Yeah, I'm Pro-Development

But not just any development.

I’m pro-dense, urban, well-designed, well built development.

I’m against crappy development, like the strip mall at W and 14th which, thankfully, now has construction fences around it.

To create good development, you need government oversight in the way of zoning and building codes, and you need community involvement. Constructive community involvement. The community needs to support good development and oppose bad development. The problem is, of course, that people have different definitions of what those things are. For instance, as I stated in my last post, the Dupont Conservancy is opposed to the proposed development at 14th and U, but where were they when that horrible strip mall was built a few blocks away? Perhaps they didn’t exist then, but that’s the kind of development that needs to be opposed.

There are other great things happening in that part of the neighborhood.
Along with the fence around the strip mall, there are two other big
projects underway. And they just took down the scaffolding in the most
well constructed building ever built on the NE corner of 14th and U. I
say that because they’ve been working on it for about 15 months, and
it’s a small three story building, so it better be the best building in
the history of the world! I’m not sure what’s going to go in there, but
right next door is the new Marvin. We’ve only been there for a drink,
but it looks fantastic and I have a feeling that the food is good.

Further up 14th is the new Union Row where a Yes! Market will soon open.
The silly European style alley they built through the middle of the
building is actually quite nice! I hope that building fills up. If
they build something of that quality at 14th and U, who could have any
concerns?

Thanks to all who read and commented on my last posting about the
project at 14th and U. Surprisingly, all the feed back I received was
positive. I figured there would be someone who disagreed with me.

14th and U Street Controversy

A developer has proposed a ten story apartment and retail building for the southwest corner of U and 14th Streets, where the McDonalds now is. The proposal is to get rid of the bad one story development along 14th Street and incorporated the historically contributing structures into the design of the new building. This, of course, has brought out all kinds of opposition from various community group, including, for some reason, the Dupont Circle Conservancy and the Dupont Circle ANC, even though 14th and U is NOT in Dupont Circle.

But that’s OK, because in this great city of ours, anyone and everyone can throw their two cents into any issue at any time. Since I live two blocks from 14th and U and walk past that corner twice a day, I figure I probably have more right than people who live at 22nd and S Streets to comment on it. So here goes.

I support the development. To not support dense in-fill development in the middle of the city is to be both anti-urban and anti-environment.

Anti-urban because dense development, as Jane Jacobs pointed out in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is good for the economy and good for public safety. Anti-environment, because in a neighborhood that is well served by public transportation (the Metro is one block away), and in a world where global warming is a reality, leaving a huge plot of land like that under-utilized is backward looking. Us urbanites should be leaders in the environmental movement, not NIMBYs.

The arguments against it come down to traffic and “massing,” which is the same as saying “I don’t like it ‘cause it’s too big.”

The traffic argument doesn’t work because, again, Metro is one block away. Who on earth would move to that building so they could drive to work every day? Plus, I walk past there at rush hour every day, and there ain’t that much traffic there, something the Dupont Circle folks might know if they every actually ventured into my neighborhood.

The “massing” argument is also absurd. To support the “I don’t like it ‘cause it’s too big” argument (and I quote from The Dupont Current), the Dupont Circle Conservancy said that “unlike the Reeves Center to the north, which was built on a large site, this project is being wedged into an existing historic district with considerable adjacent existing residential areas.” The sheer idiocy of this statement is mind-boggling! First, to hold up the Reeves Center as some sort of model of development is lunacy. The first problem with the Reeves Center is that it doesn’t use all of it’s large site, not to mention that it has such things as huge ventilation systems fronting on U street and empty glass and ugly brutalist architecture, all of which make it relate extremely poorly to the prominent corner on which it is situated and not fit in with the historic structures all around it. Which brings up the second problem with the Conservancy’s statement: the Reeves Center is in the exact same historic district, surrounded by the same residential areas, as the proposed site. In fact, it is right across the street! Their argument is simple nonsense. A 75 to 100 foot building would have the same “massing” as the self-storage building it will abut, as the Reeves Center, and as all the other apartment and condo buildings that have been built along 14th Street.

The devil, of course, is always in the details. The plans have to be good. But since it is in a historic district, and there are zoning specifications it must meet, and a lot of it has to be reviewed by the ANC (the ANC that has actual jurisdiction over the area, not one from across town), the plan will have to be good to pass muster.

In this day and age, with the price of oil climbing to ever higher levels, with the reality of global warming, NIMBY-ism and obstructionism should not be allowed to derail good, dense, urban in-fill development, which I believe this will be.

Adams Morgan: Violence and the Tyranny of Parenthood

The recent article in the City Paper about Late Night Shots got me to thinking about Adams Morgan. The article quoted an on-line thread that went like this:


"If I have said it once I have said it 1000 times. DO NOT EVER, EVER even go near Adams Morgan. That place is Ghetto.

Adams Morgan is only do-able if you limit yourself to a few bars that are close together.

Every minute you spend outside of an actual bar your life is in danger. And do not, DO NOT attempt to get a late-night slice of pizza unless you are a pro.

Any by pro I mean ready to fight people.

Everytime I’m in Adams Morgan, I take on at least 3-4 Ethiopans. Skinny little bastards are feisty."


Obviously, this guy is an unsophisticated, narrow-minded, frightened pubescent (even if he is in his 20s and gainfully employed) with little life experience and little hope of gaining any. But at least he’s honest. He doesn’t want to go to Adams Morgan, and I, for one, don’t want him there.

But there are other, darker forces at work in Adams Morgan: parents.

As part of DC governments on-going crusade to ruin the city, it has decided to enforce a law regarding tavern licenses versus restaurant licenses. Without going into detail, many places on 18th Street have restaurant licenses but don’t meet the food sales standard to maintain that license and should properly have tavern licenses. Except the city has now put a moratorium on issuing new tavern licenses until it drives a bunch of bars out of business by revoking their restaurant licenses.

Why?

Because some people moved to Adams Morgan, had children, and now can’t believe they are living in Adams Morgan with children.

A couple local news stations interviewed some stroller pushing moms on 18th Street, and that the basic message I got from them.

What these mothers on the street were really worried about was violence. Apparently, they take their toddlers to clubs at 3 am, or line up for pizza at 4:00 am, babe-in-arms, and then pick fights with drunken revelers over, what, a girl? Posh’s new hair color? A timetable for leaving Iraq? And end up getting stabbed and bleeding to death in the middle of the street at the feet of a police horse while their babies watch. Happens all the time.

Come on! Does the extremely limited and extremely rare violence on 18th Street at 3 am on a Sunday morning really effect your life so much that you need to start a crusade to ruin the neighborhood for everyone else? You knew what Adams Morgan was like when you moved here, and unless you do indeed take your kiddy out for a stroll at 3:00 am (and NOT EVENT THEN!), you won’t get stabbed or shot or anything else.

Please move to Reston. I hear they have a pretty good Don Pablos there.

Confessions of a DC Gentrifier

When I bought the place I live in right now, I considered many things: what was best financially and emotionally for me and my wife and any future children. Being close to work and metro was a priority so I wouldn’t have to spend very much time commuting and thus spend more time with my family. I also took into consideration my core values: respect for the environment, my belief in the goodness of urban life, my appreciation of a diversity of cultures. City living is green living. We walk an awful lot, instead of taking our one car. Our place is small, and shares walls and floors and ceilings, meaning it uses less energy. We live in a pre-existing urban environment, meaning that no new open space is being destroyed, no new utilities are being installed, no new roads being built for my benefit. I considered all these things when choosing where to live.

But I never said to myself “oh, and as an added benefit, I can get rid of some poor people or minority people this way, too, by running up property values and taxes.” In fact, quite the opposite: I worried (and still worry) obsessively about my culpability for what happens to people who find themselves in a financial situation that forces them to move out of a neighborhood they’ve lived in for a long time.

When I bought my first house near RFK Stadium in 2002, I knew that a young black couple rented it, but had moved out months before I bought it. I didn’t force them out, did I? I still felt a twinge of guilt about it, though. The landlord decided to sell it, but I was never sure if he decided to sell because his tenants moved out, or his tenants moved out because he decided to sell. (After I bought it, I was shocked that anyone had lived there: the floors were rotted away, the windows didn’t open, there was no air conditioning, there were rats under and in the house, there was one bathroom with a leaking toilet, the floors were sloped because of broken joists caused by a sunken wall caused by fire damage that had never been adequately repaired.)

I don’t like the word “gentrification.” It’s an inexact jargon word meant to stir up class antagonism (the Gentry are moving in to oppress the peasants!). The word does little to describe the enormously complex reality of market forces, economics, poverty, racism, city planning, zoning, public policy, and private choices. The reality is so complicated that one word can’t even begin to describe it; instead, it clouds with emotion and anger and frustration any clear thought processes that would allow people to begin to come up with solutions.

Take my old neighborhood near RFK. Some old couples sold their houses for 20 or 30 times what they paid for them years before. Sometimes their children forced them to sell and put them in nursing homes. Sometimes owners sold the houses out from under their renters. And sometimes the renters bought them. Sometimes houses and apartment buildings that were vacant for years, even decades, were rehabilitated and sold or rented to the influx of middle class people. Sometimes rental buildings went condo, forcing out the renters who couldn’t afford to buy. Sometimes public housing projects were closed and the tenants relocated to other public housing, and the land redeveloped to include some affordable housing and some market rate housing. Sometimes the public housing was saved from the wrecking ball. Sometimes an old person died and the children sold the house for as much as they could get. And some people couldn’t afford the rising property taxes and sold for huge profits and moved out. Which of these instances is gentrification? Which isn’t?

I guess it comes down to two things: freedom of choice and the responsibility to help those less fortunate. Is being against gentrification to be against an old couple selling their house for an enormous profit? Is it to be against a person like me, who values diversity and the environment and urbanity, buying a home in a once-working class neighborhood?

Or is being against gentrification to be against the wholesale redevelopment of communities in the name of progress, like what happened in Southwest in the 1950s and ‘60s? Is it to be for government programs and private initiatives that help the poor have a safe place to live while they pull themselves out of poverty? I hope that’s what being against gentrification means.

One thing is certain: it sucks to be poor. Whether you get pushed around because you have no clout, like what Haussmann did in Paris, or you simply get priced out, like what is happening now in Washington, being poor makes you extremely vulnerable. I don’t have a solution. I suspect there isn’t just one mega-solution, but many, many small things that have to happen, and none of them are simple and none of them can be summed up in a slogan or by a "-tion" word. But I know that the right thing to do is strive to help poor people not be poor anymore, and not feel guilty about the decisions we make in the best interests of our families.

DC Building Height Limit

There’s been some talk recently about raising DC’s building height limit. In a recent Washington Post article, an architect speaking at a development conference is quoted as saying: "We have a moral imperative to increase density, to get us out of our cars." This is a laudable goal: as population density increases, retail businesses move in creating a busy, thriving neighborhood; the busier the neighborhood, the safer the neighborhood. Since DC is well served by both subway and bus, and plus is a very walkable city, new residents won’t necessarily increase car traffic. Higher density is green by its very nature. Higher density is a good thing. But we don’t need 30 or 40 story buildings to achieve it.

The premise is that DC is running out of vacant land on which to build, and soon there will be no sites to develop from Florida Avenue south to the waterfront, and from Capitol Hill to Georgetown.

Right now, there is an awful lot of vacant land and under-developed real estate in those areas, and adjoining neighborhoods. Once those are all built out, perhaps the city should consider raising the building height limit.

But even then, there is really no reason to.

A critic of the plan to raise the building height limit said that “…high-rise buildings would spoil a low-lying, Parisian-style city.” Paris is an interesting comparison. If only DC were like Paris! Paris has a population density over 6 times higher than DC’s. (Paris: approximately 64,000 people per square mile; DC: approximately 9,000.) How is that possible?

There are very few buildings in Paris that are higher than 6 or 7 stories. But there are also very few buildings that are lower than 6 or 7 stories.

I’m not suggesting that DC should strive to have that kind of population density. But a little more density would be nice. To increase density, we don’t have to get rid of the building height limit; we simply have to use our real estate more efficiently. Most of residential DC consists of neighborhoods filled with 2 – 4 story row houses. In Paris, these neighborhoods would be fill with 6 and 7 story apartment houses. We don’t need to destroy DC’s huge stock of wonderful row houses. But I am suggesting that places that are blighted with bad mid-20th century development be transformed into something more urban.

All over the city, there are examples of 1950s – 1990s one and two story buildings that are a waste of real estate. Look at 14th Street NW between, say, R and W streets. Or consider the building across the street from The Ellington on U Street: Crème is located there, and a dollar store, and the Rite Aid on the corner, among other businesses. Great uses, but the building itself is only a single story. Ten or 20 years ago, someone thought it would be a good idea to build what amounts to a strip mall there. Four or five more stories on top of it, which is in character with the rest of the neighborhood, and you’ve just increased density. Twenty years ago, a one story building may have made economic sense; today, the owner of that building is losing money (or at least not making money) every day that he can only rent out one floor. Development like this could happen all over DC’s central core.

There are many ways to achieve a good density. Getting rid of the over-all height limit in DC is not one of them. Encouraging the kind of in-fill development I described above could help.