Hearst Elementary Renovation

ANC 3F Commissioner Adam Tope updates the community on the planned Heast renovation for 2013.

Construction Starts at Cathedral Commons

After almost 14 years, ground has finally broken on the former Wisconsin Avenue Giant. DC Metro Urban Diary has a good update.

Stoddert Soccer and DPR - at odds over fields

Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post covers the squeeze on Stoddert Soccer for field space.

A lot of kids, not very many fields.

ANC 3C Update on Wisconsin Avenue Giant

ANC 3C to ratify Giant Construction Management Agreement

At long last, ANC 3C intends to consider and vote on ratifying a negotiated construction management agreement with Giant and Bozzuto Development. We submitted a draft Construction Management Agreement to Giant in June 2011. Serious negotiations began last winter. The four ANC commissioners whose SMDs are contiguous to the development site have been involved in meeting with the parties and exchanging drafts up until this summer when the final format and provisions began to take final shape.

We feel that the agreement is reasonable and provides good protections for the parts of our community that will be most directly affected by the construction. We did not get agreement on everything that we proposed but neither did Giant. I urge you to go to the anc3c.org website to read the CMA that is linked to our September 18 public meeting agenda. Among the provisions in the agreement are:

* establishment of a liaison committee with public meetings and
reports to the ANC
* pre-construction surveys of homes or buildings in the potential
zone of impact as determined by Giant's engineers (those have already been completed)
* regular public notification of upcoming construction activities
throughout the construction period
* ban on construction-related parking on streets or alleys within a
multiple block radius of development (map is attached to CMA document on ANC website)
* ban on construction vehicles driving on local streets rather than
arterial roadways to or from the development site
* Saturday work hours between 8AM-5PM

ANC 3C has asked representatives of Giant and Bozzuto Construction to
attend the ANC to provide a brief update on the construction plans for the next few months. This would not repeat previous presentations to the community, but would rather focus on the planned activities for the next few months. The CMA discussion is scheduled at the top of agenda and we expect this part of the agenda to conclude by 8PM.

The meeting begins at 7:30PM and will be held in the community room of the Second District Police Station. Please note that meeting is on Tuesday this month.

Nancy MacWood
ANC 3C09

Update on Wisconsin Avenue House

DC Metro Urban Diary updates the fate of 3611 Wisconsin Avenue.

New Zoning and Ward 3

The District is embarking on a city-wide zoning revision. While this is not solely a Ward 3 issue, there has been a tremendous amount of discussion on various community listservs. Below is a recent, very relevant post:


we have centuries of evidence to see what neighborhoods look like
without parking minimums. I recently stumbled on this great little piece
entitled "Legalize Georgetown" (http://bit.ly/QKVm6a), written by David
Alpert in 2008, back when the zoning rewrite process was just getting
underway. He points out that some of DC's most beloved neighborhoods would
be illegal under today's zoning code.

"If Georgetown burned down tomorrow, then the zoning code should allow it
to be rebuilt similar to the way it is today. If someone wanted to expand
the rowhouses of Capitol Hill to vacant blocks in Southeast they should be
able to. But that's not true...

"My current building in Dupont has 13 apartments and zero parking spaces.
If it were rebuilt today, it would need an empty lot next door that's about
the same size as the building to fit the seven spaces required under
current zoning. It would mean more cars crossing the sidewalk, and one of
the prettiest blocks in Dupont would be much less. And having these spaces
would encourage more driving and raise the cost of living here."


I would add Cleveland Park to that list; many of the grand buildings lining
Connecticut Avenue predate the zoning code and would be much less grand if
they were subject to the 1950s rules. For that matter most of the pre-WWII
duplexes and townhouses in the neighborhood wouldn't be allowed.

None of the great cities of the world rose up under the constraints of
restrictive zoning codes or parking minimums, nor could they have. The most
beautiful parts of Paris, Rome, London, New York - and Washington DC -
would have been prohibited, or scarred with ugly parking lots and garages.

It's the zoning excesses of the 1950s that were reckless experiments, and
their unintended consequences - from the oceanic parking lots and strip
malls of Rockville Pike to the bleak megablocks of Southwest DC - are plain
for all to see. Today's zoning reforms take a small step towards undoing
that damage.

Residential parking scarcity is a problem; but the correct solution, as
I've argued before, is to price parking on public land in a way that
reflects its value, not to impose arbitrary Soviet-style supply quotas on
developers.