The perfect being the enemy of the good

1. I have been meaning to write about the Brookland overhead utility wire issue, but Greater Greater Washington beat me to it in "Brookland energized over power lines."

a. It's true that it's better to have buried utility lines.

b. But it's costly.

c. DC is unusual compared to most jurisdictions because the cost of typical streetscape and sidewalk improvements _are not charged to individual property owners_.

d. But somehow this doesn't cover burial of utility lines, at least outside of the L'Enfant City, where it is mandated that street-side utility wires be buried underground.

e. So the reason that DDOT and the Office of Planning kept putting aside people's wishes for underground wiring on 12th Street is that many property owners would have to pony up a lot of money in a special assessment. (At least this is my understanding.) Much of 12th Street NE, though zoned commercial, is residential, making special assessments particularly onerous.

f. The DDOT streetscape plan came up with a nice framework for conceptualizing the commercial and residential aspects of 12th Street NE (current commercial area) and Monroe Street NE (future commercial area) in Brookland, preserving the primary residential parts, and focusing commercial intensity.

g. If the organization that I had worked for last year had been better situated internally and externally, we would have adopted that framework, and worked to educate people about why it made sense.

h. One of the problems with the 12th Street NE commercial district (besides the residents who are and the community organizations which are congenitally unable to work together and come to consensus, in addition to the dominant neighborhood narrative/trope, forged during the anti-freeway battles, that they can successfully agitate for what they want and fight off any development whatsoever) is that it is too disjoint. The Monroe to Otis part needs to connect up with the part closer to Michigan Avenue, which is anchored by the Yes Organic Market and the pathetic Kelly's Ellis Island restaurant.

i. So it does bother me that most of the Brookland activists don't favor comprehensive improvements in the zoning for 12th Street, which except for the two blocks between Monroe and Otis, is C1, which is very much car and on-site parking oriented.

j. The cost of burying the utility lines is probably relatively minimal though, given that the street will already be torn up, less than $1.5 million (based on the cost of utility burial in other cities that I have come across, such as for Lenoir, NC, however I imagine that the costs assessed by Pepco are much higher).

k. Note that outside of the L'Enfant City and Georgetown, street-side utilities aren't buried, although on some main routes such as Georgia Avenue NW, most utilities are provided to the Avenue via the rear of the street, from side streets.

l. But even with buried utility lines, and a quality streetscape, without the ability to forge a more coherent business district in spatial terms, along with "better" merchants and property owners able to leverage the improvements, Brookland commercial district won't improve.

m. Especially because the area has about 1/3 of the population it needs to support adequate neighborhood-serving retail and lacks the attractions necessary to attract customers from outside of the immediate neighborhood.

n. Restaurants in Brookland prove the point I make time and time again about the necessity of quality restaurants serving as anchors for neighborhood-based commercial district revitalization. Colonel Brooks Tavern is on-again, off-again. For the past 18 months + I think it has been very good, albeit more expensive than I would like to pay. But Kelly's declined precipitously. Cardinal's Nest has been a disaster, and the new BBQ place just doesn't know how to pull it together.

o. Meanwhile in Takoma/Takoma Park, the groups do know how to work together (for the most part, although maybe not on the Metro site redevelopment). They are working to revive and reopen the Takoma Theater, and two new restaurants are coming to the Takoma Park side of the commercial district, one owned by Gillian Clark (ex of Colorado Kitchen), the other an artisinal pizza place. Plus they have two decent restaurants already.

p. Maybe I should put up the slide presentation I created on the Brookland Main Street program on slideshare. It's pretty good if I say so myself and discusses niche development opportunities and has a rough "build out analysis" for 12th Street NE, identifying opportunities to improve the building stock, add retail options, and strengthen the streetscape and commercial district simultaneously.

q. I really can't write much more on my experiences in Brookland, other than I finally accepted that the perfect model or ideas in and of themselves aren't enough, that you have to have community support, and build the consensus required to effect change, otherwise you get nowhere.

r. cf. the introduction in the current issue of themail on why the school "reform" effort is likely to fail. Chancellor Rhee and Mayor Fenty don't have enough experience in planned change, innovation, and transformation to really understand how to bring it about. Instead, they think that everyone other than themselves and the closest members of their team are the problem.

Similarly in Brookland, residents and groups don't know how to "play well with others." Instead of saying to govt. people that they disagree, and here's why, they instead call on higher ups within specific agencies or City Council and demand that those people be fired. It makes it hard for those government agency workers to then turn around and advocate for Brookland.

Plus, knowing how the process works, the government agencies would rather put their efforts toward projects in other communities, because they can get more accomplished more quickly. (This is something else that the people in Brookland "taught me.")

Some of the worst and craziest community meetings I have ever experienced--other than two specific meetings in the H Street neighborhood--were in Brookland. It's one reason that I didn't want to live in Ward 5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and even though with trepidation we did look at some houses in Brookland instead we lucked out and found a jewel of an area in Ward 4 and now we are happily ensconced there. (In short, I'd rather eat at Ledo's Pizza or McDonald's on Georgia Avenue rather than go to Brookland.)

2. My pushing for best practices and high quality projects is frequently a sore point with colleagues who tell me to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (That's my problem with the EYA project ArtsDistrict Hyattsville, which is good for what it is, but should be considered a transect violation from the standpoint of new urbanism. My making that point seems to have bumped me off the promotional e-list of the area's primary "new urbanism-smart growth" promotion organization.)