure that added density pays for the external costs and impacts it adds. In other words, more off-street parking spots, not fewer. More aggressive traffic calming like they do it in MD to keep added traffic on the main roads and not the neighborhood streets. It's common sense.

If you really want to cut down on traffic and parking problems, then DC should either stop providing second and third parking stickers to a single household, our charge a couple thousand for each additional sticker. I don't understand why someone who buys some sorry house in Tenleytown should get as many free on street parking spaces as they want , and put the kids in Janney. But then complain that someone in an apartment should only take the metro and shouldn't have their kids in Janney.

[Anonymous]

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And the kids in many of those 10 story apartments would all crowd into Janney. But so what, as long as GDS, the Aces and their developer cronies get to pocket the profits...

Umm. Yeah. Kids living on apartments get to go to "your" neighborhood public school.

Is that what this is all about, now that the neighborhood has taken back Janney and mostly rid itself of out of bound kids, let's make sure they don't get back in by buying or renting an apartment three blocks from the school? I've been reading this ridiculous NIMBY chain for months now and finally realized what it's about. Should have figured, given the neighborhood's sorry history on race.

Let's leave the NIMBY and race-baiting invective out of it, as well as the moralizing. (Yes, we've all heard so much about GDS's unique and storied history on integration, Eric Holder on the board, etc., etc.). Instead, let's get practical. Upper NW public schools are bursting at the seams today. They're overcrowded even just with families who live in their school zones. With more and more large projects in the area, whether GDS PUD Commons, the project just announced at Fannie's site, or visions of more 10-story multifamily buildings along Wisconsin (some of which will have parents with school aged kids), just where exactly is the school capacity to educate all of these new students?

It's the history of our neighborhood. And it's not very far in the past. Helps explain the present.

Racially-restrictive covenants were ruled unenforceable in 1948. The free black community around Fort Reno was destroyed by the Feds in the 1920s and replaced by Wilson and Deal which were created as public schools exclusively for white students. None of the current residents concerned about overdevelopment and the city's refusal to add infrastructure as needed lived in Tenleytown during that time. Nor, with a very few exceptions, did their families.

FWIW, many neighborhoods in DC had restrictive covenants during the first half of the 20th century. This wasn't a distinctive Tenleytown thing -- DC was a Jim Crow society.

The history is relevant because it's the reason why the single family home parts of Tenleytown are still overwhelmingly white, and the reason that Janney is almost 75% white and just 10% black in a city that is majority black and with a school system that is even more so. Of course, new apartments will change those numbers because there just aren't enough whites around to keep Janney at those demographics forever. Apartments with new residents can break the historical demographic pattern that does date back to the neighborhood's explicitly segregationist past.

[Anonymous]

Your point is that upscale GDS apartments will draw African-Americans in a way that the current housing stock does not? That makes no sense.

The issue is not who lives in the neighborhood -- it is how many people. Why crowd the neighborhood public school in order to give GDS room that the zoning rules don't anticipate?

And your point about Janney demographics is fair and an issue for the City to consider -- but it is odd if it is coming from someone outside the neighborhood or the Janney community. i would imagine that many GDS families live in neighborhoods with far less diverse schools than Janney.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your point is that upscale GDS apartments will draw African-Americans in a way that the current housing stock does not? That makes no sense.

The issue is not who lives in the neighborhood -- it is how many people. Why crowd the neighborhood public school in order to give GDS room that the zoning rules don't anticipate?

And your point about Janney demographics is fair and an issue for the City to consider -- but it is odd if it is coming from someone outside the neighborhood or the Janney community. i would imagine that many GDS families live in neighborhoods with far less diverse schools than Janney.

My kids aren't there FWIW, mostly amused by the crazed postings on this thread. And we live in a neighborhood that's more diverse than in-bound Janney.
Does seem like the pushback against apartments is designed to keep kids out who don't belong. It's not just about overcrowding because, if the school gets too crowded, DC can always redraw the boundaries to even things out. Or parents there could join the rest of DC and enter charter school lotteries.

[Anonymous]

The issue is not apartments -- it is the number or people/density and whether GDS should be able to push zoning limits.

GDS can build as many apartments as it likes as long as it does not violate zoning. And it can offer below market rates too and it can market to URM.

[Anonymous]

Housing prices/distribution of wealth is why Tenleytown is predominantly white. Janney is whiter than other Ward 3 elementary schools because it attracts a higher % of in-boundary students. More affluent Ward 3 neighborhoods (e.g. Cleveland Park) send more of their kids to private schools earlier.

Racially-restrictive covenants existed in single-family neighborhoods elsewhere in the District (Bloomingdale, Mt Pleasant, Park View) that are now racially integrated. SFHs in these areas are significantly less expensive than SFHs in Tenleytown.

What GDS is proposing -- small luxury apartments typically renting for $2k+ a month -- is not going to change the racial demographics of the neighborhood in any significant way.

PS DC is no longer a majority black city. All those luxury condos/apartments built over the past 15 years have made the city whiter and a more expensive place to live.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Housing prices/distribution of wealth is why Tenleytown is predominantly white. Janney is whiter than other Ward 3 elementary schools because it attracts a higher % of in-boundary students. More affluent Ward 3 neighborhoods (e.g. Cleveland Park) send more of their kids to private schools earlier.

Racially-restrictive covenants existed in single-family neighborhoods elsewhere in the District (Bloomingdale, Mt Pleasant, Park View) that are now racially integrated. SFHs in these areas are significantly less expensive than SFHs in Tenleytown.

What GDS is proposing -- small luxury apartments typically renting for $2k+ a month -- is not going to change the racial demographics of the neighborhood in any significant way.

PS DC is no longer a majority black city. All those luxury condos/apartments built over the past 15 years have made the city whiter and a more expensive place to live.

1. True. Racist restrictive covenants were used in places that like Mt. Pleasant that are very integrated and places like Spring Valley, Tenelytown, and pretty much everything west of Rock Creek and north of Georgetown--although Tenleytown's history is a bit more disturbing because it also had been an area with fairly large and thriving black and integrated neighborhoods that were completely demolished. No one living today is responsible for it, but Janney's demographic makeup is certainly a legacy of past racism.

2. $2K is not enough for luxury. If I spent 2K when I was last in an apartment back in the 90's, it would have been pretty sweet, but 2K doesn't get much anymore. 2K apartments will lower the average HHI of Tenleytown, and will on average, be a different group of people than who lives in the single family homes now.

3. DC is still easily majority-minority, and DCPS is overwhelmingly majority minority and very majority black.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The way to figure it out in the big city is to ensure that added density pays for the external costs and impacts it adds. In other words, more off-street parking spots, not fewer. More aggressive traffic calming like they do it in MD to keep added traffic on the main roads and not the neighborhood streets. It's common sense.

If you really want to cut down on traffic and parking problems, then DC should either stop providing second and third parking stickers to a single household, our charge a couple thousand for each additional sticker. I don't understand why someone who buys some sorry house in Tenleytown should get as many free on street parking spaces as they want , and put the kids in Janney. But then complain that someone in an apartment should only take the metro and shouldn't have their kids in Janney.

The point is not that someone in an apartment should not have a residential parking sticker. People who live in multifamily buildings get access to RPP (unless more recently the developer has covenanted otherwise). The point is that new housing developments, particularly of a certain scale, shouldn't make an existing problem worse. In economic terms, think of it as mitigating externalities -- the costs that otherwise burden the public, the concentrated new parking demand as potentially hundreds of occupants of new units in a given block may seek street parking. (To be fair, I would also limit the number of RPPs for new single family construction where there is not offstreet parking.) To address parking impacts, developers should be providing an adequate number of offstreet parking spots for residents and their visitors. Lately, however, developers have gone to planning agencies and zoning boards to argue that residents will not be drivers and instead will take Uber and mass transit. Projects that get relief from offstreet parking regs, as paltry as they've now become, should not be eligible for RPP. This is exactly the approach that Arlington County takes. In DC it has happened on a negotiated basis, but no agency wants to enforce it.

[Anonymous]

Ok, so the argument is that because the Fed government destroyed an African American community when they built Deal and Wilson in the 1920s, GDS should be authorized to build a structure that is twice the size that the zoning entitles them to, in the hope that studio and 1 bedroom apartments renting for upwards of $2,000 will bring more African American families into the Janney community, and any neighborhood opposition to GDS's plan is a manifestation of Tenleytown's historic racism?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your point is that upscale GDS apartments will draw African-Americans in a way that the current housing stock does not? That makes no sense.

The issue is not who lives in the neighborhood -- it is how many people. Why crowd the neighborhood public school in order to give GDS room that the zoning rules don't anticipate?

And your point about Janney demographics is fair and an issue for the City to consider -- but it is odd if it is coming from someone outside the neighborhood or the Janney community. i would imagine that many GDS families live in neighborhoods with far less diverse schools than Janney.

It could happen, because they might want to live in the GDS mixed-use development because, inter alia, they value the association with GDS's recognized history as a pioneer in integration and social justice in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The issue is not apartments -- it is the number or people/density and whether GDS should be able to push zoning limits.

GDS can build as many apartments as it likes as long as it does not violate zoning. And it can offer below market rates too and it can market to URM.

Didn't GDS or its attorneys already state at a public meeting that they would only provide the bare minimum of below market units that the law requires?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your point is that upscale GDS apartments will draw African-Americans in a way that the current housing stock does not? That makes no sense.

The issue is not who lives in the neighborhood -- it is how many people. Why crowd the neighborhood public school in order to give GDS room that the zoning rules don't anticipate?

And your point about Janney demographics is fair and an issue for the City to consider -- but it is odd if it is coming from someone outside the neighborhood or the Janney community. i would imagine that many GDS families live in neighborhoods with far less diverse schools than Janney.

My kids aren't there FWIW, mostly amused by the crazed postings on this thread. And we live in a neighborhood that's more diverse than in-bound Janney.
Does seem like the pushback against apartments is designed to keep kids out who don't belong. It's not just about overcrowding because, if the school gets too crowded, DC can always redraw the boundaries to even things out. Or parents there could join the rest of DC and enter charter school lotteries.

Or move to Montgomery County. A lot of people in AU Park can see Maryland from their front porches.

[Anonymous]

The notion that African American families would move to Tenleytown just to be near GDS, while sending their kids to Janney, is ludicrous. It takes a jaw-dropping level of arrogance and/or cynicism to make an argument like this.

[Anonymous]

I've posted before that I think that GDS should build apartments for its faculty and staff. It's a win-win for the school and a win-win for the community if their main concerns are traffic and the increase in enrollment at Janney.

The cost of living in DC is so high that it is really difficult to attract top teaching talent in a nation-wide search. Given how awful traffic has been and how unreliable Metro is for the unforeseeable future, the ability to minimize commute would be huge.