New Cleveland Park library is a missed opportunity
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Anonymous
Actually there are very few rent controlled apartments in DC. But it is an inane and irrelevant tangent to this discussion because no one is proposing to eliminate them - tear downs of existing large residential buildings are rare - in fact I can't think of a single example of it happening so this is really a red herring. |
Anonymous
That's fantastic, people can choose where they want to live. If they want to live in a glass box in a dense area, go for it. Others like low-rise Palisades, Cleveland Park or Chevy Chase DC. That diversity of neighborhoods and housing types is a good thing. Not everything has to be turned into Greater Greater Generica. Connecticut Avenue actually has varied zoning heights, reflecting the Newlands plan for how the corridor developed. There are concentrations of denser apartment buildings, often set back on lawns, interspersed with low density strips including Cleveland Park, the area where Politics and Prose it and then Chevy Chase DC. That's an important element of the streetscape design. Van Ness was originally part of this pattern, but it got changed, and we see how that turned out. |
Anonymous
| And yet, like it or not, Van Ness is an economic engine for the area. The Main Street is doing wonders to improve the retail mix and the "community" feel. |
Anonymous
Rent control is the one of the most ineffiecnt ways to deliver truly affordable housing to people who need it. Rent control apartments are not means tested which means someone can make 100k and have a rent controlled apt for decades. So that is a very weak arguement. True affordable housing is means tested for tenants and has been created through some kind of subsidy like tax credits or housing production trust fund. That is what Cleveland Park and most of Ward 3 has NONE of. The site could have had at least 20 truly affordable housing units. But keep on trying to convince everyone that Ward 3 has their fair share of affordable housing. |
Anonymous
The thing is to enforce — and strengthen — the law to require developments to include more affordable units. Do you know how many ‘affordable’ units Cathedral Commons built, despite getting PUD treatment permitting more height and density than zoning allowed? The bare statutory minimum. PUDs are supposed to require community benefits like more affordable housing to offset being able to exceed zoning. Yet this didn’t happen. Moreover, a number of the Cathedral Commons ‘affordable’ units are rented to AU students. The whole system is corrupt. |
Anonymous
Maybe if you had asked for more affordable housing as an amenity at the outset rather than fighting the development for 15 years, the legal fees and opportunity costs could have gone to that instead of the zoning attorneys. It is total crap that you complain about this now after having fought the development for so many years. |
Anonymous
You have no idea what you're talking about. No one fought the development for 15 years. In 1999, Giant proposed to build a new supermarket with a 300 foot blank wall (think GDS Safeway) along Wisconsin Ave., with an above ground parking garage. That did result in community opposition, which didn't want a deadened streetscape of Wisconsin the length of a football field. (The plan was known as the Great Wall of Giant.) Giant then withdrew its application. In fact, three or four years during Mayor Williams' term, Giant, the ANC, local organizations and the Office of Planning all signed off on an agreement, announced by the mayor's office, for Giant to build a better store. Giant then was acquired by Ahol, which walked away from the agreement for unexplained reasons. In 2005 the local ANC hired an architect to engage again with Ahold/Giant to encourage them to build a new store. Giant then proposed to renovate the north and south blocks with a plan that got strong support from local stakeholders (ANC and community groups). Perhaps bolstered by community support for its plan, Giant then changed its proposal yet again and by 2008 doubled the size of the project, which then required relief from zoning laws. That much larger project was opposed by many in the community as violating zoning protections and as not adequately addressing impacts. By the way, during the zoning hearings, Giant's representative thanked those in 1999 who had opposed the blank Great Wall of Giant proposal along Wisconsin. Giant engaged a firm called Streetworks that specializes in 'engagement' with local political officials. Their proposal then sailed through the Zoning Commission with barely a design tweak. Folks look at Park Van Ness as an example of what Cathedral Commons could have been had Giant not designed it in the cheapest, least imaginative way possible. Despite being a PUD, there were no community amenities required as is typical in large PUDs (more affordable housing, community space, playground renovation dollars, etc.). Streetworks did its job well. |
Anonymous
| Ha! What do you expect? Good, quality architecture from Giant?! |
Anonymous
You are splitting hairs - the same proposal was not fought continuously for 15 years but multiple iterations of the proposal were fought off and on for 15 years. If opponents, and more importantly the ANC which is lead by someone who thinks she is living in 1986, had constructively engaged with the developer you might have gotten a better designed project and more affordable housing. What was built was much smaller than what has long existed on neighboring parcels and if you want better design and more affordable units you need to unlock some of the value of the site to pay for it which opponents were unwilling to do though now they come and bitch about something of their own making. BTW nothing about what they proposed "violated zoning protections" whatever that means. BTW the funniest/most ignorant component of your post is the comparison to Park Van Ness which was a matter of right project and FWIW a much larger project. But since it was bigger they had more money to spend on design and by law it came with more affordable (IZ) units. But keep fighting the good fight - it is getting you crappier projects that come at the expense of a more vibrant neighborhood and tax revenues that benefit the District! |
Anonymous
Nope, the first proposal was not a blank wall. the first proposal was fought because of a partially visible parking garage. Please get your facts right. The 300 foot wall was proposed in response to the attacks on the PUD, so Giant proposed a matter of right development. That was then threatened with a landmark filing, which failed. The initial proposal had openings from the corner all the way to Cactus Cantina, one for the Giant Bakery, one for the Giant Florist and so on. You can see the copies of this at the ANC office or ask the head of the ANC at the time, she still has them. |
Anonymous
No, wrong again. The original 1999 plan had a single entrance close to the parking structure. Any other doors were Potemkin ones. The agreed-upon design with Mayor Williams' office and the office of planning did have separate entrances on Wisconsin, but Giant signed and then walked away from it. Throughout, Giant largely insisted on having just one door to the store, citing security reasons (in Cathedral Heights, no less). Even today, there's just one entrance, which feels like a tunnel. The whole project looks like quick, modest ROI bet that a developer would put up in a marginal part of town, not as a built-to-last addition to one of the city's most established real estate markets. |
Anonymous
You are as bad as KellyAnne Conway. The openings were absolutely real. There were absolutely real openings. Please look at the 1999 Elevation entitled "Macomb - Woodley Shops, Wisconsin Avenue Elevation." The Chair of the ANC at the time has the drawings in her possession if you want to see them, or they should be at the ANC office. The reason it doesn't possess the affordable housing and architectural detail you pine for now is because of the delays you and your neighbors inflicted on the property owner for 15 years. Ironically, the original proposal that you fought was only for the south side parcel and had NO housing included. So now you complain that there wasn't enough affordable housing. HINT: had you said at the time, that you would support the PUD with the parking garage if you included 3 stories of affordable housing on top, the project would have been completed by 2001. |
Anonymous
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NIMBY memes: 1. The neighborhood is all SFH's, so it should multifamily will destroy the character
2, The neighborhood already has multifamily, therefore no more is needed. As for rent controlled units, if you want to condition upzoning on retaining equivalent affordability (IE if you replace 20 units of rent controlled with 100 units, at least 20 units have to be committed AH at the same level) by all means suggest that. I don't think that is the real objection to new density. |
Anonymous
It seems that Greater Greater Washington, the mouthpiece of Big Development, has taken over this website. This is exactly what a developer would propose, put the affordable units on top of the parking garage. It's no secret that the affordable units in many projects are relegated to the margins, next to the loading dock and so forth. |
Anonymous
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Perhaps, but the point is, the original proposal for the Giant was a 1 and 1/2 story grocery store with some office space on top and a 3 story parking garage replacing a huge surface parking lot.
After 15 years, the neighborhood got a 1 1/2 story redeveloped parcel plus the redevelopment of the north parcel with a multi-story mixed use with housing solution. And at this late date, we have neighborhood NIMBYs complaining about the architecture and the lack of affordable housing, neither of which were part of the discussion in 1999. |