"Think, you don't think. You do what you're told. That's what you do." and forced defects in the NoMa/Northwest One retail "strategy"

1200 block, North Capitol Street NE. Photo from A9.
The DC Housing Authority site, 1133 North Capitol Street NE, will be redeveloped as part of the Northwest One program. Photo from A9.

There is a lot going on in the "NoMa" district north of Union Station in Washington, DC. The Office of Planning is undertaking a NoMa master planning initiative, which is supposed to wrap up later in the spring. (One of the public meetings was last night, and a draft plan is supposed to be released at the March public meeting.)

Northwest One/New Communities planning map from the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.

At the same time, there are many parallel city government initiatives in the same general area, including "Northwest One," the New Communities initiative which is a kind of locally-initiated Hope VI project for the neighborhood between North Capitol NW, First Street, K Street and New York Avenue. This area is comprised of Sursum Corda and a number of large multiple unit assisted housing buildings on the west side of North Capitol, such as Tyler House.

"With all the development coming in, people see green. . . . Of course, they'll want the poor people out," said Tyler House resident Jim Brown. (Photo by Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post) From "Some of D.C.'s Poor Question Their Place in Housing Plan."

I learned that the New Communities program has dictated to the people running the NoMa study that they aren't to tinker with the New Communities plan to build retail in the new housing on the 1100 and 1200 blocks of North Capitol Street.

Yet there is no market for retail in that area. And North Capitol Street is too car-oriented to begin yanking the street back for the pedestrian and the kind of street-level retail that they envision.

The NoMa plan suggests making First Street NE the spine for retail in that area, in part because this street links two subway stations--New York Avenue (which is really at First & a half and M Streets NE) and Union Station--as well as the Greyhound bus terminal. It also leads into the Eckington Place-New York Avenue area. Since denser housing is likely to be built on and around the NY Avenue subway station, such a plan makes sense.

North Capitol and retail does not. Especially given the development of larger scale retail at 5th and K Streets NW in the CityVista project, which will include a Safeway, and the development of higher capacity retail along 3rd Street NE at H Street (the proposed Steuart Investment project which calls for about 250 units of housing plus a first floor grocery store, allegedly Harris-Teeter) and plans at Uline Arena for housing and retail, including perhaps, a grocery store...

A stylized view of the Safeway at CityVista, from their website. I think that this will become the supermarket where I'll want to go shopping...
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The quote in the title comes from the movie "Total Recall."

Index Keywords: urban-revitalization; housing