Big GDS news

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

This is a worthy idea, but how to monetize it from GDS's perspective? GDS got into this transaction as a revenue opportunity to support the school's programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

This is a worthy idea, but how to monetize it from GDS's perspective? GDS got into this transaction as a revenue opportunity to support the school's programs.

Pretty silly idea. Building dorms or apartments for teachers might make sense if a school is hiring lots of kids right out of college. But the success of GDs is due in large part to hiring and retaining veteran teachers. Some for their entire careers. They have their own lives and own families, and I doubt that they're looking to all be living together a block from the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

But what is the existing problem? I can get a parking spot in Tenleytown any time of day or night, within a block of the metro. This is a totaly fallacy that parking in Tenley is like Adams Morgan or some such.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

This is a worthy idea, but how to monetize it from GDS's perspective? GDS got into this transaction as a revenue opportunity to support the school's programs.

Pretty silly idea. Building dorms or apartments for teachers might make sense if a school is hiring lots of kids right out of college. But the success of GDs is due in large part to hiring and retaining veteran teachers. Some for their entire careers. They have their own lives and own families, and I doubt that they're looking to all be living together a block from the school.

There is typically a 10-15% turnover rate for faculty at schools like this. Many of these hires are young, who eventually hopefully become the long term faculty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

But what is the existing problem? I can get a parking spot in Tenleytown any time of day or night, within a block of the metro. This is a totaly fallacy that parking in Tenley is like Adams Morgan or some such.[/quote
]

This. I've yet to see the parking problem.

[Anonymous]

A lot of the GDS board has turned over, since the school originally agreed to do the yuge real estate deal. It wouldn't be surprising at all, after all of the challenges of the last 2 1/2 years, if the new trustees on the board are looking to shed the PUD albatross.

[Anonymous]

Or, they will just wait out the murkiness around PUD's.

[Anonymous]

The Board has seemed reluctant to take its oversight function seriously.

[Anonymous]

At this point, what is the earliest possible date that the campuses could be consolidated?

[Anonymous]

If they don't even have a PUD application on file, which I don't think they do, then breaking ground would be at least a year from now at the earliest. 2020 seems plausible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If they don't even have a PUD application on file, which I don't think they do, then breaking ground would be at least a year from now at the earliest. 2020 seems plausible.

Is this still correct? We were thinking of GDS for middle school and wondered whether they still plan to consolidate on the Tenley campus.

[Anonymous]

Same issue here. What is a realistic timeline?

[Anonymous]

Email sent today says they're on track for opening a unified campus in fall 2020

[Anonymous]

I think that is by abandoning developing the Martens site nd just building on the Safeway portion.

That will be a huge cash albatross for the school until they can dispose of Martens.

[Anonymous]

yep campus just on safeway land. not sure what will happen with Martens. Lots of turmoil in staff at GDS currently.