Disagreements within the Growth Machine...

The Growth Machine thesis from urban sociology posits that despite seeming differences, at the heart, the local political-economic elite is united around a growth (real estate development) agenda focused on intensification of land use and increases in property values. See "Neil Albert keeps the RFPs coming, but can he deliver" from the Washington Business Journal to understand the pro-development focus of the Fenty Administration.

In DC, the Federal City Council is the primary actor "governing coalition" (using the term not from Growth Machine theory but the political science theory of the Urban Regime, which I think is a bit better at explaining how the local political-economic elite functions and governs) along with the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the DC Chamber of Commerce. The FCC includes all the universities and other players, and the big developers. It was co-founded by the then publisher of the Washington Post (local media is absolutely dependent on local development for continued success).

John Hill is the current executive director of the Federal City Council. (He was the director of the Financial Control Board during that economic bad time of the city's bankruptcy in the 1990s.) Recently, he was removed by the current regime (Fenty Administration) from the board of the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust. See "Appointments Spark Hearings " from the Washington Post. I "wondered" what that was about, maybe just an element of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" as Mayor Fenty opens up these kinds of slots to younger-new but still connected people.

The Tenley Library-Janney School redevelopment issue is a debacle. Recently, the Mayor announced a joint development agreement for the site. The community and certain Councilmembers did not agree as written in the DC Wire Washington Post blog, "Kwame Brown and Cheh Team Up For Tenley."

Now the Library System, where John Hill is still the chairman of the board, has announced plans to go ahead with a rebuilding of the library independent of the joint development agreement.

Granted, this is an instance where most every actor acting is wrong, especially the Library System where I think most of the board members should be removed, probably the director too, because they aren't interested in making libraries work better for communities and the 21st century as much as they think they are (even with the recent hiring of David Adjaye, architect of the paradigm breaking Idea Stores in the Tower Hamlet borough of London, see "An Architect For the Books" from the Washington Post).

Hip Idea Store library branch in Whitechapel.

I wonder what this says about the success of the governing coalition of the Growth Machine and its organizing agenda (another UR term).

From the DC Library Renaissance Project:

Library Board Ignores Mayor on Tenley Library, Directs Chief Librarian to Proceed with Construction

Washington DC -- November 19, 2008 – President of the Board of Library Trustees John Hill tonight revealed that his board has instructed Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper to proceed with construction documents for a standalone library at Tenley. This comes in spite of Mayor Adrian Fenty’s selection earlier this summer of developer LCOR to incorporate the library into a mixed use project there.

The Mayor’s project involves the joint development of a library, Janney Elementary School, 170 units of housing and retail, as well as underground parking. A preliminary plan ignited neighborhood opposition when it was first floated several years ago. Since then, opposition has grown.

Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh, who had initially sought the mayor’s support for the public private partnership to build the library as part of the mixed use project, recently reversed her position. Last month Cheh made public a letter to the Mayor urging him to drop the partnership and support DCPL’s standalone library.

The surprise announcement to ignore the Mayor’s plan came at a bi-monthly meeting of the Trustees at the Lamond Riggs Library on South Dakota Avenue NE serving Wards Four and Five. When one disbelieving Tenley resident asked if Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Neil Albert had been told, Hill responded that it was “not necessary. We are an independent board and can move forward.”

Since hiring Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper two and a half years ago, the Trustees maintained that they would begin construction this fall on the Tenley library and three others. They laid out what they termed a “dual track” strategy, which included working with the neighborhood to plan a standalone library while remaining open to explore the possibilities of the public private partnership. Numerous meetings with development partner LCOR have not yielded a satisfactory plan for the library in the mixed use project.

Members of the Tenley community in attendance thanked the Trustees for keeping their promise to move quickly to rebuild the Tenley library. Trustee Bonnie Cohen deferred all credit for the decision to the leadership of John Hill.
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Note that I am in favor of mixed use redevelopment of civic sites, although mixed use doesn't have to mean public and private, it can mean mixed agency use too.

I don't know enough about the parameters of the Tenley-Janney site to know which way I should come down. HOWEVER, just as I would likely get rid of Michelle Rhee and hire someone like Andres Alonso, superintendent in Baltimore, or Anthony Alvarado (see Making Schools Work with Hedrick Smith . District-Wide Reform) or Kathleen Cashin (see "Bucking School Reform, a Leader Gets Results," from the New York Times), I WOULD FIRE THE LIBRARY BOARD OF TRUSTEES AND THE DIRECTOR AND RESTART THE LIBRARY PLANNING PROCESS, WHICH BEFORE WAS NEVER ADEQUATELY VETTED.

Speaking of having a Planning Commission in the City. If a Planning Commission only has purview over the Office of Planning and not the planning activities of the other agencies, especially the Department of Transportation, the Public Libraries, the Schools, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Fire and Emergency Services Department, and health and wellness planning, even Public Works, THEN IT IS ALMOST WORTHLESS.

The debacle within the Public Library system, not to mention the Public School system, is a case in point.