Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to the latest plans, the community will get all of the negatives - no tax revenue, no new retail, no new anything.

I hope those who vigorously opposed the previous plans are happy.

Cry me a river. All GDS -- and their crony developer partners hiding behind the curtain -- have to do is to build a project that doesn't violate the zoning laws. If cmplying with zoning is a problem for them, then they can sell to a less greedy applicant. I can wait until then. It's not like the Wisconsin corridor is exactly a retail desert....

Yeah, it is a retail desert for that stretch of Wisconsin anyway. No developer wants to touch it. Meanwhile, other areas are booming. The neighbors were fools.

Good school -- but I am glad that their novel density transfer theory did not fly.

As true today as on day one of this fiasco--the Greedy Developers' School.

[quote=Anonymous]The sleaziness of this whole deal by GDS has been the ability to shift densities and height levels back and forth between the Safeway and Martens sites. [/quote]

I can't understand why it's so important for people to believe that building to the "highest and best use" is the result of sleaziness. I've had great and not-so-great experiences with my kids at GDS but one thing they have never ever been is "sleazy". They honestly tried to do the right thing. At the visioning meetings there was a consensus that GDS should use the opportunity of this process to reach out to, and create a benefit to the community. It's a shame that the community had to go into it fighting and cut off all collaboration before it could even start.

I am sorry, but I am not happy with the idea that the neighborhood is going to get all of the vehicular traffic and leave millions of dollars of income to the city on the table.

Why is that a better solution?

Anonymous wrote:According to the latest plans, the community will get all of the negatives - no tax revenue, no new retail, no new anything.

I hope those who vigorously opposed the previous plans are happy.

Cry me a river. All GDS -- and their crony developer partners hiding behind the curtain -- have to do is to build a project that doesn't violate the zoning laws. If cmplying with zoning is a problem for them, then they can sell to a less greedy applicant. I can wait until then. It's not like the Wisconsin corridor is exactly a retail desert....

According to the latest plans, the community will get all of the negatives - no tax revenue, no new retail, no new anything.

I hope those who vigorously opposed the previous plans are happy.

This is where I am as well. I love GDS and I'm a neighbor. I don't have an issue with school expanding into the Safeway lot or the former Martin's lot. But I have an extremely negative reaction to GDS - my alma mater by the way - being used as a Trojan Horse for a real estate development.

"I don't have much of a problem with the campus plan if there is strong traffic mitigation. I do object to the little Trumps on the GDS board, etc. trying to make a buck (hiding behind the school's skirts) with a PUD that violates the zoning laws."

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In my view, 18:00 above has it exactly right. The sleaziness of this whole deal by GDS has been the ability to shift densities and height levels back and forth between the Safeway and Martens sites. That is where the danger of too tall, too dense, too ugly and too horrible has always been. Having a completely separate developer not in cahoots with GDS will most probably end up with a much more pleasant and in scale addition to the neighborhood than what GDS was proposing. This is actually a very good development for the community (as opposed to the mostly Maryland families enrolled at GDS). Another important factor from the community could be to request that GDS do what Potomac School does---require those students who don't arrive on foot or by Metro, to take school buses in order to ameliorate the extremely hazardous pedestrian conditions that will be created by a huge influx of cars at exactly the time Janney and St. Columba's students will be walking to their schools. This whole project still leaves A LOT to be desired from the perspective many in the adjacent community.[/quote] I get so tired of these "mostly Maryland families" types of comments about GDS. I just checked the school's directory and I can say that a clear majority of the students at the school live in DC.[/quote]

So what? Hardly any walk -- the vast majority arrive every day by car, and that will be even more true when younger students move to the Wisconsin campus. That said, I don't have much of a problem with the campus plan if there is strong traffic mitigation. I do object to the little Trumps on the GDS board, etc. trying to make a buck (hiding behind the school's skirts) with a PUD that violates the zoning laws.

[quote=Anonymous]In my view, 18:00 above has it exactly right. The sleaziness of this whole deal by GDS has been the ability to shift densities and height levels back and forth between the Safeway and Martens sites. That is where the danger of too tall, too dense, too ugly and too horrible has always been. Having a completely separate developer not in cahoots with GDS will most probably end up with a much more pleasant and in scale addition to the neighborhood than what GDS was proposing. This is actually a very good development for the community (as opposed to the mostly Maryland families enrolled at GDS). Another important factor from the community could be to request that GDS do what Potomac School does---require those students who don't arrive on foot or by Metro, to take school buses in order to ameliorate the extremely hazardous pedestrian conditions that will be created by a huge influx of cars at exactly the time Janney and St. Columba's students will be walking to their schools. This whole project still leaves A LOT to be desired from the perspective many in the adjacent community.[/quote] I get so tired of these "mostly Maryland families" types of comments about GDS. I just checked the school's directory and I can say that a clear majority of the students at the school live in DC.

[quote=Anonymous]In my view, 18:00 above has it exactly right. The sleaziness of this whole deal by GDS has been the ability to shift densities and height levels back and forth between the Safeway and Martens sites. That is where the danger of too tall, too dense, too ugly and too horrible has always been. Having a completely separate developer not in cahoots with GDS will most probably end up with a much more pleasant and in scale addition to the neighborhood than what GDS was proposing. This is actually a very good development for the community (as opposed to the mostly Maryland families enrolled at GDS). Another important factor from the community could be to request that GDS do what Potomac School does---require those students who don't arrive on foot or by Metro, to take school buses in order to ameliorate the extremely hazardous pedestrian conditions that will be created by a huge influx of cars at exactly the time Janney and St. Columba's students will be walking to their schools. This whole project still leaves A LOT to be desired from the perspective many in the adjacent community.[/quote]

The JBG partners were some of GDS's genius, power player "roster of aces," as a fawning Washington Post profile put it shortly after the school announced its yuge real estate play.

What's the statuts of their takeover of 42nd street? I hope that idea got buried.

In my view, 18:00 above has it exactly right. The sleaziness of this whole deal by GDS has been the ability to shift densities and height levels back and forth between the Safeway and Martens sites. That is where the danger of too tall, too dense, too ugly and too horrible has always been. Having a completely separate developer not in cahoots with GDS will most probably end up with a much more pleasant and in scale addition to the neighborhood than what GDS was proposing. This is actually a very good development for the community (as opposed to the mostly Maryland families enrolled at GDS). Another important factor from the community could be to request that GDS do what Potomac School does---require those students who don't arrive on foot or by Metro, to take school buses in order to ameliorate the extremely hazardous pedestrian conditions that will be created by a huge influx of cars at exactly the time Janney and St. Columba's students will be walking to their schools. This whole project still leaves A LOT to be desired from the perspective many in the adjacent community.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I heard they are on track to campus unification by 2020, by using the Safeway site as planned.

My guess (and purely a guess, since just an interested neighbor) is that GDS will flip the Martens property. Real estate prices continue to climb, and maybe they will end up at least even, if not ahead.

I'm truly scared though of what a new developer will do with the Martens property. I'm guessing we will all rue the day when we pushed back against GDS developing it. If it just goes to the highest bidder, God only knows what monstrosity we'll have on Wisconsin Avenue.

I agree that there likely will be development there, but am less concerned about someone other than GDS. The whole premise (and presumably, value) for GDS and its unnamed partner was to have common ownership of the Safeway and Martens site under GDS. That way, the zoning lawyers argued, the Martens site could 'borrow' unused density from the Safeway site, resulting in a taller, denser development than what existing zoning allows. Once GDS had its approvals in hand for the Martens site, then it would be free to flip the property to its silent developer partner waiting behind the curtain (assumed to be JBG, whose principals include current or former GDS board members). GDS seems to have run into more roadblocks than it anticipated. A new developer could still seek a PUD, but 'borrowing density' probably would be an unavailable strategy for big and tall.

Anonymous wrote: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.

I heard they are on track to campus unification by 2020, by using the Safeway site as planned.

My guess (and purely a guess, since just an interested neighbor) is that GDS will flip the Martens property. Real estate prices continue to climb, and maybe they will end up at least even, if not ahead.

I'm truly scared though of what a new developer will do with the Martens property. I'm guessing we will all rue the day when we pushed back against GDS developing it. If it just goes to the highest bidder, God only knows what monstrosity we'll have on Wisconsin Avenue.