Friday Roundup

Beautification

Found in the in-box this week: a press release from the Alexandria Beautification Commission, which is seeking nominations for its 2007 awards.

That got the Cranky One thinking about which Parker-Gray property would be eligible for such an award this year.

Several candidates come to mind, but the Growler's favorite is 1219 Oronoco Street. If you remember, this former apartment building was a neighborhood eyesore for years. At its nadir in late 2005 it was disfigured by broken and boarded up windows and exterior brick stained from accumulated age and neglect.

Now take a look at the building. The former wreck has been rehabilitated and with fresh landscaping looks brand new, even sporty with its new Art Deco touches.

The Growler has heard this building will go condo, but it appears the owners are still finishing the interior work. Congratulations to owners Nurcan Bozkurt and Yalcin Bilgehan for their turnaround of a troubled property!

What's In a Name?

The Growler noticed an interesting advertising block in the April 26th Washington Post Alexandria-Arlington section.

On p. 26 ads for several businesses on upper King and N. Fayette Streets were grouped under the heading "Uptown Old Town Alexandria."

Now that has a nice ring. It associates our neighborhood with Old Town while paying tribute to a neighborhood nickname even older than the title "Parker-Gray."

Is this a sign we are on the cusp of becoming hip?

New Planning Director

The Growler welcomes new Planning & Zoning Director Faroll Hamer, who started work this week.

Ms. Hamer comes to Alexandria from the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission’s (M-NCPPC) Montgomery County Planning Department, where she served as interim director since December 2005. From 1987 to 2005, she was with M-NCPPC’s Prince George’s County Planning Department, serving as Chief of Development Review, supervisor of the Urban Design Section, and as a planner in the Urban Design Section. Montgomery County.

Update on Dollar Store

From an alert reader, here's a memo from Police Chief David Baker to Council Member Del Pepper responding to concerns from a neighbor about the Dollar Store on Pendleton Street and other issues.

Sweet November

A few readers have asked the Growler offline about the possibility that the dates for Alexandria elections will be switched from May to November, when presumably the lure of state and national races would ensure better voter turnout and participation in local contests.

In early March 2007, Mayor William D. Euille appointed the Alexandria Election Process Review Committee to "examine and make recommendations on possible options to not only move City elections from May to November, but to create staggered terms for Council and the School Board and revise Council and School Board compensation, based upon comparability with other jurisdictions in the region."

Now we are learning there will be a public hearing in June on this very topic. Pencil it into your calendar or thumb it into the Crackberry.

Notice of Public Hearing

The Alexandria Election Process Review Committee will hold a public hearing on Saturday, June 2, at 10 a.m. at City Hall, located at 301 King St., in the Council Chambers, second floor. The Committee has met several times to review Alexandria’s election process and related issues, and is preparing a document that will be distributed to the public in early May on the issues under its consideration. For each issue, the document will give some background, and describe current City practice and any changes to the practice that are under consideration.

The public hearing will allow the public to respond to the document.

Since 1973, the Alexandria City Charter has provided for Mayoral and City Council elections to be held every three years on the second Tuesday in May. School Board elections have been held on the same schedule since 1994. The Constitution and Code of Virginia allow cities such as Alexandria to hold elections for Mayor, City Council, and the School Board in May or November. The State allows terms of office to run from one to four years in length. The Code specifies that elections and terms for School Board members must be the same as those for City Council.

For additional information on the Alexandria Election Process Review Committee, call Bernard Caton, Legislative Director for the City of Alexandria, at 703-838-3828, or e-mail bernard.caton@alexandriava.gov.

Another JHAA Meetup

Yet another JHAA meeting tonight:

"Alexandria City Public Schools will be holding a series of community meetings to highlight academic achievements and ongoing challenges in our schools. Superintendent Rebecca Perry will speak about important issues in education, followed by principals who will make brief presentations on their schools, and concluding with a question and answer period. Not every school will be featured at each meeting. See the list below. If your child is not currently a student and you do not know which school is in your attendance zone, please call 703-824-6710. RSVPs would be appreciated but are not required. Please call the ACPS Department of Information and Outreach at 703-824-6635 and indicate which meeting you plan to attend. Meetings will be:

. . . .

East End - Tuesday, April 24, 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.
At Mount Vernon Community School, 2601 Commonwealth Ave.

Schools:

Mount Vernon Community School
Jefferson-Houston School for Arts and Academics
Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology
Lyles-Crouch Traditional Academy
George Washington Middle School
Minnie Howard 9th Grade Center
T.C. Williams High School

For more information, contact the Department of Information and Outreach at 703-824-6635.

License to Fill

If the Growler did not race to the computer to cover last week's transportation meetings, it's because much of what was discussed at both sessions was at a regional, macro level. There weren't lots of specifics about Alexandria, although there were a few more local details at the Mayor's forum.

Nevertheless, in an indirect fashion the presentations underscored how intense development in central suburbs like Alexandria is being touted as a measure to reduce pressure on transportation systems. Count that as one more factor in the thinking behind the stalled Braddock Road Metro small area plan.

Fortunately, other alternatives have been identified, including pushing jobs as well as housing to the outer Virginia suburbs like Loudoun County or promoting more development on the eastern side of the region, including Prince George's County where many of our cross-Alexandria commuters originate.

The first transportation session, sponsored by the Federation of Civic Associations, featured a presentation by staff members of the Transportation Planning Board of the Metropolitan Council of Governments. If you remember from past Growler articles, local transportation projects that require Federal funding must be run through the TPB to be added to the list of regionally blessed projects.

The basis for the discussion at this meeting was the TPB study "The Regional Mobility and Accessibility Scenario Study," and the accompanying document "What if the Washington region grew differently?" With no end in sight to population and job growth in the Washington area, TPB undertook the study to try to grapple with the implications for traffic and congestion.

The study developed several scenarios for transportation planning, including (1) what if more people who work here lived here, (2) what if people lived closer to their jobs, (3) what if there were more development on the eastern side of the region (i.e., Prince George's County), and (4) what if more people lived and worked closer to transit? Each scenario was analyzed to determine whether it would have a positive or negative impacts on congestion.

At this meeting, the audience was broken into small groups and asked to perform an exercise in planning (groan!), indicating on a regional map where jobs, housing and transportation would be sited if we had our way and if money were no object. It ended up as a pleasantly challenging game: the Growler's table built a new high-speed rail system paralleling the Beltway with limited stops. Nothing like being told there are no spending limits!

The second, third, and fourth scenarios were described by TPB as having positive regionwide impacts on congestion. Nevertheless, it is the fourth scenario that should have Parker-Gray residents most concerned, since it proposes more jobs and housing closer to transit and proposes an extensive transit network including more commuter and Metro rail as well as BRT.

The Mayor's Forum featured a grave panel of suits talking about transportation. Mayor William D. Euille kicked off the presentations with a discussion of recent state legislation that will provide more local dollars for transportation. He also touched on the enhanced taxing authority to be granted to the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA) to fund local jurisdictions with transit and roads projects. Other panelists discussed TransAction 2030 (a project of NVTA), the impact of more train cars on Metro, the possibility of privately-built HOT lanes (which motorists would pay to use), the prospect of rail across Wilson Bridge, and future expansion of DASH bus service in Alexandria.

But one principal question remains unanswered for those of us living in Parker-Gray: should neighborhoods like ours be sacrificed to accommodate regional transportation needs? Can enhanced transportation be reconciled with the protection of existing neighborhoods?

License to Kill

As many residents have now heard, a suspect in the N. Patrick Street double homicide was arrested over the weekend.

The most telling detail we have besides the suspect's name (Darrell Watson) is that he resides at 403 Euille Court. That's an address in the Chatham Square development, but the Growler seriously doubts that Mr. Watson is one of the homeowners who paid nearly six figures for their homes. He more than likely lives in one of the public housing units at the mixed-income development.

So we have a double murder adjacent to one housing project that has been tentatively ascribed to the resident of another nearby housing project.

Meanwhile, we are hearing that the lucky residents of Old Town will eventually be freed of the WMATA bus barn at Pendleton Street, which will be slated for redevelopment as townhouses. We also learned last week that Alexandria's DASH bus system is going to relocate its bus barn elsewhere in the City.

So apparently Alexandria can push to disperse motor vehicles but not public housing. Under pressure, the City can find suitable real estate for its buses but not for subsidized housing.

Had enough yet?

Post-Mortem

Linear Park Problems?

Just a day or two after a reader posted their remarkable story about surviving a savage beating in Linear Park adjacent to the Metro tracks, the Growler hears there's been a similar incident, although fortunately less serious.

A 15-year resident of Buchanan Street was returning home from work at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, only to be pushed down, struck and kicked by a group of youths, who darted off laughing afterwards.

We have yet to see this incident mentioned by police in the E-news Daily Crime Report, although the Growler understands it was called in to them.

Time for a Curfew?

The mother of the Buchanan Street crime victim (she's a well-known civic activist in another neigborhood) told the Growler her son's assailaints were young, perhaps high school kids.

We have discussed the loitering laws to death on this site, and it's clear there are problems enforcing them effectively.

But what about a curfew for young residents? Why would a high school student need to be out roaming around at 1:30 a.m?

Would a curfew for children be a more effective measure than loitering laws?

N. Patrick Street Murders

As noted in a comment posted this morning, today we have a longer piece in the Washington Post about the slayings on N. Patrick Street complete with quotes from Police Chief Dave Baker. There seems to be a slight retreat from earlier pollyanna-ish press observations that this was a quiet neighborhood.

Chief Baker was quoted saying "That's an area of the city that we've devoted a lot of resources to. Crime has gone down in that area, but it doesn't really matter how much things have improved. When you have an event like this, it sets you back. This presents a new challenge. "

No Chief, this is the same old problem and the same old challenge. We need a new solution.

Today we learned that one of the victims of yesterday's shootings once lived in Del Ray but had moved to the District.

We hear repeatedly from police that non-residents, particularly people who may once have lived in the neighborhood, are often the source or casualty of the problems in public housing. At least one of the latest victims would seem to fit the profile to a T.

One of the benefits of dispersing public housing would be to help break up this geographic notion of a home country, to which past residents return again and again like bees to a hive. Without the immense concentration of public housing units here, there would be less likelihood that the fringe population of drug dealers, hookers and others who use public housing as a base for action in the middle of the night would still be drawn to Alexandria.

Patrick Street Mayhem

No, we're not talking about the BRT proposal.

The Growler was working on the second cup of nuclear-strength chai this morning when the news flashed on WRC: overnight there had been a double slaying on N. Patrick Street near the Samuel Madden Uptown public housing project.

The bodies were found literally in the middle of the 800 block of N. Patrick Street around 2:15 a.m. Click here to read more.

WTOP's story stated "Neighbors and police say there have been few problems in this particular neighborhood."

Not sure who WTOP's reporters would have talked to in the dead of night, but whoever the source was who provided background info apparently forgot about the still-unsolved murder of David Murphy in the 400 block of N. Patrick Street back in December 2005. That brazen shooting took place around 5 p.m. during evening rush hour.

Transportation Doubleheader

What an interesting week we are going to have on the topic of transit! Route 1 residents, hold yourself in readiness.

First, tonight there will be a gathering to dispense information the City has not yet officially shared with citizens. (Doesn't this sound like déjà vu all over again?)

The Regional Transportation Mobility Public Participation Forum will be held at the Lee Center Exhibit Hall (1106 Jefferson Street) beginning at 7 p.m. and will feature speakers from the Metropolitan Council of Governments' Transportation Planning Board. Their presentations will focus on what regional transportation initiatives have already been agreed upon by regional governments like the City of Alexandria.

The Federation of Civic Associations, the Old Town Civic Association, the Upper King Street Neighborhood Association and In My Opinion (a newsletter produced by local activist Julie Crenshaw Van Fleet) are sponsoring the event.

Then two days later, we have the City's official presentation, hastily thrown together once the cat was out of the bag about the COG forum.

The City's forum features the usual suspects, including Mayor William D. Euille, Transportation and Environmental Services Director Rich Baier, Ad Hoc Transportation Task Force Chairman Larry Robinson, and our good buddy Justin Wilson, chairman of the DASH Board. (If you will recall, Mr. Wilson is the Alexandria Democratic Committee treasurer who in print told Andrew Macdonald to shut up already about the Braddock Road plan.)

The City's forum will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, April 19, at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Madison Building Auditorium, located at 600 Dulany St.

And as they used to say back in college, let's compare and contrast what these players have to say.

Hear Us Roar

At last night's "final" public meeting on the Braddock Road Metro plan the neighborhood pushed back — and hard — against the City's attempts to ram home this flawed plan, portions of which had still not been released to the public by the time the meeting commenced at 7 p.m.

The result was that mid-way through the session, Planning Commission Chairman Eric Wagner announced the plan was not going to Planning Commission and City Council in May.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!

Participants' hearts initially sank when they arrived to find City staff plotting another touchy-feely exercise designed to divide and conquer. Yes, we were all going to be required to break into small groups, talk about trees and sidewalks, and then report back our findings through a team leader. It's no coincidence that we'd be sitting on the tiny school chairs in Jefferson-Houston's cafeteria for this exercse because in essence the City was planning to treat us once again like overgrown kids.

Fortunately, the lengthy and repetitious presentation by various City staff drained away the time. (Note to Rich Josephson: enough of that tedious PowerPoint presentation we've seen eight times before. Daddy, get yourself a new bag ... and soon.)

In the interests of time, Mr. Wagner finally decided to scrap the breakouts in favor of the open mike. And once again, residents were articulate and passionate about their wants. The message came across strongly,and even more clearly than it did at the March 20 meeting: people are concerned about density, height, traffic, BRT, open space, retail, and public housing.

Let the Growler point out the remarkable fact that despite many residents' concern that by floating the issue they will be unjustly attacked, the community is at last discussing the sensitive topic of public housing. That's a dialogue that's long overdue.

Best of all, there are now signs of greater cohesion and collaboration between different parts of the neighborhood. There's a recognition that density is at the root of many of the plan's evils, and the calls are becoming stronger and stronger to open up discussion about development on the western side of Braddock Road Metro.

There were virtually no proponents for the plan as it currently exists, although near the end developer William Cromley spoke up to raise the bogeyman of "by right development." He was roundly ignored.

A few highlights: BRT is now officially going to be removed from the draft plan. That doesn't mean the issue still doesn't need to be fought. Certainly our Patrick and Henry Street neighbors need to keep an eagle eye on the draft report. But now the arena for action moves to the Ad Hoc Transportation Task Force, which as far as the Growler can tell is still going to be advocating for the three major transit corridors and BRT on Route 1.

Despite the many concerns expressed about public housing, we learned that the redevelopment of the Andrew Adkins project is still off the table. That was confirmed by ARHA senior staffer Connie Lenox and ARHA board vice chairman Carlyle J. "Connie" Ring. If the Lofts needs a wake-up call, this certainly comprises one.

What are the next steps? Keep this page bookmarked and you'll find out.

An "Affordable Housing" Gap?

Here we are on the morning of April 12, less than 12 hours away from the "final" public meeting on the Braddock Road Metro small area plan, and a quick glance at Planning & Zoning's Web site reveals there are still chapters of the plan that have not been released to the public.

That includes an important chapter on "affordable housing," presumably encompassing not only affordable housing but public housing as well.

Now understand that the plan has already been announced for the Planning Commission docket on May 1. Commissioners are normally given their materials a week ahead of the hearing, which means the draft plan must be completed by April 24, less than two weeks away.

Does anyone think P&Z's consultants haven't started writing the chapter yet? After all, the Planning Commission hearing has been postponed several times over the last few months. Surely these chapters are somewhere in the hopper.

Or did the dog eat the consultants' homework?

So the question du jour is this: is the City deliberately withholding information from the public for tonight's hearing? Is the idea to release the critical chapters between April 13 and April 24, after the public meeting, which would require concerned neighbors to troop down to City Hall yet again to fight this nonsense? Is it a tactic to defeat citizens and taxpayers?

And is this an example of staff running amok or are the orders to dawdle with the missing chapters coming down from the highest levels of elected officialdom?

The Growler will leave it to readers to figure that one out (make sure you ask about it tonight), but for a moment let's ponder what is so controversial about the affordable housing chapter.

We've talked a lot about public housing issues on this site, but less so about affordable housing. It's time to turn the spotlight in that direction.

In many respect, affordable housing is a slogan in search of a policy.

We all know that the price of housing in the greater Washington area skyrocketed from 2001 to 2005, fueled by low interest rates and strong demand. There's also strong demand for reasonably priced rental housing, the opposite side of the coin.

As housing prices rose sharply after the millenium, the City began to consider methods for preserving affordable housing and ultimately changed the Zoning Ordinance to permit granting developers up to 20% greater density on their sites in exchange for affordable housing. That bonus density features prominently in the discussion on our community.

The politicians really started salivating about density bonuses with the movement in 2005-2006 to save Gunston Hall apartments on S. Washington Street. Some readers will recall that Gunston Hall was scheduled to be acquired by a developer who proposed tearing down the post-war low-rise brick apartment buildings and replacing them with luxury housing. The coalition that successfully fought to save Gunston Hall included historic preservationists, the Old Town Civic Association, various local activists, the National Park Service (since the buildings front on what is part of the GW Parkway), and ... the affordable housing lobby.

The group's turnout saved the day (although the fate of Gunston Hall is now tied up in litigation) and the experience seems to have left a deep impression on politicians. They now had the dream policy: they could hand their buds the developers greater density for their projects at the same time they appeared to be throwing bread and chocolate at the masses. Affordable housing proved to be a sure-fire populist issue.

Here's where Braddock Road Metro comes in. If you remember, at the March 20 meeting we heard ad nauseum from P&Z Acting Director Rich Josephson about affordable housing. Why?

This area has long been a cornucopia of affordable housing, ranging from the Carpenters' Shelter (self-described as the largest homeless shelter in Northern Virginia), subsidized housing (public housing, Section 8 projected based housing like Jefferson Village, and private rental homes supported by Section 8 vouchers) all the way up to a small quantity of Habitat for Humanity homes, reasonably priced market rental apartments and small entry level single-family homes. Why would we need more affordable housing here? Isn't it reminiscent of carrying coals to Newcastle?

Well, the reason is pretty obvious in the Growler's opinion. The politicians plan to shovel in lots of affordable housing here in as a big IOU to please their core voting constituencies in other parts of the City, while handing their friends in the development industry extra density. No-one loses except us. We have to deal with the detritus of density, including congestion and pollution. And because the cheapest and easiest form of affordable housing is condominiums, we are getting few townhomes and lots of high-rises.

But is there really an affordable housing crisis in Alexandria? In today's Washington Post, the Alexandria-Arlington section lists a number of home sales under $300,000. These are mostly condos but as Planning Commissioner Donna Fossum has observed publicly, condos are now the most common starter homes in the area.

The Growler has tried in vain to find out if the City has really looked analytically at the affordable housing issue to determine what is the supply of housing (both rental and sale), what is the demand, and what is the size of the gap or shortfall (if one exists). Only then would it be possible to determine if there is a problem, what its magnitude might be, and what would be the price tag associated with filling the gap.

Even then, the issue still needs to go to the public to determine if voters really want their taxes to directed to narrowing such a gap rather than filling other perceived civic needs. It looks, however, like this rigorous analysis has not been done with any great precision. (Feel free to point the Growler to the analysis if you, dear reader, are aware of it.)

And here's another twist.

According to research by Dr. Stephen Fuller, presented to Council on June 7, 2006 at a special session on affordable housing, there was no shortage of affordable housing in the Washington area in the early 1990s. The unspoken observation was that was the date of major recession and a severe slump in the real estate market that lasted well into the 1990s.

The U.S. appears to be in a similar slump right now, so the question remains why the affordable housing issue should be such a hot button with our local politicians right now.

The more closely one examines this thicket, the more the questions crop up. Why do some Alexandria developers set aside units while others contribute to the Housing Trust Fund? How is the Housing Trust Fund used? Has it been evaluated for effectiveness? The Growler once spent more than an hour being transferred around the Office of Housing while trying to track down a financial statement for the Trust Fund -- how much has been paid in and what has been expended. So far it appears to be a swamp.

So is the Braddock Road Metro plan the vehicle to advance politicans' agendas while leaving us to cope with the density?

Do You Trust This City?

Tomorrow night (Thursday, April 12) the City of Alexandria will hold the final public meeting on the draft Braddock Road Metro small area plan. The session will get underway at 7 PM at Jefferson-Houston School at 1501 Cameron Street.

It's hard to predict what will happen. A few optimists believe that staff may come back with revisions to the plan, though probably not anything substantial. There indeed might the possibility of good news: that a new grocer has signed on for the Madison, that the retail space at the Monarch has been leased, and that the City and ARHA have forged an agreement to move a substantial amount of public housing out of our neighborhood.

That could happen. It doesn't seem likely, however, that everything turned around in just three weeks.

The postponement following the contentious March 20 meeting was probably directed by politicians (working through staff), who wanted to give the plan's supporters time to rally. That's undoubtedly the reason the ICCA meeting was canceled: low attendance has never fazed them in the past.

In the end, most participants tomorrow night will speak on behalf of their own interests and concerns and whether the draft plan connects with their desires and needs. That's all part of the democratic process.

But the Growler would like to break through cliche for a moment and focus on what support or opposition to the plan betokens.

It is based to a large degree on the viewer's sense of trust in the City of Alexandria — both permanent staff and elected officials. The plan is just a plan. It's a blueprint and a roadmap. It's not a concrete fait accompli that people can immediately grasp and react for or against.

It is a set of promises. And the fundamental issue is whether you as a voter, resident and taxpayer believe that the Alexandria's bureaucracy and politicians will keep the promises that the plan indicates: that they can pour huge density around Braddock Road Metro and prevent adverse traffic impacts while successfully moving residents to mass transit. Can you believe that they can attract high-quality retail and make this community "vibrant," even as they are struggling to fill Carlyle? Can you be sure that they will eventually disperse a meaningful amount of public housing to other sites and reduce crime permanently.

Trust is really where the line is drawn. Some of the most ardent supporters of the plan are new to the political process and view the City as a quasi-paternalistic, benevolent force. These neighbors believe the City will live up to its commitments and will continue to honor past victories wrung from politicians by the community in former times.

Unfortunately, many of these individuals have not been here long enough to see the whole cycle and to understand that with revolving doors for politicians as well as senior staff there is little or no institutional memory left to honor past agreements.

Many of the people opposed to the plan are those who have seen the City at work over the years and have little or no faith in promises. There's solid ground for these residents' skepticism. This, after all, is the City of Alexandria, which took people's homes and yards by eminent domain to build Metro and expand Route 1, whose police have had been loathe for generations to eradict crime and protect citizens, which "lost" Parker-Gray's historic district paperwork for 16 years?

This is the City of Alexandria, which let its budget balloon with the housing boom while letting jobs slip away. It's the City which let our only regional mall at Landmark lose 75% of its assessed value. It's a City which is trying to define itself by shipping tourists from Maryland's National Harbor and spending half a million dollars to run buses to lure PTO employees down to the half-empty restaurants on King Street. It's the City of Alexandria that never made Braddock Place work, even after the Meridian and the nearby condos were built a few years ago.

So let the Growler pose this question: do you trust the City of Alexandria? Do you trust Mayor Euille and the City Council? Do you trust City Manager Jim Hartmann, Rich Josephson and Jeff Farner of P&Z, Rich Baier of T&ES, or the staff and board of ARHA?

Talking Down

On Friday afternoon, the Planning & Zoning Department published "minutes" of the March 20 public meeting on the Braddock Road plan, which the Growler finds highly amusing.

Staff still don't get it. Their stance all along has been that we residents are "confused" and "misinformed," but in fact as more and more residents have been independently digging through documents and attending hearings involving not only P&Z matters but also the Ad Hoc Transportation Task Force and ARHA, they've come to their own conclusions about what is really going on. And it isn't the version of reality that the staff and politicians desperately want us to buy into.

The Q&A format is no accident. The concerns expressed at the March 20 meeting are not being viewed as an opportunity for dialogue and compromise but are being carefully interpreted as signs of our ignorance. We the citizens question, and they (the staff) enlighten. There's no give so far on the staff side.

Nevertheless, staff are on the defensive and in the notes present some increasingly convoluted arguments. For example, at the recent Planning Commission hearing on the SUP renewal for the Braddock Road 7-11, P&Z Acting Director Rich Josephson claimed there would be no comparable dense development on the Del Ray side of the Braddock Road Metro because the entrance to the Metro was on the eastern side.

Yet on page 2 of the notes, the staff argument is now that discussion of development on the western side of Metro is off the table, because that turf is part of the Potomac West Small Area Plan.

So listen to the Growler already: reopen the Potomac West Small Area Plan, and let's talk about equity in density, about 360 degree development around Metro. Let the City prove that smart growth and transit-oriented development is really what this plan is about, and not about reinforcing discriminatory land use patterns forged in the days of segregation.

The Growler was also amused by the continuing defense of the City's traffic study for Braddock Road. In essence, P&Z and T&ES are saying that you can add 3 million square feet of primarily residential development and have minimal impact ("only 8% more peak trips") on traffic. Does anyone believe this?

"The study found that irrespective of redevelopment in the Braddock area, through traffic levels on Route 1 in particular and the area in general will increase whether or not the envisioned development occurs."

That sentence on page 5 of the notes says it all. The City is using projected increases in pass-through traffic on Route 1 as a shield, claiming that things will be so bad anyway that we might as well not worry about a thousand more local residents and their cars. That's an easy point to make, since most of the staff as well as the politicians will be gone by the time traffic in our neighborhood reaches crisis point.

We are also treated to an unusually long discussion of Metro, undoubtedly contributed by the WMATA team (which is hungering to develop the lot at Braddock Road, having been denied at King Street). While there's a lot of discussion of capacity and the Metro Matters capital program which is supposed to add more rail cars to the system, there's nothing about the physical constraints at the tunnel under Rosslyn. That's going to be a significant choke point for years to come and a far more complex and expensive problem to solve. And given the architecture of Metro's stations and platforms, there's only so many cars that can be added to each train.

As for public housing, staff are being coy about the question of dispersal. We are told that Adkins will be redeveloped as mixed-use and that the "residential component could include market rate units, or a combination of market rate and public housing units." But the only semi-concrete proposals we've seen so far for Adkins involve compressing the existing lower-density public housing into a high-rise with essentially the same number of units, and a market-rate building being constructed next door. That isn't dispersal.

Further down the page, we learn "any redevelopment of the Andrew Adkins, James Bland or other ARHA properties will require the provision of replacement units, some of which will be relocated off-site in other areas of the City... In particular, the density proposed for the Adkins site will likely mean a majority of the ARHA Adkins units will likely need to be relocated to off-site locations." But a few sentences later "Future redevelopment/relocation of existing public housing units will depend on the availability of suitable sites."

Oh ho, the Growler can see what's coming: by the time redevelopment happens, those "suitable sites" like Potomac Yard, Eisenhower Avenue, and Van Dorn will be fully developed and no longer available. Somehow we will be stuck with public housing forever.

In conclusion, we in this neighborhood are still getting a full-court press to accept the Braddock Road Plan at face value. Let's see if the meeting on Thursday, April 12 is more of the same.

Pendleton Roundup

This in from Kelly Conner about last night's meeting on 717 Pendleton:

James Hunt from the City's Department of Planning and Zoning gave an informative presentation about Ace Temporaries' application to remove the longstanding proffer restricting the use of 717 Pendleton Street to a business or professional office. The applicant ostensibly claims that it wants the proffer removed to make the property more salable.

Mr. Hunt explained that if the proffer were to be removed, the building would be zoned commercial low (CL). He listed the by right uses in a CL zone, as well as the uses permitted with an SUP in a CL zone. These include congregate housing facility, funeral home, rooming house, and, ironically, day labor agency.

The attendees who spoke at the meeting made it quite clear that they were categorically opposed to Ace's application to remove of the proffer. Mr. Hunt also noted that he had heard from numerous other neighbors not in attendance, all of whom had expressed the same sentiments. He indicated that he had heard the neighborhood "loud and clear." Indeed, the consensus was so strong that the meeting wrapped up quite quickly.

Mr. Hunt told us that he had studied the property, including making a site visit. He stated that the next step would be for staff to make a recommendation to the Planning Commission on Ace's application. He estimated that the staff report would be available by April 20th. The Planning Commision is scheduled to hear the application on May 1st. After that, the matter will go to the City Council.

Mr. Hunt did state that if Ace's application to remove the proffer is denied, another such application may not be made for one year. The consensus was that Mr. Hunt was extremely accessible and professional. He again offered to answer any additional questions the neighborhood had.

His telephone number is (703) 838-3866, ext. 326. and his email address is mailto:isJames.Hunt@alexandriava.gov.

Let me know if you have any additional questions, Growler. Thanks again for providing a forum for neighborhod information.

Missing in Action

We've been hearing a lot about "misinformation" from City officials or their stand-ins lately. But here's some significant information gaps in the Alexandria Web site that seem quite important in the ongoing debate about transportation and development.

Ad Hoc Transportation Task Force

The City's Web team appears to have stopped posting Task Force minutes for more than a year. It's been January 2006 since any minutes or files other than the recent draft report chapters have been uploaded to the T&ES Department section of the City Web site. That's a problem because we need to know the thought process that brought the group to some of their conclusions.

Braddock Road Small Area Plan Meeting Notes (March 20, 2007)

It's been two weeks since the meeting and although we were promised notes twice on the plan Web site, none have yet been posted.

Braddock Road Small Area Plan -- Chapters 8, 9 and 14

Despite multiple postponements in the Plan's torturous move toward approval, the public has still not been presented with three chapters of the draft. It would appear from the information on page vii of the draft Executive Summary that the missing chapters are "Affordable Housing," "Sustainability and Green Building Technology," and "Development Opportunity Sites and Design Standards."

For the Swinging Set

Here are electronic copies of some of the documents handed out at the recent community meeting on the renovation of Hunter-Miller Park.

The playground renovation survey in PDF format will need to be printed, completed and returned in hard copy to the Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities, Attention: Judy Lo, 1108 Jefferson St., Alexandria, VA 22314

If you like to do things electronically, here's the same survey in Microsoft Word format, which can be completed and E-mailed to Judy Lo (judy.lo@alexandriava.gov).

Finally, here's a recommended Playground Tour list which details sites in Alexandria and Arlington with different configurations and various types of equipment. Parents might want to check out as future options for Hunter-Miller Park.

Route 1 Redux

Last night the Growler attended the Ad Hoc Transportation Task Force Meeting at City Hall, and the Cranky One must say that it's a good thing citizens are now sitting up and paying attention to their work.

Task force chairman Larry Robinson once again grumbled about "misinformation," and during a discussion of the Mayor's April 19 transportation forum emphasized again that the task force was not responsible for the reference to a special tax district in the draft Braddock Road plan. (Just a reminder, a visitor to this site late last week claimed it was T&ES Director Rich Baier who was the culprit.)

But minutes later while the task force was reviewing more draft chapters of the new master transportation plan, their own consultants discussed funding bus rapid transit (BRT) through special tax districts, including tax increment funding (TIF). Planning Commission Chairman Eric Wagner, who also serves on the task force, went a step further and recommended adding a business improvement district (BID) as another funding option in the chapter.

Hello, that's yet another form of special tax district, folks.

So it appears that task force members are annoyed not because it's untrue they are considering special tax districts to pay for BRT or other rapid transit, but because the information found its way into someone else's report (the Braddock Road small area plan) and thus let the cat out of the bag.

The money required for BRT in the proposed transit corridors won't be chump change. The consultants estimate $283 to $409 million in capital costs and $13.7 million in annual operating costs. They've been asked to tote up the numbers for light rail as well, but indications are it will be an even more expensive option.

What intrigued the Growler was learning that the revision of the transportation master plan is not simply an exercise in big picture thinking, to be filed away upon completion. The plan itself is the essential first step to getting big federal bucks to defray as much as half the capital costs.

Seems the City must approve a formal transportation plan in order to get its projects on the lists maintained by the federally-sanctioned metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for this area. Here in Northern Virginia the MPO is the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) and its Transportation Planning Board (TPB).

"The federally mandated metropolitan planning process requires all MPOs across the country to produce two basic documents—a long-range plan, which in the Washington region is called the Financially Constrained Long-Range Transportation Plan (CLRP), and a Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), which lists projects and programs that will be funded in the next six years. Since 2000, the CLRP has used a planning horizon of 25 years. In order to receive federal funding, transportation projects must be included in the CLRP and the TIP." [Emphasis added] (Source: TPB Website)

Now these reference to COG are intriguing. Long-time activist Julie Crenshaw Van Fleet has scheduled a presentation on COG for the April 17 meeting of the Federation of Civic Associations. Mrs. Van Fleet has attended COG meetings for years and she seems anxious that other Alexandrians know what is going on with regional transportation planning. Indeed, the timing suggests that her upcoming presentation (which was announced first) is what spurred the Mayor and Mr. Baier to schedule their own forum two days later.

Does Mrs. Van Fleet know something the rest of us don't? Does she see a slam dunk coming?

And why did Mr. Wagner last night propose bundling the Route 1 and Duke Street corridors as a "presumptive Phase One," although the consultants thought it would make a stronger case for federal funding to combine all corridors as one project? Is it because the price tag for Route 1 and Duke Street makes them eligible for the Federal Transit Administration's Small Starts program, which according to FTA's Web site features streamlined approvals and more simple alternatives analysis?

Whoooosh!!

Bus Stops

In the last few days, some commenters have denied on this site that the Ad Hoc Transportation Task Force had anything to do with inserting language about bus rapid transit (BRT) into the draft Braddock Road Small Area Plan, placing the blame instead on Transportation & Environmental Services Director Rich Baier.

But readers might like to take a look the draft version of the new master transportation plan posted on the City's web site. On page 4, the map not only shows the Route 1 transportation corridor running all the way to the Fairfax County line, it also indicates "smart stations" at Princess Street between Henry and Patrick, at Duke Street between Henry and Patrick, and at Franklin Street.

"The task force never looked out or considered taking this BRT beyond the Braddock Metro station through already built up areas."

Does the Task Force also claim no knowledge about this detailed information in their own report?