Speaking of clubs and Ward 5

There is a lot of ferment about the possible relocation to Ward 5 of clubs displaced by development of the baseball stadium, or by the redevelopment of that district. Dissent is driven by a number of different reasons, ranging from homophobia to concerns about the impact on community, to the reaction to special legislation introduced in DC City Council to make relocation easier.

One of the things I find frustrating about dealing with these kinds of issues is the failure on the part of neighborhood groups (a different aspect of "the tyranny of neighborhood parochialism") to judiciously differentiate between Class A, B, and C liquor licenses. There is a difference.

And in a different place in Ward 5, on Bladensburg Road, ex-ANC Commissioner Kathy Henderson (via her daughter India, who was elected in her place) is fighting the establishment of a tavern on the east side of Bladensburg within a couple blocks of H Street NE.

To my way of thinking, you need some night time establishments, in order to get people to begin (re)sampling commercial districts. Pioneering hipster types will go to places in bad areas--and the Bladensburg commercial district is scary, far more desolate that H Street has been over the last 20 years, in my opinion anyway.

People buying Pabst Blue Ribbon or a $7 hefeweisen (the price this weekend at the Saloon on U Street NW) aren't the ones loitering, selling drugs, etc., the kind of activity that Kathy Henderson likely opposes.

You need good activity out on the street, otherwise the vacuum allows negative activity to fester and grow, and it doesn't take much negative activity for an area to decline precipitously.

Below is something I wrote about this general point.
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Some background, although you're not necessarily into the nuance of revitalization, but lately I've been thinking in a more focused way about time shifting, and looking at commercial districts in terms of dayparts, "just like a restaurant" such as breakfast, lunch, happy hour, dinner, late night.

A church mostly is active from about 8-noon on Sundays. The other 164 hours in the week, the church doesn't have much activity. Same goes for government buildings, which tend to be active from 8am-4pm M-F. Schools, etc. Most commercial districts, and definitely clubs, don't function from 8-12 on Sundays.

Now, I am not sure how I would feel if there were a proposal to relocate some of these establishments to 12th St. NE, but... I don't have a problem with the proposed areas, which at least on WV Ave. are quite a distance from residential areas. (I define quite a distance as say 400 or more feet; 270 feet is a typical block in the core of the city.) I don't know about the Club 55 thing, but the reality is that with the 1st Amendment to the Constitution one of the clauses being "separation of church and state," it isn't Constitutional to allow church proximity to dictate certain aspects of state action such as zoning clauses for liquor licenses. In DC, the only such clauses that exist are for schools.

A problem I have with some of this stuff is that the avg. neighborhood groups treat all Class A (hard liquor), B (beer and wine), and C (restaurants and taverns) licenses as identical when they are not. You want night time establishments in your area, to attract people to different dayparts.

However, it needs to be done in a manner that protects and enhances the community--meaning no shootings such as at H2O this past weekend, etc. But A and B licensees selling products that cater to loiterers consuming alcoholic beverages in ways that debilitate public space have a much different effect when compared to establishments that provide on-premise consumption.

The big thing is management and addressing the issues that could potentially result from any such night-time economy place.