Eastern Market Metro Plaza

Since it seems that a whisper campaign is going round stating that I believe that Eastern Market Metro Plaza needs to be made over in some sort of urban renewal project, reprinting this blog entry from 2007, which recounts a workshop I participated in back in 2004, is in order.

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This is a discussion of a Project for Public Spaces planning demonstration in which I participated in 2004, using the Eastern Market Metro Plaza as the site. Since I wrote the blog entry below, in April 2007, I have been thinking quite a bit about master planning, and how (1) there isn't a master plan for Eastern Market; and (2) there isn't a broad master plan for the area around Eastern Market and all of the public assets:

- bus and transit service
- Eastern Market public market
- North Hall arts space (within Eastern Market)
- Rumsey Natatorium
- the to-be-repurposed Hine Junior High School
- the Eastern Market Metro Plaza
- and the related public spaces at the NE and SE corners of 8th and Pennsylvania Ave (this is actually three pieces of a large square, comparable to Seward Square a couple blocks over)
- the Southeast branch of the DC Public Library
- the old Naval Hospital (to become the "Hill Center),
- not to mention the commercial strips on 7th Street SE, Barracks Row (8th Street SE), and Pennsylvania Avenue, and the need for a broader retail plan,
- plus the need for comprehensive transportation planning and the likely creation of a transportation management district, especially given the talk of building structured underground parking on the Hine school site.

In Eastern Market board meetings, I do mention the need for master planning from time to time... The master plan for Lancaster's Central Market is a good model, but at the same time, I recommend a broader planning process, comparable to a typical DC Office of Planning "small area plan" to cover the other areas. It's pretty amazing that the renovation of Eastern Market, planned before the fire, went forward without a master plan. This has hampered, in my opinion, optimal facilities planning for the public market going forward, especially given the ever-increasing competition it faces (e.g., Harris-Teeter) and the lack of real planning of the market as a commercial district, as opposed to a collection of individual businesses.

	Lancaster Central Market Master Plan
	Lancaster Central Market Master Plan Committee: Vision, Mission and Values

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Metro
Originally uploaded by bwalsh.

(Flickr Photo of Eastern Market Metro Plaza by B Walsh.)

There is an opportunity to rethink the Greater Eastern Market area as a result of yesterday's disaster [the fire in April 2007]. One thing is the Eastern Market Metro Plaza, which is now under DC control, rather than that of the National Park Service.

In 2004, I participated in a training workshop conducted by the Project for Public Spaces for Scenic America. The field site was the Eastern Market Metro Plaza.

Having lived in DC for 17 years or so at that point, I figured I knew everything about how to fix that place.

How wrong I was....

In a few short hours, the various Scenic America staffers from around the country who came in for the training, starting with a presentation by PPS staffers, and then a sojourn out in the field, came up with many great ideas.

In my opinion the ideas we came up with in a couple hours (plus the pre-training) were for the most part far better than those suggested by Ohme Van Sweden, the landscape architecture firm that was retained by some organization to come up with improvement proposals.

I do think it made a difference that (1) Scenic America staffers were already experienced with planning and placemaking issues, (2) that there was at least one or two local people on the teams who could point out things like the fact the library is across the street, and provide historical background.

And there needed to be more time for ideas to gestate, such as during the session the recognition that the Hine Multipurpose Room could be repurposed and show movies at night, etc.

I came out of this training as a fervent convert to the PPS placemaking approach.

Below are the results from the session.
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How to Turn A Place Around
Scenic America Affiliate Workshop
April 26, 2004
Finn McCool’s Restaurant, Capitol Hill

Led by
Fred Kent, President, Project for Public Spaces
Kathy Madden, Vice President, Project for Public Spaces

Background

On April 26, 2004 the Project for Public Spaces, based in New York City, led 29 participants at Scenic America’s Affiliate Workshop in a six hour workshop to analyze public open space near Barrack’s Row on 8th Street, SE. We closely examined three areas: I. Eastern Market Metro Plaza including the 8th Street edge of the Metro Plaza; II. the transit stop on 8th Street at the neighborhood park between 8th and 9th Streets on Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, diagonally across the street from Metro Plaza (referred herein as “Neighborhood Park”) and the park’s interior; and III. the exterior area around the middle school between 7th and 8th Streets, SE on Pennsylvania Avenue, SE.

Participants included both staff and volunteer leaders from a number of Scenic America’s national affiliates and associates including Scenic California, Scenic Nevada, Scenic Texas, Scenic Missouri, Scenic North Carolina, Scenic Virginia, Scenic Maryland, Scenic Wisconsin, Scenic Michigan, SCRUB (Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight) in Philadelphia, and others; and various Scenic America board members and staff of Scenic America from Arkansas, Washington State, Massachusetts, etc.

While Scenic America organized the workshop to help affiliates and associates understand how they can demand citizen-driven, not expert-driven, public space process in their own communities it is our hope that some of the excellent ideas that that emerged from these national leaders might be useful to Capital Hill residents as they plan the future of these important neighborhood spaces along Pennsylvania Avenue, a prime gateway to the Nation’s Capital.

THE PROCESS: The system of parks along Pennsylvania Avenue, SE is an important community asset. The purpose of the training workshop was to critically examine these spaces, talk to users, and envision how they might better serve both the neighborhood and enliven the gateway to the Capitol.

To begin the workshop, Bill McLeod, Executive Director of Barracks Row Main Street, briefed the participants on the history and redevelopment of 8th Street and the open space issues at the intersection with 8th St. Fred Kent and Kathy Madden of Project for Public Spaces then instructed the group in the PPS methodology of place analysis. Participants broke into small groups and spent about 45 minutes on each of three sites, then returned to Finn McCool’s for lunch and to report their findings (detailed below).

I. A. Metro Plaza – Library Focus

The S.E. Library, one of two Carnegie libraries on Capital Hill (along with the NE Library on 7th St., NE), can be thought of as the “head” or focal point of the park and should be linked physically and visually to the Metro Plaza and the other parks. Workshop participants like the potential of pulling people into the Library as they are passing through the Metro area.

The space is currently barren and uninviting -- a thoroughfare with no place to sit, little shade and poor lighting. At present, trees separate the park from the library with no focus on this lovely and historically significant building that rises above the Plaza. The focus on Metro somehow relegates this to a pass-through.

One workshop participant suggested that this Metro plaza should be a surprising and wonderful place to emerge when coming out of the subway station. To make this a reality, changes could include alterations to the pedestrian circulation system to open up the corner and link to the library. Workshop participants suggested that there may be ways that Capitol Hill’s two Carnegie libraries could cooperate to promote reading through exhibits, lectures in the Metro Plaza.

Recommended Changes:

• Link library to park both physically and visually.
• Focus the plaza on books and learning. Hold used book fairs and market new products for children. Celebrate local writers.
• Build a diagonal path through the space since that is how it is used to get to bus and Metro.
• Install better lighting – not just more – that is well-designed and inviting.
• Provide a place to sit -- a must.
• Shade is required, perhaps through trellises and even some forms of bamboo (?).
• Provide a gazebo, carousel or a bandstand for music – John P. Souza is from this neighborhood and perhaps the plaza is a place to celebrate that part of DC’s heritage.
• Place classy-looking book themed benches throughout the plaza.
• Install a playground to meet needs of the local daycare group and many young families on Hill (there was some disagreement about this since the plaza has a travel function as well). Many of the same elements appeal to people of all ages.
• Install a water feature – perhaps a fountain with a literary theme. (An issue with the subway below...)
• Invite vendors, perhaps from the Eastern Market area, to have kiosks here to sell food. Provide tables and chairs.
• Work with the Newseum on some special events to be held in this plaza.
• The newspaper boxes are a jumble and need some organizing design.
• The signage for the area at the Metro needs improving.
• Because of the number of buses, there needs to be very clear information on bus routes, etc.
• Screen Pennsylvania Avenue with trees to give some sense of enclosure to the plaza.
• Work with B.I.D. on litter control and frequent trash removal.
• Local stores surrounding the park should somehow be linked to its future use – Kinko’s; Radio Shack, Starbucks, CVS, etc.

B. Metro Plaza – 8th Street Edge

Participants liked the openness and the opportunity to encounter “uncanny” people. But the area is more of a “pass through” than a real place. While the current sidewalks along 8th Street are serving as cafes, there is no extension of this activity into the park.

Recommended Changes:

• Treat this as a gateway entry to Barracks Row as well as to the Capitol.
• Install a marker to point to the Marine Barracks and the Navy Yard.
• Provide a map of businesses and some history of the area. • Introduce any banners or other decorative features that become emblematic of 8th Street.

II. A. Neighborhood Park - 8th Street Northbound Bus Stop

The bus stop is uncomfortable; however, it is accessible and has good visibility and a nice view of the flowering tree at the corner of the school yard.

Recommended Changes:

• Create more shade.
• Do a better job of maintenance and litter control.
• Demark the area with flower pots.
• Locate historic markers, banners, etc. as recommended above to link area to 8th Street and Barracks Row.
• Install more comfortable benches.

Neighborhood Park – Interior

The Park offers good access and link to Metro through the park. While it is desirable to have benches, but they are not well maintained. The place looks seedy on closer look. Nothing invites one to use it.

Recommended Changes:

• Needs a clear tie with the surrounding neighborhood.
• Needs a playground to attract children and serve many young families now on Hill.
• A sculpture (similar to that at Lincoln Park) or water fountain could make this place a real standout.
• Are the plantings here appropriate? The roses look nice but are they the most kid-friendly plants?

Hines Middle School. Hine Middle School looks like a fortress. The banner citing the school for educational achievement has been up there for many years and is faded. The red door needs painting. It is used as an exit, but it looks very uninviting. The main entrance on 8th St. is equally unattractive. There is an evident lack of maintenance with many weeds. The windows, with their extensive wire coverings, contribute to a fortress-like quality. Team members felt it looked more like a prison than a neighborhood school.

Recommended Changes:

• Spruce up the exterior with paint. There may be a wall suitable for a really fine mural that the kids could paint.
• Get a new banner or get rid of the old one. It detracts rather than adds to the neighborhood.
• Draw the school into the adjoining open spaces with art displays.
• Repave the sidewalk around the school. It now feels like pedestrians are passing a wasteland, not a special place.
• Remove the chain-link fence. It is one way to open up access to the school.
• Involve the school in some community gardening, both on school grounds and potentially in the neighborhood park across the street.

CONCLUSIONS

The interrelated set of open spaces, institutions, and functions in this particular location – near the Market, the Metro and bus lines – should be viewed as a tremendous local asset -- an opportunity waiting to happen.

The school should be viewed as a major institution and user of the spaces rather than as the source of problems.

Pennsylvania Avenue is currently a speedway and needs major traffic calming around the Eastern Market area, beginning at 9th Street. Cars need to slow down and the driver’s expectations need to change as cars approach the Capitol. This could help with the hazardous conditions now in front of the school where kids routinely dart in front of on-coming traffic.

As plans proceed to redevelop these areas, there should be a formal neighborhood involvement process providing opportunities for place analysis and recommendations (as in this workshop) to develop an innovation and integrated plan that both reflects neighborhood needs and values and also solves problems with the existing spaces.

Respectfully submitted,

Meg Maguire, President
Scenic America

New York City: A New Vision for Street Fairs

New York City's Center for an Urban Future, one of the city's great think tanks focused on local-community livability and viability, has published a vision paper on how to improve street fairs.

A Vision for Street Fairs
Artists, architects, urbanists, and developers opine on the future of the city's street fairs in this new report from the Center for an Urban Future. The report examines how the city could turn the city's staple, but "repetitive," street fair into an urban essential.

From the cover:

New York’s street fairs need a makeover. They are bland, repetitive and don’t reflect what’s unique about New York. In order to kick off a discussion about how these staples of summer could better serve New Yorkers, the Center for an Urban Future asked two dozen innovators from a variety of fields for their visions for improving the city’s street fairs.

Interestingly enough, last fall Anwar Saleem, director of H Street Main Street, and I had a conversation about this issue with Steve Moore, who is the director of the Washington DC Economic Partnership. Steve made the point that street festivals--including the H Street Festival, Adams-Morgan Day, Mt. Pleasant Day, Capital Pride, etc.--are major economic drivers, bringing a lot of people into the city, and collectively have a significant economic impact that is underappreciated.

Both Anwar and I recounted how difficult it is to get all the necessary permits, that some requirements are unreasonable and onerous (e.g., you are supposed to get 90% approval of representatives of all properties within 500 feet of the street you are asking to close--that's almost two blocks in every direction!), and that the various fees from the city agencies are incredibly expensive (although you can get some "in-kind" support from the agencies from the Mayor's Office, but the process isn't defined--you need to know or be helped or connected in order to be positioned to be able to get that assistance).

Anyway, I am intrigued by this report.

Note also that the Celebrate Fairfax organization sponsors a training/events conference each year on how to run major events and street festivals. We need to offer such a training program in DC.

The Growth Machine and public graft

Harvey Molotch's classic journal article, "City as a Growth Machine," explains how the grouping of local economic and political elites, despite what might appear to be seeming differences, is mostly united on a pro-growth agenda, centered around real estate development and land use intensification.

How it works between the politicos and the developers is generally unseemly.

Even so, I am constantly amazed that in Maryland, politicians get investigated and sometimes lose their positions, when these unseemly relationships cross the line into corruption. See "State looking into Prince George's County bribery complaints, source says: American Hospitality owner, staff member to testify before grand jury on lawmakers' alleged dealings" from the Gazette, including this:

Luthra's company filed a lawsuit Jan. 19 against the county alleging Johnson and Prince George's council members collectively pushed Luthra during a year-long period to spend more than $900,000 preparing the Four Points building so the housing department could lease space. Johnson allegedly assured Luthra the lease was "a done deal" and allegedly used his personal attorney to conduct negotiations outside of the public process, according to the lawsuit.

American Hospitality Management also alleges that council members Marilynn M. Bland (D-Dist. 9) of Clinton, Camille Exum (D-Dist. 7) of Capitol Heights, Tony Knotts (D-Dist. 8) of Temple Hills and Ingrid Turner (D-Dist. 4) of Bowie pushed the company to hire former councilman Michael Arrington as a lobbyist to handle the negotiations to move the county housing department to Four Points, a mixed-use development that includes office space, a Sheraton hotel and commercial spaces. ...

The lawsuit also states that several council members worked through Arrington to push Luthra and associates to buy tickets for political events in exchange for consideration of the lease. In another claim, Luthra said in court papers that the council wanted him to give commissions from the lease to their political allies, including Arrington and Charles Dukes, a real estate broker with W.F. Chesley Real Estate of Crofton.

Luthra's lawyers say the developer was caught in a "power struggle" between Johnson and the council over who gets to collect favors from business contracts in the county. "This system of corruption and graft has, upon information and belief, been in place for many years," lawyers for the company wrote in a new complaint filed June 1.

I wrote about this story earlier in the month. But what amazes me is that this kind of behavior is seemingly legal in DC. At least, how could steering millions of dollars of contracts to friends of the Mayor, by diverting contracts in one government agency (Parks and Recreation Department), to a nonprofit organization controlled by another government agency (DC Housing Authority), without oversight, be legal? Why aren't people going to jail?

There is a series of postings in themail by John Hanrahan about alleged conflicts of interest by Councilman Jack Evans (the third installment is in this issue) and he laments the lack of interest by local journalists:

As a former reporter for the Washington Star and Washington Post, I frequently investigated and reported on conflicts of interest and ethical problems in the Maryland General Assembly. I also am the former executive director of the Fund for Investigative Journalism. I think I have enough reporting experience to know when an elected official appears to have crossed the line into a conflict of interest and to point out that the local mainstream press is inexplicably giving Evans a free pass on this issue. Over the last two months I have sent this information to five reporters or editors at four different news organizations, and have had no response thus far.

Probably if it weren't real estate oriented (say like this issue, "Wasting Away: The Squandering of D.C.'s AIDS Dollars") the Post would get more energized. But the Post is part of the Growth Machine too and less likely to criticize development-related "suasion."

Public art master plans

Most of my life I have really been into newspapers. The summer after my freshman year in high school, I participated in a "summer youth program" session on journalism at Michigan Tech University, where I helped to produce a "newspaper" for the students in the program. (I never went on to work in journalism though.)

At the time there was a "Dial a Ride" proposal (a type of public transit service) up for a vote in Houghton, Michigan, and I wrote a piece about it, including in the article the line that the program should be supported. I was admonished by one of the instructors, who explained to me that the inclusion of opinions is inappropriate in what should be objective news stories.

I think about that just about every time I read a story in the Examiner with the byline "Markham Heid" as just about every article includes sentences and word choices that are deliberately designed to incite, where the implications the words engender come right out of the Rupert Murdoch school of tabloid journalism, although not nearly as "screamy". Nothing about those sentences is intended to represent objective journalism.

For example, the Kennedy Center got a big grant (from a conservative rich family no less) and in his story he equated the grant with the debacle over an unfunded grant by a rich guy who turned out to be no good. From the article:

The DeVos donation is reminiscent of a $50 million pledge made by Internet stock investor Alberto Vilar to the Kennedy Center's arts management institute in 2001. Vilar, however, did not fulfill his promise. Earlier this year, he was sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud and money laundering.

What a stretch! How are these two events related, other than the intent to fund the same program? It's hard for me to believe that the editors at the Washington Examiner are less careful than the instructor-editors in the MTU Summer Youth Program's journalism class.

Over the weekend, the Examiner ran a story, "Alexandria officials mull ambitious, expensive new arts program," by Heid about a public art master plan in Alexandria. Here's the lead:

Alexandria officials are crafting an ambitious new plan to fund public art using hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer cash, and by extracting contributions from private businesses.

Pretty much all government initiatives are funded by taxpayers ("taxpayer cash"), and it is typical for new development projects to have "public amenities" requirements ("extracting contributions from private businesses") but the sentence construction is clearly leading, if not pejorative, as are other sentences such as "Private property developers would be asked to pony up cash based on the size of new development projects, or expansions of existing properties."

Heid ought to be blogging maybe. Not writing stories for "legitimate" newspapers.

Anyway, the article discusses the creation of a public art master plan in Alexandria, which I think is a good thing. From the article:

"The purpose of this plan is to help us think through where we would put public art and how much of it we want," said Councilman Rob Krupicka, the council's liaison to the city's arts commission.

"It makes sense for us to have a solid public art policy and funding approach, and we don't have either right now," Krupicka said.

The city's plan as it now stands would allocate a percentage of Alexandria's capital improvement budget to arts programs each year beginning in fiscal 2012. The estimated taxpayer contribution would be $300,000 to start, and would balloon to $600,000 by fiscal 2016.

And that's a good lead in for what seem like interesting _and structured_ public art programs in New York City, Boynton Beach, Florida, and Charlottesville

Avenue of the Arts Exhibition

This year the City of Boynton Beach Arts Commission encourages artists to submit iconic artwork that features the tactile quality and celebrates sensory sensations. Artwork that has textural finishes, surfaces, grains, qualities and consistencies. The artwork can utilize sound, color or movement to communicate the texture theme. Is the artwork smooth, rough, pitted, soft, hard or squishy? Does it have grooves or gouges, smooth or polished or is it rustic or worn? Visual texture is the illusion of having physical texture. The artwork should hold up to the outdoor Florida environment for the year long display. The artists may consider more than one artwork site or create a site-specific installation that addresses this theme.

Times Square Alliance Public Art Program

Artists and arts organizations are encouraged to propose projects that address the unique nature and rich history of Times Square. Projects should be able to have an impact in a space defined by dynamic activity and continuous, competing visual stimuli. Organizations, curators and artists are encouraged to consider how their projects will change or effect the space during the presentation and how the 350,000 people here every day (as well millions of virtual viewers) will interact with the presentation. Public spaces to consider as locations for art projects and events include the new Broadway plazas and Duffy Square in Times Square and other public and private spaces throughout the Theater District, 42nd Street and 8th Avenue. Through its Public Art Program, the Times Square Alliance brings temporary high-quality, cutting-edge art and performance to Times Square's public spaces, so that it is known globally as a place where ordinary people encounter authentic, ever-changing urban art in multiple forms and media.

Art in Place

Several locations around the City have been selected for public sculpture. Charlottesville is visited by 500,000 tourists each year. All locations are in areas of high vehicular traffic. Although we are looking primarily for large works, we have established sites along Schenk's Branch Greenway where a pedestrian path parallels McIntire Road and allows for views of smaller works. Each installation will be in place for 11 months. Each selected work is provided with signs that direct the viewer to this Web site.

The point of a master plan for public art is to develop structured, supported programs that do interesting things. Not having a plan guarantees you won't have much. Having a plan guarantees that you'll get something, and if the plan and subsequent process is robust, it should end up supporting the creation of some great work and interesting (and maybe, but not likely provocative) projects.

I still am blown away by the gutsy public art project associated with the construction of the Interstate/Yellow light rail line in Portland. One of the stations serves a site that was a World War II Japanese-American relocation center. The sculpture honors the people who were imprisoned. In the pillars of the work are reproductions of front pages of Portland newspapers, with the most virulently racist headlines. I was impressed that a government-funded art project could show such guts and willingness to challenge and confront dark periods in our history. (There was an equally moving installation at the light rail station serving the Vanport area, which was the site of a devastating flood in 1948 that killed 15 people and left 18,000 people homeless.)

Expo Gates sculpture by Valerie Otani, Expo Center, Portland, Oregon.

I believe that if DC had a public art master plan, we'd probably do a better job than we are doing now with public art projects, some of which end up collapsing because of community opposition.

What we need is action, not the ability to sue...

Gladiators. (Internet photo.)

In "D.C. government gets an earful for lack of openness," the Examiner reports on a DC Council hearing considering expanding requirements for openness for DC Government. From the article:

Many speakers complained that routine requests for information were often ignored or improperly denied by city departments. Those kind of complaints are nothing new and aren't unique to the District.

But the District's problems, Cheh and other speakers said, have only gotten worse under the administration of Mayor Adrian Fenty, who rose to power on a platform of accountability.

The average number of Freedom of Information Act requests wholly denied by the city has quadrupled under Fenty, while the average number of requests has stayed constant to previous administrations, according to figures from Cheh's office.

The article concludes with this:

Cheh's proposed bill would create an Open Government Office, which would advise agencies on public records laws and have the power to sue an agency that failed to comply with the law. She said the office would work as a "gladiator" for the public.

So you create a government office that has the power to sue another government agency?

Wow. Some solution.

Gladiators weren't content to sit in a courtroom arguing desultorially about what to do. Gladiators do things!

Instead, give the "Open Government Office" the authority to go in to the agency and fill the request, and seize funds from the uncompliant agency to pay for their cost of doing so.

Adding another lawsuit to the courts is hardly a step forward in protecting citizen rights and access to government. It does guarantee full employment for government lawyers though.

Attorney Michael S. Washor, making spirited opening remarks at the beginning of a trial. New York Times photo.

When the enemy of my enemy is my friend

I've been surprised to see little discussion in the Internet world of this article, "Rivals Secretly Finance Opposition to Wal-Mart," from the Wall Street Journal, about how supermarket chains are behind some of the organized efforts against Walmart store projects.

The article mentions Saint Consulting, which specializes in land development approval/disapproval consulting. I have mentioned the firm before. They published a fabulous book, Nimby Wars, about the process. See this article from Forbes about their work.

Frankly, I am surprised, still, that they published the book, which is a great primer for anyone, "nimby" residents included, in how to go about organizing in order to get your way. Of course, the adoption of community organizing strategies and tactics by "capital" is nothing new.

Shouldn't places near subway stations, in intensely urban places, be urban?

People in DC are well aware of the issues involved, mostly at subway stations, of the difficulties of trying to add density to leverage the value of the subway location. This has been a long time issue at Brookland, Takoma, to some extent Tenleytown, even at the Hine school site across the street from the Eastern Market Metro Station.

Plus, for the wrong reasons, original opposition to intensification at places like Takoma when the subway system was being planned, ended up being beneficial. Why? Because back then what would have been built would have pretty much been urban renewal styled stuff, like Fort Lincoln on Bladensburg Road, or the various church-related HUD senior housing projects around the city, etc. So, they were "wrong" to fight leveraging at least to some extent the subway location, but right to oppose what would have been bad, neighborhood-vitality-sucking projects.

The first attempt at intensification near the Rhode Island Metro went awry, yielding a typical parking-centric suburban-style shopping center with a Home Depot and a Giant Supermarket, joined eventually by a line of one story retail. Now there is a second project, being built on the parking lot of the Metro station. It will mostly be housing, with some ground floor retail.

Although the argument is not helped when the proposals for development have flaws. That would be the case for proposals for rowhouses with parking at Takoma, the same was originally proposed for Brookland 10+ years ago, and for taking away part of a school site at Tenley. Some of the Hine proposals, and the community desires for green space on the site, were at odds with its decidedly urban and transit-rich location too.

Still, it is generally understood that the investment in high capacity transit needs to be leveraged in a "smart growth" sense. This is the justification for Maryland's plans to develop specific "transit oriented development" projects at 14 rail stations in the state, at subway, railroad, and light rail stations in the Baltimore region, and at subway and railroad stations in Prince George's and Montgomery County. See "State agency to move from Crownsville to P.G. Co." from the Baltimore Sun.

While the site of a community garden by the Marine Barracks in Southeast DC isn't exactly by the subway--it's a few blocks south of the Eastern Market station, and further to the Navy Yard Station, it makes sense to allow the Marine Corps to expand to this site. The gardeners disagree. See "Gardeners near Capitol Hill prepare to repel a Marine Corps invasion" from the Post.

Also see the "transect" concept from New Urbanism.

There is a delicate balance between community building and community strengthening. Much of the time gardening, mural, and other community building projects are able to take the opportunity of weak demand and broken neighborhood economies to do projects on properties that aren't otherwise wanted. DC at least in the inner core of the city served by 29 subway stations, isn't that kind of a place.

It's why projects like the Shaw Eco-Village, an attempt to create a green-based community revitalization initiative, failed. The property values were high, and the initiative couldn't remain in place along with normal market forces. (see "Shaw EcoVillage forced to close" from WashCyle). On the other hand, in places like Baltimore, where many neighborhoods languish with hundreds of vacant buildings, such initiatives can succeed.

Still, if you look at the photos in the Post article, the gardeners have accomplished great things. But how does the city continue to grow and maintain its competitiveness in the context of the region and all the other jurisdictions it competes with?

Residents work on their private plots at the Virginia Avenue Community Garden, which is under consideration as a site for a Marine Corps barracks. Photo: Ricky Carioti, The Washington Post.

VisArts Youth Design Team animation in favor of light rail surface access to the University of Maryland College Park Campus

VisArts Center in Rockville.

The animation was created by student Tommy Tran, based on a print poster concept originally created by Kelly Holland.

When plan = vision and policy is consistent: Arlington County and HOT lanes

I forgot last night to write a blog entry about the Post editorial from earlier in the week, "Blocking traffic," admonishing Arlington County for suing the State of Virginia over HOT lanes--high occupancy toll lanes--for I-95 and I-395 but the letter to the editor in today's paper, "What new HOT lanes mean for Va.," reminded me.

The editorial said that Arlington's justification is invalid and a waste of tax money. But the letter writer, Bob Hugman of Woodbridge, understands. He writes:

... I think this is instead an example of a county government that believes in the concept of carpooling and mass transit and is willing to take action to protect it.

Conversion from basic high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) to HOT lanes will encourage single-occupant vehicles, degrade the commutes of carpoolers and bus riders, and threaten a tremendously successful system. Twice per day during HOV restrictions, the current system moves something like 30,000 people in 10,000 cars. The addition of another narrow, dangerous lane by restriping the highway and removing a shoulder may allow 5,000 more single-occupant cars carrying 5,000 individuals during rush hour. That would be an increase in people movement of only 17 percent. To achieve that, existing carpools will be slowed from 65 to 45 mph, if we are lucky -- gridlocked if not. Many people will just give up carpooling if there is only a small difference from traveling in the regular lanes.

We carpoolers are the good guys here. Let's find another approach, especially during rush hour.

From the standpoint of consistent transportation policy, based on a transportation vision as expressed in a transportation plan, and effectuated and implemented through consistent and congruent goals, objectives, and actions, Arlington County's action makes perfect sense.

In the Master Transportation Plan Goals and Policies section, Goal 2 is stated as:

Move More People Without More Traffic. Provide more travel choices and reduce the relative proportion of single occupant vehicle (SOV) travel through Transportation Demand Management (TDM), telecommuting and travel shifts to other modes including transit, carpooling, walking, and bicycling.

Strategies
1. Implement land use policies such as transit-oriented and mixed-oriented and mixed-use development trat result in better access and use of the transportation system.
2. Focus on minimizing person delay across modes rather than focusing exclusively on minimizing vehicle delay.
3. Encourage the use of environmentally sustainable modes, including bicycling, walking, transit, carpooling, and telecommuting.

Transportation General Policy C states:

Manage Travel Demand and Transportation Systems

Influence travel demand generated from new development through County Board-approved conditions and actively manage County-controlled streets, parking, transit sesrvices, and commuter service programs to minimize the growth in single occupant vehicle trips and to promote the use of all other modes of travel. If not managed effectively, the project increase in demand on Arlington's transportation system from anticipated local and regional population growth will far exceed the existing or future capacity of the system. Therefore, it is vital to put into place a wide range of demand-management and system-management strategies. Many measures are proposed to achieve a shift away from use of personal motor vehicles towards greater use of transit, carpooling, bicycling, and walking. Taxis and car-sharing also offer opportunities to reduce auto ownership and dependence.

What I really like about the Arlington County Master Transportation Plan is how it is logically and internally consistent. The provisions of each element of the plan (for the most part, they couldn't be absolutely perfect in the section on Parking and Curbside Management because residential parking is the third rail of local politics) "cascade" from the Goals and Policies of the Plan, and each section is internally consistent in and of itself, and with the overarching vision, goals, policies, and strategies.

So what that means is that Arlington County chooses to maximize the throughput of people rather than vehicles. Hence, it means that it is logical for the County to oppose the creation of HOT Lanes as a transportation strategy that is counter to their policies of maximizing people throughput rather than vehicles that typically carry only one person.

It is the Post editorial page that is out of line, not Arlington County.

BP

I do try to only deal with urban and community building issues in the blog. Transportation policy covers a wide range though, but debacles in the Gulf of Mexico with a failed drilling platform are normally out of the scope of the blog.

Since the coverage, yes I have been struck by the clear evidence of massive management failures at the rig, at "satisficing" behavior to allegedly save money and time, which led to the tragic outcome of dead workers and a defiled Gulf of Mexico. And since I write about management failures all the time albeit mostly of municipalities, it's in keeping with the content.

BUT, what I think is far more interesting is what it communicates about BP's pattern of behavior, their focus on brand identity and marketing, while failing to "walk the talk."

This is related to urbanism because many gas stations are in cities. And actually, my "reboot" as a citizen hyper involved at the local level was simultaneous to dealing with BP on their desires to expand a gas station at 3rd and H Streets NE.

In some respects, you could argue that their actions helped spark the H Street renaissance, because for the first time in many years, residents north of H Street and south of H Street came together to deal with a common foe. And that effort led some of the same residents to join in with the H Street Merchants Association on commercial district revitalization matters, which helped lead to the creation of the H Street Main Street program and got then Councilmember Sharon Ambrose to get the Office of Planning to do a strategic plan for the resuscitation of H Street.

But I was struck during the time (2000-2002) by BP's intransigence, their unwillingness to think about urban issues and integrating their facility into the urban fabric, rather than taking up a whole face of a block for a gas station.

And after a bit, I realized that running your business property like s*** can be a positive business strategy designed to drive the businesses next to you out of business, making it easier and cheaper to acquire their properties so you can in turn expand your own business.

And all this was seemingly opposite to how BP and its then Chairman , John Browne, talked about the purpose and practice of their business. I read this article, "Unleashing the Power of Learning: An Interview with British Petroleum's John Browne" in the Harvard Business Review while dealing with the gas station issue, and I was struck by how the firm acted completely opposite to how they said they did.

Article access must be paid for, but here's the abstract:

John Browne believes that all companies battling it out in the global information age face a common challenge: using knowledge more effectively than their competitors do. And he is not talking only about the knowledge that resides in one's own company. "Any organization that thinks it does everything the best and that it need not learn from others is incredibly arrogant and foolish," he says. British Petroleum's chief executive, who engineered the revival of BP Exploration and Production and poised BP for spectacular growth, never accepts that something can't be done and is always asking if there is a better way and if someone might have a better idea. Under his leadership, BP is doing the same. And no matter where knowledge comes from, Browne says, the key to reaping a big return is to leverage that knowledge by replicating it throughout the organization so that each unit is not learning in isolation.

I can't think of many companies where the reality is so out of sorts with their rhetoric. So I don't have too much sympathy for all the Brits upset with the U.S. "attitude" about the company. BP has problems with the iron law of oligarchy too, and big time.

Changing the logo doesn't necessarily change the company.

When the union label may be terrifying: transit edition

I don't favor union bashing--my problem with unions is the same problem I have with any large organization, the problem that Robert Michels describes in the classic text in political science, Political Parties, which argues (according to Wikipedia) that:

all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop into oligarchies. The reasons for this are the technical indispensability of leadership, the tendency of the leaders to organize themselves and to consolidate their interests; the gratitude of the led towards the leaders, and the general immobility and passivity of the masses.

What this means mostly is that the organization becomes internally and self-focused. In the case of organizations like transit systems, it sets up a management vs. labor dialectic that boxes out the riders, the customers of the service.

While I don't know the details of the decisions--riders aren't "parties" we don't have standing concerning personnel matters--I find it very troubling that WMATA has to rehire two bus drivers it fired. See "Bus drivers fired for misconduct return to Metro" from the Examiner.

I can understand the decision, maybe, with regard to the bus driver in the accident that killed someone. Maybe it wasn't his fault--even though the investigation said it likely was. I didn't read the accident report, maybe there are mitigating circumstances. But I can't see any justification for rehiring a bus driver who got out of his bus, assaulted someone -- "because I thought it was funny" -- and then continued on his merry way.

I don't see how such behavior should be supported by the transit workers union or an arbitrator.

Aren't bus drivers really working for the riders?

Who wants someone like that driving me around?

From the article:

"Neither of these incidents should have ever happened," Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said. The agency stands behind its decisions to fire the drivers, but Farbstein said Metro does not believe it has legal grounds to overturn the arbitrators' rulings.

Still, the agency and the union are at odds over whether the driver involved in the deadly wreck should be allowed to return behind the wheel. The union is fighting for him to get his job back, as specified in the binding arbitration ruling.

"The decision was very definitive," said Jackie Jeter, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689. "The authority does not have authority to do whatever they want to do."

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That being said, I think that the job of being a bus driver is one of the hardest jobs out there. I wouldn't be good at it. The driver has to deal with riders who can be a problem, as well as a lot of traffic, and the need to move in and out of traffic constantly.

Constant training is necessary sure. But so is constant vigilance. People who are a threat to others shouldn't have the job.

Sun columnist favors the Idaho Stop for bicyclists

Too much Baltimore/Maryland stuff this morning, but hey, these days (at least through the end of the month), that's where I am working...

On Monday, the Baltimore Sun's transportation columnist, Michael Dresser, wrote about bicycling (three of his last five Monday columns have been on bicycling), coming out in favor of the Idaho Stop, in "Given new protection, bicyclists should protect selves."

I've written about the Idaho Stop before. It allows bicyclists to treat stop signs and red lights as yields PROVIDED THAT THERE IS NO ONCOMING TRAFFIC (OR THAT THERE ARE SIGNIFICANT GAPS IN TRAFFIC ALLOWING FOR SAFE PASSAGE).

He doesn't mention my #1 reason to favor the Idaho Stop--it allows bicyclists to spend more time separated from cars. That is the key to defensive cycling in mixed traffic situations.

Now Washcycle might not like that in the column Dresser also calls for bicyclists to wear helmets. And Dresser also suggests that bicyclists should have to have a driver's license endorsement (something to which I am not opposed).

All in all, it's a nice column to see.

(The other columns were on electric bikes, "Electric bike may be good fit for middle-aged wannabe cyclists," which I am starting to see as an option for people who would have longer commutes, and it might make the difference between their cycling to work vs. driving, and Maryland's new 3 foot passing law, "Laws give pedal power to the people.")

Note that working as a bicycle and pedestrian planner, I am not in a position to ever advocate for the Idaho Stop during working hours...

Maryland's Republican candidate for Governor says no to light rail

Regardless of issues about the Red Line in Baltimore (advocates want heavy rail, which I understand in terms of extending the subway network there, but not in terms of the cost given the likely level of ridership--heavy rail is cost effective when you have multiple hours with 20,000+ riders/hour) in terms of the type of vehicle (heavy vs. light rail vs. streetcar) and alignment, Robert Ehrlich proves the point that with regard to transit anyway, who you elect makes a big difference.

Michael Dresser of the Sun reports, in "Ehrlich's transit stand risks backlash: Position irks business but could attract light rail foes," about how Ehrlich's position on developing the Purple Line in the suburban Maryland counties of Montgomery and Prince George's, and the Red Line in Baltimore City and Baltimore County, may be at odds with the traditional business leadership types who would normally prefer a "big business" candidate like Ehrlich.

From the article:

Taking a hard-line stand against proposed light rail projects in Baltimore and the Washington suburbs, former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. might have driven a wedge between himself and business leaders in regions where he needs to collect votes.

At a recent round table in Montgomery County, Ehrlich said he would scuttle Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley's plans for light rail on Baltimore's Red Line and Washington's suburban Purple Line — possibly but not necessarily replacing them with dedicated bus lanes.

The Republican's move could endear him to transit skeptics and core constituencies in rural and outer suburban Maryland who use roads heavily and who give little thought to bus and rail systems.

But he runs the risk of alienating traditionally Republican-friendly business leaders who favor both projects, largely because they believe light rail would spur development and job growth along the lines.

In particular, Ehrlich's opposition to the Purple Line plan has put him at odds with Washington-area business groups who were among his staunchest allies in the fight to build the Intercounty Connector, a cause that helped propel him to victory in 2002.

Maryland Transit Administrator spends 2 hours with the Transit Riders Action Coalition

See the write up of the session in a blog entry, "MTA chief outlines priorities," by Michael Dresser of the Baltimore Sun, as well as the piece in Baltimore Brew, "MTA chief Ralign Wells takes tough questions from transit riders."

Really good article on tourism marketing

Was in last week's Baltimore City Paper, "Happy?: Baltimore's latest tourism campaign rekindles the city's ongoing branding issues."

One of the best I've read in the popular press, the story covers the topic very thoroughly in a limited amount of space and makes an interesting distinction about how destination marketing organizations have to market to outside audiences, but the inside audience is the most judgmental about the campaigns.

Prnewsfoto/Visit Baltimore, Diane Bondareff

More than 250 people set a new world record for the largest human smiley face in the Inner Harbor May 13 to help launch visit Baltimore's "Find Your Happy Place" campaign.

Speaking of the Room & Board store and not knowing how the retail industry works

The Post covered the opening in a brief in the Monday business section, "Home furnishings retailer Room & Board opens D.C. store." From the article:

Room & Board will likely be a cheaper alternative on a corridor known for small, independent furniture sellers, and the chain is projecting $16 to $18 million in annual sales. But can it outlast the sluggish housing market better than West Elm?

The Post's opining misses the point about West Elm vs. R&B. The array of items offered is completely different. R&B is a furniture company. West Elm is a lifestyle store. WE was located downtown, as a lonely lifestyle outpost with a few pieces of furniture--except for the Macy's downtown store furniture department (which I have bought furniture from, when it was Hecht's and as a Macy's).

Room & Board is a furniture company that makes a lot of its own products, therefore has a higher profit margin, plus it is part of a broader but still developing commercial district with other other companion stores, thereby drawing on a larger retail trade area.

Plus as a national firm with only one location in the DC region and a deep mailing list, it will draw people to this store on a scale that West Elm cannot, because R&B is exclusive (like how Ikea was when they had only a handful of stores in the entire United States, and one was in the Potomac Mills Mall--remember?).

Finally, West Elm didn't sell much furniture. R&B will sell a lot. And each piece costs a relatively decent chunk of change. Maybe they will sell fewer plates and knick knacks, but each $2,000+ table or couch has a much higher value to the store in terms of gross sales and net revenue.

According to the Post article, the company expects the DC location of Room & Board to generate $16 to $18 million/year in gross revenue. Sure the DC Home Depot grosses between $60 million and $70 million/year, but they have to have much more space, carry and sell a lot more items, and have way more staff in order to do it...

Also see this past blog entry on the failure of West Elm, "West Elm is closing their downtown DC store."

14th Street NW as a retail district

Before image of Room & Board building from Apartment Therapy. Note that the store is amazing, really well laid out, with the addition of a fourth floor balcony, also promoting the store's furniture options, as well as the use of the ground floor side yard as a patio, again promoting their offerings.

With the opening of the new Room & Board furniture/lifestyle store at 14th and T Streets NW over the weekend, I took the opportunity to review a bit, the state of retail and entertainment from P Street to T Street on 14th Street.

There have been ups and downs of course. Some businesses have failed. Not all of the condominium projects are successful (their construction plans didn't beat the real estate market downturn), and 14th and U, what in commercial real estate is called the 100% intersection or the "Main and Main" location, continues to dominated by a government office building that sucks the life out of a key corner.

Recently there has been a lot of angst about the role of restaurants, what an "arts district" is, etc., which I have written about here, "Should a restaurant or bar or coffee shop be considered an arts-related business as a matter of course?," plus the article from a couple years ago, "Other 14th Street NW Galleries Could Close in Wake of G Fine Art" in the Post.

I'm thinking that with the addition of Room & Board, a national furniture mail order company with a limited number of stores, fewer than 15 around the country, that the other lifestyle stores that have been developing along the corridor (Muleh, Home Rule, etc.) along with the other limited edition chain furniture/lifestyle store, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, along with the key anchor, Whole Foods Market on P Street, which has helped to center that block around lifestyle (Lululemon), mostly restaurants (Logan Tavern, etc.) drawing people out onto the corridor from a larger retail trade area, that the corridor, at least from P to T, can take on a more "design district" orientation.

But it's going to take awhile before the district fills in between say Rhode Island and T Streets. Jumping from T to U Street is going to take a long time, requiring a lot of new construction. The U to V block will be tough too, although beyond that, with Busboys & Poet and Eatonville, things are strengthening.

Not an art orientation, at least in terms of "arts as production" galleries, etc., although arts and entertainment as by presenting institutions such as the Studio Theatre, the Black Cat music venue, the Source Theatre building, along with other night time establishments will continue to bring people out to the corridor at night.

Note that Studio Theatre started the revitalization process for the corridor in 1978. With the opening of Room & Board in 2010, you can see that commercial district revitalization is rarely an immediate success, it is a long term process with many bumps in the road.

There was opposition to the opening of the R&B store on the part of some, because it is a chain. It took me some time to learn and appreciate, but the best "independent" commercial districts are a mix of mostly independent retailers, along with some chains, up to 20% or so.

The chain stores are anchors, they do advertising, they draw patrons to the corridor who in turn shop in other stores, they set a high bar for customer service and identity which in turn shapes the corridor as a professionally run commercial district with high standards.

These blog entries (also mentioned in the previous entry) discuss the necessity of independent retailers setting and meeting high expectations through robust, complete concepts and identity systems.

- Why ask why? Because (discusses the systems of individual businesses as well as the trends impacting commercial districts)

- Indepependent retail businesses can succeed and thrive

This blog entry, ""The "soft side" of commercial district competition,"discusses people's perceptions of commercial districts and how too often, at least in DC, independent retailers and commercial districts don't meet what we might consider minimum standards of operations, which of course is the primary reason (other than high rents, see "Once again, when you ask the wrong question, parking is always the answer," Cleveland Park Retail: My off-hand evaluation, the rents are too high" and "Commercial retail rents #2" about Cleveland Park) that the stores and the commercial districts continue to languish.

From the soft side blog entry:

Few people are going to patronize the business except as a reflection of "community support" or having no other options. (The issue is to work to get the facade improved... not to discourage the business from improving, but in the current condition this business is unlikely to generate "catalytic" improvement benefits that contribute to the commercial district as a whole.)

Ohio Restaurant, 1300 block H Street NE, Washington, DC. Photo by Elise Bernard.

This is why I talk about "soft aspects" in relation to the Reilly Law of Retail Gravitation:

(1) the quality and condition of the buildings;
(2) the cleanliness of the street and sidewalks;
(3) the condition of the street furniture, treeboxes and other aspects of the physical environment;
(4) the signage and windows of the businesses;
(5) the quality and organization of the store interiors.

Each influences whether or not people will choose to shop in your commercial district, or if they will merely continue to shop elsewhere because you provide no compelling reason for them to change their minds, attitudes, habits, and comfortability.

These factors plus the number and quality of stores and the issue of how to get there are the primary considerations influencing people's decisions about where to shop, eat, or play...
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For the first time in years, biking down 14th Street NW last Sunday (after having picked up a couple of items at Whole Foods, but not cilantro for $1.99/bunch), I felt like at last, here is a commercial district that has a preponderance of independently owned stores all with high quality production values, complete identity systems, that are well merchandised and well run.

I'm not counting Georgetown because most of the independent stores don't meet these standards, but all the chain stores there do, and there are many from funky Urban Outfitters to the Gap and Polo, and they are really what drives patronage of that commercial district in terms of the retail offer. (The night time establishments have a different market position.)

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Principles for creating complete concepts/identity systems for retail businesses*
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• Understand the needs, preferences, habits, and aspirations of the target audience.
• Good design sells. It is a competitive advantage. Design is systems and processes, not just graphics.
• A disciplined, coherent approach leads to a unified and powerful brand presence.
• Create a distinct position and complete identity for your store/concept.
• Experience and study the competition and learn from their successes and failures.
• Understand traffic flow, the volume of business, and economic considerations of your location.
• The storefront is a mass communications medium that works 24/7 and can attract new customers, influence purchasing decisions, and increase sales.
• Logo and signage expresses the brand and builds on understanding the needs and habits of users in the environment.
• Exterior signage must consider both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
• Design an interior space that is sustainable, durable, easy to maintain and clean, and is energy efficient.
• Consider the dimensions of space: visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and thermal.
• Understand the pyschological effect of light and lighting sources.
• Consider the needs of handicapped customers and those of different ages.
• The shelf is the most competitive marketing environment that exists.
• Align merchandising strategies with displays, advertising, and sales strategies.
• Create an experience and environment that makes it easy for customers to buy, and that inspires them to come back again and again.
• Create an environment that helps the sales force sell and makes it easy to complete a transaction.
• Align the quality and speed of service with the experience of the environment.
• Benchmark the quality and speed of service against the competition.
• Consider all operational needs so that the store delivers on the brand promise.
• Anticipate future growth. Measure, evaluate, change. Constantly ask: is the message clear?; is the content accessible?; is the experience positive?

* This table was built from the section on "creating touchpoints" from Designing Brand Identity (second edition) by Alina Wheeler

Over retailed

Art Voice, the alternative newsweekly for the Buffalo, NY region, has an interesting article on trends in retail, which really is about trends in the national market, and big box/chain retail. See "Too many stores."

My response:

In the work I've done in neighborhood and commercial district revitalization in DC and elsewhere over the past 10 years, I've come to believe that in the context of comprehensive/master plans, that there is a difference between "economic development" and "building a local economy."

In terms of retail this is particularly tricky as over the last 50 years, the retail sector has reorganized from local or regional retailers to a system of national firms, locating in centers owned by regional and national firms, who in turn negotiate national agreements. But reputable research shows that the economic multiplier impact of local businesses can be significantly higher than for chain businesses--about 15 cents/$ spent in a chain store recirculates locally, why the number can be as much as 55 cents/$ spent in a locally owned business.

But the U.S. has far more retail space per capita than exists in Europe or Canada.

The problem with the Main Street Approach to neighborhood commercial district revitalization is that it lacks the organized structure for developing and supporting sustainable development and renewal of independent retail.

I was working with another consultant in trying to develop a more structured approach and model for this, but we didn't end up working with any clients long enough to be able to set up and test the approach. The Historic Los Angeles Downtown Retail Initiative and the independent retail recruitment process for the Second Street development in Austin, Texas come closest to how I believe it should be done.

Basically I think that a structured system and process for developing and supporting retail entrepreneurship needs to be created. Generally the scale on which it needs to operate is larger than any one commercial district. You need to have a training system in place for potential retailers, while at the same time working with property owners to maintain an active inventory of available space, while also developing relationships with banks and angel investors for financing. So you create potential entrepreneurs who have fully developed concepts (see the blog entries below for more details about this concept) who you are able to link with space and financing when opportunities/vacancies arise.

The other problem is how people shop. Retail goods are commonly categorized as convenience goods (food etc.), specialty goods (such as apparel), and shopping goods (high cost items bought infrequently, involving significant advanced research.

It's really hard for specialty goods and shopping goods sellers to be successful at the level of neighborhood commercial districts, except when the district as a whole is able to develop particular categories as niches that serve larger than normal retail trade areas. (The basic metric is that you need about 30,000 to 40,000 people to support 50,000 s.f. of retail space.)

The way that Catonsville in Baltimore County has a cluster of music shops is one example. How Hampden in Baltimore City has repositioned to funky specialty and independent retail is another. (In my opinion, Hampden, Carytown in Richmond, and Frederick have the best primarily independent retail districts in the DC-MD-VA region.)

So yes, in short, we have too much available retail space for what consumer demand can realistically support.

Blog entries:

- Why ask why? Because (discusses the systems of individual businesses as well as the trends impacting commercial districts)

- Indepependent retail businesses can succeed and thrive

While it is an overview plan, the commercial district revitalization framework plan I did for Cambridge, Maryland touches on these and related issues in a significant fashion, and outlines the approach that I have learned with regard to positioning local commercial districts for opportunity within the regional retail landscape.

Brookings report on metropolitan trends

The title of the article from Smart Planet, "Brookings: five waves of change will reshape US cities in the 2010s," says "cities" but the report is really about metropolitan areas as a whole.

The report: The State of Metropolitan America

The trends:

Growth and outward expansion: “Between 2000 and 2009, [metro areas] grew by a combined 10.5 percent, versus 5.8 percent growth in the rest of the country. But they continued to spread out, too, as their less developed, outer areas grew at more than three times the rate of their cities and inner suburbs.”

Population diversification: “The United States population is today one-third nonwhite, and those groups accounted for 83 percent of national population growth from 2000 to 2008. Immigration continues to fuel our growth, too, and now nearly one-quarter of U.S. children have at least one immigrant parent…. Large metropolitan areas will get there first, as their under-18 population had already reached majority non-white status by 2008.”

Aging of the population: “Large metro areas are in some ways aging faster than the rest of the nation, experiencing a 45 percent increase in their 55-to-64 year-old population from 2000 to 2008. As a result, their single-person households are growing more rapidly as well, especially in suburban communities that were not designed with these populations in mind.”

Uneven higher educational attainment: “More than one-third of U.S. adults held a post-secondary degree in 2008, up from one-quarter in 1990, helping to propel our economic growth. But younger adults, especially in large metro areas, are not registering the same high levels of degree attainment as their predecessors. Moreover, the African American and Hispanic groups projected to make up a growing share of our future workforce now lag their white and Asian counterparts in large metro areas on bachelor’s degree attainment by more than 20 percentage points.”

Income polarization: “By 2008 high-wage workers in large metro areas out-earned their low-wage counterparts by a ratio of more than five to one, and the number of their residents living in poverty had risen 15 percent since 2000.”

Two good articles in Mass Transit Magazine

1. Reducing Risk By Michael Conlon and Brenda Himrich of the Minneapolis Metro Transit system, is about a safety campaign designed to reduce distracted driving on the part of bus drivers in their bus service.

When the system discovered that a bus driver was using a cell phone when getting into an accident with a bicyclist, they decided to develop an integrated campaign using internal media, training, and evaluation systems to reduce distracted driving--and accidents--by drivers. The media also ended up being repurposed as part of external communications programs.

The reason I find this article important is all the myriad of problems with safety that have been experienced over the past year with the WMATA system, and the need to develop an integrated and thorough response.

The Minneapolis transit system also quantified the financial benefits from accident reduction (as much as $30,000 for each accident eliminated). In the DC region it would be more, because so many of the accidents end up generating large settlements or legal awards.

2. Routing Culture By Tim Newcomb, is about transit system maps, objectives, communicating information, and schematic vs. geographic maps. From reading the comments, most of the map designers seem to be less focused on communicating broader information to occasional users.

Limited public input into review of WMATA

Smoke filled room
Originally uploaded by rllayman

(Smoke filled room image from the Internet.)

From email:

COG Includes Business Advocates, Excludes Rider Advocates on Metro Task Force

Transit rider advocates sent the following letter to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, as the task force on Metro governance appointed by the Board of Trade and COG holds its first meeting at 8:30 this morning.
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Dear Chairman Brown and members of the COG Board of Directors:

We are disappointed by your decision to not include transit rider advocates on the WMATA Governance Commission, initiated by the Greater Washington Board of Trade (BOT) and co-sponsored by the Council of Governments (COG).

During the June 9th COG meeting, opposition to making the Commission inclusive of rider advocates was based on the false notion that no representatives of any advocacy group had yet been appointed to the task force. The BOT has a network of dedicated, thoughtful people. However, as a letter from the BOT's president and chair published on its website makes clear, "regional advocacy" is part of the organization's mission. The BOT primarily represents large businesses with heavy financial resources and influence and also provides the most significant, recognized endorsements of major candidates including Governors, Mayors and County Executives and Chairs.

There is cause for concern that the Board of Trade has specific intentions from the outset: to give the elected chief executives of Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia the sole authority to appoint members of the WMATA Board of Directors. It is important that the Commission give thorough, objective consideration to different options to improve governance.

By stripping the authority from local elected officials in our region to govern WMATA, the WMATA Board would become less accountable to the public, much like the situation with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Historically, WMATA Board members from Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia consistently have been more accessible and responsive to the public than those appointed by the State of Maryland. Case in point: the varying responses to public input during the recent funding crisis. There is something to be said for elected officials who are closer to the people being accustomed to the responsibility of being accessible to the public.

COG failed to include advocates who have been dedicated on behalf of Metro riders to secure more funding, improve service, and yes, increase Metro accountability. Governance at WMATA is a legitimate issue to examine, though the urgent need is to secure stable and sufficient funding to provide safe, reliable and efficient service for riders. For a panel that purportedly will focus on how to improve governance and accountability at WMATA, the process by which this task force has been set up does not help promote public confidence in COG's openness or inclusiveness.

We also wish to record another concern about the process: our letter, and a similar one from at least one other group, were not included in the packet of information provided to the COG Board of Directors, even while an unrelated letter from business groups about the I-95/395 HOT lanes was included. Therefore, our original letter - dated May 25, 2010 - was not available for your consideration in the official record.

Going forward, we hope for robust, inclusive and meaningful public participation throughout the process.

Sincerely,

Ben Ross, Action Committee for Transit
Stewart Schwartz, Coalition for Smarter Growth
David Alpert, Greater Greater Washington
Roger Diedrich, Virginia Chapter, Sierra Club

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See the article, "City as a Growth Machine" by Molotch to better understand how groups like the Greater Washington Board of Trade function and what their agenda is.

See the past blog entry "St. Louis regional transit planning process as a model for what needs to be done in the DC Metropolitan region" for my point that a wide-ranging public process, not a closed process limited to the traditional political and economic elite, is necessary within the DC region to restore the role of and trust in public transit, specifically with WMATA.

Reselling college student detritus: Johns Hopkins University

Reselling college student detritus: Johns Hopkins University
Originally uploaded by rllayman

More than 25 years ago, at the University of Michigan, I suggested that the residential housing department work it out with Goodwill and/or Salvation Army to put donation "dumpsters" out for all the good quality reusable stuff that students toss at the end of the year, because they don't want to take it home, or store it over the summer.

I guess that GWU is doing something like that, or I seem to recall reading about it last year.

At Johns Hopkins University, they collect such materials and have a yard sale, and the proceeds go to support neighborhood organizations.

Seems like a good idea to me.

The poster says that they divert more than 90 container loads of stuff from the waste stream.

Anti-oil/BP protest, Takoma DC

Anti-oil/BP protest, Takoma DC
Originally uploaded by rllayman

normally this would happen in Takoma Park, which is more "radical" than we are in DC, but I guess there wasn't a good place with a lot of visibility.

Having to do a public event in the side parking lot next to a liquor store demonstrates the utility of having pocket parks and squares in DC neighborhoods (like the new plaza in Columbia Heights).

There is a park across the street, but it isn't designed to support multiple and different types of uses, plus its design walls it off from the street, and supports disorder--not to mention its location on Blair Road during rush hour makes it very noisy.

Advocacy poster on the Purple Line and the University of Maryland campus

Advocacy poster on the Purple Line and the University of Maryland campus
Originally uploaded by rllayman

There are a couple of errors in this poster, because the student designer who did it needed a bit more guidance, but all in all I would call the final product a stand out effort by a member of the Youth Design Team at Rockville's VisArts visual arts education nonprofit program located in the Rockville Town Center in Montgomery County.

(The facility is interesting in another way. It's an example of co-locating public and nonprofit and commercial facilities in a mixed use project. The Rockville branch of the public library is located there as well, in addition to residential and other commercial components.)

The high-school and college students on the team make web sites and logos, print 1-color T-shirts, and produce other design work for local nonprofits and small businesses.
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The problems with the poster...

Technically...

1. It's not METRO, at least not yet. The planning and construction will be by the Maryland Transit Administration. Likely after it is constructed, WMATA will operate it, and at the very least, there will be a combined fare system, but because of WMATA's current problems, WMATA isn't in the position of being able to take this on, at least officially, right now.

2. It's not going to be heavy rail/subway, but light rail. Therefore, the iconic image of the subway car, while very strong, is not exactly accurate.

In the right top corner of the MTA webpage for the project
is an image of the kind of transit vehicles that MTA is considering, which are not the subway vehicles used by WMATA.

Still, I like the idea. Graphic support of evident advocacy needs!

Action Committee for Transit Candidate Questionnaire

Pro-Purple Line yard sign at Philadelphia Ave. & Fenton Street
Originally uploaded by rllayman

It might be a bit premature to list this, because candidates haven't had a chance to respond to this, but Montgomery County's Action Committee for Transit has released three candidate questionnaires for this election cycle:

County Council and County Executive Candidates

Candidates for State legislature

Candidates for U.S. House and U.S. Senate

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I would have included a separate questionnaire for Governor. Even though we know how the respective candidates support or don't support transit, it's important to ask the questions and put them on the record.

Similarly, while ACT of course is a transit organization, it would have been good to see questions on the survey form concerning complete streets, maybe biking and pedestrian issues, and some questions on Growth Policy and additional questions on how Montgomery County can transition from thinking of itself as a suburban, auto-dominated place, to a community more concerned about livability and compact development.

(See on the latter, "Council wrestles with traffic growth puzzle" from the Gazette.)

See, for me, these questionnaires are also exercises in emphasizing the importance of these issues, and demonstrating that there is a constituency that is committed and concerned about it.

Revenues from and costs serving local households: DC version

Greater Greater Washington has a post, "Being outside a state has its advantages," about the advantages of DC being not part of a state. For what it's worth, I've made this same point for about 9 years.

There are two issues.

Income Tax Revenue

It's all about the income tax revenue stream that is made available to the locality. I don't know how it works in Virginia, but in Maryland, about 1/2 of the state income tax revenue is returned to the local jurisdictions. However, this money is subject to recission if the state has financial issues, as it does in the current economic situation.

Similarly, localities in Maryland that are incorporated work out a tax reimbursement from the County, for services that citizens pay for in the County property tax, but end up being provided by the City/Town. Again, localities can lose out on this reimbursement during tough economic times, as Takoma Park has learned (see "Takoma Park council considers sharing pain of budget shortfalls‎" from the Gazette).

DC doesn't have to worry about that. It keeps all that it earns. Of course, when tax revenues fall, or when demands on public coffers keep rising, it has the same budget issues faced by other jurisdictions.

Cost to a municipality of serving households

Typically, it is said that a single family house costs $1.20/dollar of tax revenue and that a multiunit residence costs 80 cents/dollar of tax revenue to serve, and commercial property something like 55 cents/dollar of tax revenue to serve.

A house worth about $400,000, after the homestead exemption, has a property tax liability to the homeowner of between $3,000 and $3,500. That is the revenue from property tax. Now the city generates about 18% of total property tax revenues from the downtown central business district, and a goodly portion of the residential property tax comes from Ward 3, which has the highest property values of any section of the city.

The issue is what is the cost and revenue number to serve different types of households when you factor in income tax collections? I haven't seen this calculation done for DC and we need to do it.

What bugs me in terms of the redistributive justice advocates is that they rail against resident attraction programs and focusing on attracting childless families to the city, without acknowledging that (1) the city needs revenue to pay for all the programs they want, and (2) each household with children generates far more financial demand on the system than they ever pay in taxes, especially if more than one child needs to be educated.

The cost to educate one non-disabled children per year is upwards of $15,000. (The cost to educate one disabled child for one year can be as much as $80,000.) Given that the number of households with children is about 20% of the total, you can see that we need many tax paying childless households in order to pay for the cost of educating each child.

Similarly, we need more revenues to help cover the social and human services costs of households that draw more services.

That's one of the reasons I support intensification of land use where it can be supported, not just because walkable, compact places have enough people for neighborhoods to flourish, with successful local commercial districts, safer streets, more people to participate in civic and community functions, to serve as "eyes on the street" contributing to safer neighborhoods, and density and demand so that public transit can run more frequently.

We need more tax paying residents (income, sales, property) so that all of the various demands and interests of a "progressive urban political and social agenda" can be accomplished in a manner that doesn't bankrupt the city.

Theoretical advantage of unitary government and efficiency

Another point about unitary local government is that in theory it should be more efficient, not less efficient, in that you don't have overlapping local, county, and state agencies performing part of the responsibilities.

For example, a resident of the City of Takoma Park is paying money to the state, county, and city, and the State Highway Administration takes care of some roads (like 401 - East-West Highway/Philadelphia Road), and the City takes care of the rest. But the City resident is paying Montgomery County also for this, and maybe the County isn't reimbursing all of the money back to the City of Takoma Park. Note that because of the city and the county tax, residential property taxes in incorporated communities in Montgomery and Prince George's County are significantly higher than they are in DC.

So part of the city's complaints about having to perform state responsibilities is a chimera, except that the city is not always performing more efficiently.

One thing too that I rue is the lack of high performance standards/mandates that can come down from a state government in the planning realm.

For example, most states mandate particular local planning requirements. So in Maryland, counties have to have environmental plans with strong recycling requirements, a master plan, a growth plan, a parks and recreation plan, etc. In DC, we don't do a lot of this. New York City has been doing composting for years, in response to a state mandate to reduce their waste stream. Etc.

Without having strong requirements, the city loses, in my opinion, as a result.