Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Then they should just sell the lots to a developer who will pack in a bunch of townhouses with no buffer on the Safeway site.

Many of the neighbors would prefer to see townhouses instead of a campus that is stuffed to the gills with 1300 students and faculty, and all of the attendant traffic and parking impacts. Space is so tight under the GDS plan that they plan on building the lower school soccer field three or four stories above street level, on top of the roof!

The GDS plan sounds tacky.

OMG. Just in time for Halloween, an anti-GDS troll resurrected this thread from the dead.

Yeah, new development could be "tacky." Like maybe someone would put, in tony Tenleytown, a Chik Fil-A, a Chipotle, District Taco, Z-Burger, McDonald's . . . . Whoops. They are all there already! Maybe a Burger King? That might be the one development that could really drag down the neighborhood.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Then they should just sell the lots to a developer who will pack in a bunch of townhouses with no buffer on the Safeway site.

Many of the neighbors would prefer to see townhouses instead of a campus that is stuffed to the gills with 1300 students and faculty, and all of the attendant traffic and parking impacts. Space is so tight under the GDS plan that they plan on building the lower school soccer field three or four stories above street level, on top of the roof!

The GDS plan sounds tacky.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Then they should just sell the lots to a developer who will pack in a bunch of townhouses with no buffer on the Safeway site.

Many of the neighbors would prefer to see townhouses instead of a campus that is stuffed to the gills with 1300 students and faculty, and all of the attendant traffic and parking impacts. Space is so tight under the GDS plan that they plan on building the lower school soccer field three or four stories above street level, on top of the roof!

Anonymous wrote:Way too many pages here. Can someone summarize the situation? Considering HS and LS for my two. What is timing of the consolidation/expansion?

Anonymous wrote:Then they should just sell the lots to a developer who will pack in a bunch of townhouses with no buffer on the Safeway site.

Anonymous wrote:That would be somewhat surprising. How would they pay for the Safeway site? Selling the lower campus won't cover the full costs.

Anonymous wrote:Oh thanks GDS spokesperson. It just so happened that the best real estate investment in the US was right across a street.

Anonymous wrote:They were never going to use Martens for the campus.

Anonymous wrote:They were never going to use Martens for the campus.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seriously? What other investments are available? Do I need to go through stocks, bonds, REITs, etc? GDS spent many millions on the real estate. They could instead invest that money. Are we supposed to believe that Maartens is hyper-leveraged (which would be a stupid way to 'invest' institutional money) and that the only investment vehicle available to GDS that is similarly hyper-leveraged is the plot of land across from the school?

Anonymous wrote:I don't know, you would have to ask GDS or go back to the original accounts. I thought they bought them both at the same time.

On the second part, what revenue streams would you suggest? I don't think GDS has much of an endowment. Most DC privates don't.

Are you really this stupid? Do you think GDS had whatever cash was necessary to make the purchase that they used operational or endowment monies? No, of course not. There were some donors who stepped up to make the purchases possible. It's not like those same donors would have given the same in cash to buy bonds, REITs or stocks. If GDS had that kind of capital lying around, they wouldn't be messing with this real estate transaction.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not suggesting another toy store. Suggesting anything that we can walk to in our own neighborhood other than a used car lot and barren streetscape.

I kind of like the businesses there now -- the bike store is absolutely terrific and and "used car lot" features antique and vintage autos. That's more interesting to me than six stories of hipster flats on top of yet another Five Guys and a Starbucks.

Anonymous wrote:Until and unless population density increases, Tenleytown will continue to be a dreary strip surrounded by a startingly (for DC anyway) homogenous residential population. Of course the GDS development isn't going to solve problems caused by decades of chasing away any change, but it will be a step in the right direction of starting to create a more urban village within our great city.