Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Wanted: A comprehensive plan for the "Anacostia River East" corridor

Greater Hill East, Washington, DC

Will H. commented in my earlier post on the proposed Redskins training facility, "Appropriate development proximate to subway stations: Sports edition," suggesting the Pepco site on Benning Road, the location of the now closed electric power generation site, as an alternative.

I had a kind of rambling response in the comment thread. What I was trying to say is that (1) I don't think that a professional football team's minimally used practice facility is a desirable use for DC, especially in potentially high-value well-connected locations; (2) but rather than me pronouncing what type of development should go where, more importantly, clearly, all this talk about various sites and various proposals is an indication that a much more serious and wide-ranging planning process is necessary for the Anacostia River corridor between Pennsylvania Avenue (the Hill East area) and "New York Avenue".

The Problem

The map above shows that corridor, with various "separate" areas indicated that should be included in a more "comprehensive" planning effort.

Outside of the part that abuts Capitol Hill, the so-called "Capitol Riverfront" business improvement district, the Anacostia River isn't seen as the kind of incredible civic asset that it ought to be, considering how many communities make recapturing river and waterfront assets a fundamental element of revitalization planning. It's time to capture the opportunity of the Anacostia River beyond the area of the Washington Nationals stadium.
Page from the Fall River plan, Massachusetts Urban River Visions program
Page from the Fall River plan, Massachusetts Urban River Visions program.

Note that a good example of such a planning effort is the Massachusetts Urban River Visions project, not that DC didn't get started with the Anacostia Waterfront revitalization program, late in the tenure of Mayor Williams. I'd argue that the planning didn't go far enough.

-------
Update: The Housing Complex blog of the Washington City Paper made a similar point about Anacostia River planning in an entry last year, "A Design Contest for the Anacostia Waterfront," which called attention to a new comprehensive river planning initiative in Minneapolis, likely sparking in part by the Mississippi River National Recreation Area and planning around it, which has tended to focus on St. Paul and its Riverfront Corporation.
-------

(Note that the links in the right sidebar under "Parks, Waterfronts, & Rivers Planning" list other good resources.) Also see the Maryland state heritage area, the Maryland Milestones program (formerly called the Anacostia Trails Heritage Area) in Prince George's County, as a heritage and revitalization planning program that can be leveraged and linked to as well.
Anacostia Trails Heritage Area wayfinding sign, College Park Metro
A heritage and wayfinding interpretation sign for the "Maryland Milestones" area, located at the College Park Metro Station.

I've indicated these areas as needing to be components in such a plan, but you can extend this idea further east and include the Minnesota Avenue corridor and the proposed revitalization of the Skyland Shopping Center as well.

The red line is the streetcar line, the blue line is the Anacostia River, and the black line is a proposed continuation of Massachusetts Avenue across the Anacostia River.

Land Use

A. The Hill East area -- which frankly has already been planned. It's just Mayor Gray, CM Jack Evans, and others want to give half the land to the Washington Redskins, in hopes they'll relocate their stadium--used fewer than 20 times each year--back to DC. See "Unstrategy for Economic Development in DC."
Reservation 13 Master Plan diagram
Original diagram from the Reservation 13 Master Plan.

B. The RFK Stadium area. This area is a dump. It should be re-planned and re-used. People say "DC only has the privilege to use this National Park Service land as a stadium." Well, agreements can be changed.
RFK Stadium postcard
Postcard, date unknown, but before 1969 when the stadium was renamed. Note all the parking lots. Caption: D.C. Stadium located at 22nd Street, N.E. and Capitol Street Bridge. In season, the Washington Redskins and Washington Senators play home games here. Stadium features parking for 12,00 automobiles and has a seating capacity of 43,500 for baseball games and 50,000 for football games.

C. The Spingarn campus. This educational campus, with a high school, vocational education high school, junior high, and elementary school, did go through a planning exercise around 2003, conducted by the urban design studio of the University of Michigan architecture school. Of course, in the frequent changes in administration of the DC Public Schools, those plans are probably lost. One of the scenarios was to add mixed use housing development to the area, because the campus has much more space than is necessary to support all the education functions.

D. Langston Golf Course. Interest in golf is declining (witness the failure of public golf courses in Montgomery County) but the historical connections with the course and African-Americans mean that the course likely will remain in use. Still, it can probably be improved.

E. The former Pepco power generating plant. It's big, it's mostly empty. It's an opportunity, as Geoff Hatchard pointed out in this GGW post, "Pepco Benning Road site is perfect for the NFL or FBI," even if I think that neither of his proposed uses is "perfect" for that site.

The Dominion Energy power plant next to Alexandria is being decommissioned and the site will be adaptively reused. Why not the same for the site in DC--granted there will be big remediation issues, but if they can build housing on the site of a former chromium plant in Baltimore's harbor, they can fix this site too.

F. Hatchard's entry also pointed out that the area north of the Pepco plant is a National Park Service maintenance yard. Maybe it's being underutilized too and could be redeveloped as part of a more comprehensive plan.

G. The Mayfair Mansions-Parkside neighborhoods. This GGW piece, "Little-known Kenilworth-Parkside is neighborhood to watch," discusses a revitalization effort there.

I'd bet good money that this planning initiative will fail, because "planning" for the improvement of this comparatively small place without working to connect the efforts to a more comprehensive plan for the entire area isn't likely to succeed.

No, I'm not being mean, it's an assessment (granted I'd have to learn a lot more about the specific initiative) based on a lot of study of various revitalization projects in the city and elsewhere that have been attempted over the past few decades.

And speaking of connection, the fact that the neighborhood is isolated--blocked off by the freeway and the site of Pepco's former generating plant makes successful revitalization that much harder.

Transportation

Then there are these transportation ideas, recognizing that the area is already served by the Stadium Armory Station (blue and orange lines) and the Minnesota Avenue Station (orange line), the Anacostia River, and there are plans for a continuous walking and biking trail, the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail from the Southwest Waterfront up to the Bladensburg Waterfront Park in Prince George's County, Maryland.

W. The "H Street-Benning Road" streetcar. All of us smart growth types talk up the impact of the streetcar on H Street, but service on Benning Road allows us to reconceptualize how these large properties abutting Benning Road--the Spingarn campus, the RFK Stadium parking lots, the Pepco site--can be energized by resuse and reconnection and the streetcar can help realize this.

X. I've written before about putting in an infill subway station at Benning Road, a kind of bringing back of the proposed but defeated "Oklahoma Avenue Station" as conceptualized in the original plan for the subway system. See "Update: Bring back the Oklahoma Avenue Metro Station (but at Benning Road)." (The station was opposed by residents because it was designed to serve commuters, who would park in the otherwise empty stadium parking lots.)

Y. Maybe it's crazy, but consider putting in two stations, one to reposition the use of the RFK parking lots and Spingarn, the other for the Pepco/NPS yard/Mayfair area.

Z/1. Last September, Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago proposed a series of boathouses along the Chicago River, in order to reconnect residents to the River and to help make the River "get used." Maybe we need a similar kind of program here. See "Rahm Emanuel: City to build boathouses on Chicago River" from the Chicago Sun-Times.

Proposed boathouses, Chicago River

Veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan learn adaptive kayaking on the Chicago River
Veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan learn adaptive kayaking on the Chicago River at the 2011 Wounded Warrior Adventure Sports Camp. Friday, August 19, 2011 |Brian Jackson~Sun-Times

Z/2. While the Hill East planning process proposed building an extension of Massachusetts Avenue SE with a bridge over the Anacostia River, Capitol Hill residents forced the removal of that item from the final plan. Maybe that decision needs to be reconsidered. While I understand legitimate concerns about traffic, at the same time, more connectedness is better than less connectedness. The reason the area is derelict now is that the River acts as a barrier and without the continuation of Massachusetts Avenue, the area is further disconnected.

If you don't want Reservation 13 to be "a dumping ground," make sure it's connected to the city beyond its borders, rather than acting as an edge. (cf. Kevin Lynch, Image of the City)
lynch_image elements, Kevin Lynch, Image of the City
Page from the book, Image of the City, explaining how district "edges" serve as barriers.

Conclusion

If the DC Office of Planning can weigh in on the appropriateness of food trucks having access to the National Mall ("Food trucks could bring more flavor to National Mall" from the Washington Examiner, and of course, I agree), certainly it should step up and push a far more comprehensive planning effort for these key parcels than is capable of being envisioned by people like Vincent Gray and Jack Evans.

Anacostia Overview

Labels: , , , , , ,

13 Comments:

At 9:03 PM, Blogger Douglas Andrew Willinger said...

Z/2. While the Hill East planning process proposed building an extension of Massachusetts Avenue SE with a bridge over the Anacostia River, Capitol Hill residents forced the removal of that item from the final plan. Maybe that decision needs to be reconsidered. While I understand legitimate concerns about traffic, at the same time, more connectedness is better than less connectedness. The reason the area is derelict now is that the River acts as a barrier and without the continuation of Massachusetts Avenue, the area is further disconnected.
--

You ought to write more about that- ridiculous that such an attitude should be allowed to prevail in our nation's capital.

 
At 7:13 AM, Blogger elasmr84 said...

شركة شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة 0544543073
https://twitter.com/KhanAna
شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة

شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة 0550617882
https://vimeo.com/118906946
شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة

شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة

عندك اثاث مستعمل تريد بيعة عندك اثاثك قديم وتريد تجديد اثاث البيت محتار وتبغى شركة شراء اثاث مستعمل متخصصة فى شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة
كل ماعليك هو الاتصال بنا افضل شركة لشراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة بافضل الاسعار اتصل بنا يصلك مندوبنا ليرى الاثاث ويقوم بخبرتة بتقييم الاثاث المستعمل
لديك ويعطى كل قطعة قيمتها ويعطيك افضل سعر بالسوق وبذلك تكون قد اتممت الصفقة باتصال واحد وتاتى العمال والسيارات لنقل الاثاث المستعمل لديك
واعطائك افضل الاسعار فى اثاثك المستخدم لماذ التقوى لشراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة افضل شركة شراء اثاث مستعمل بالمدينة المنورة لانها اولى الشركات العاملة فى مجال شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة
وضواحيها متخصصون شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة وينبع شراء الاثاث المستعمل بينبع وشراء الاثاث المستعمل باملج شراء الاثاث المستعمل بمهد الذهب شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالعيص شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالعلا
متخصصون شراء جميع اواع الاثاث والعفش المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة شراء غرف النوم المستعملة باواعها شراء اطقم الكنب والسجاد والموكيت والبطرمة والمساند والمجالس شراء الاجهزة الكهربائية بانواعها المكيفات والشاشات والغسالات والثلاجات وغيرها شراء السكراب
افضل متخصصين فى تقييم وشراء وتثمين الاثاث المستعمل بلمدينة المنورة
بعونا على تويتر
https://twitter.com/KHANANA
شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة بينبع واملج والعيص وبدر والعلا وخيبر ومهد الذهب 0544543073
https://vimeo.com/118906946
تابعونا على انستقرام
https://www.instagram.com/BUY_USER_FURNITURE/
https://www.instagram.com/elasmrfifi/
تابعونا على بلوجر
http://movingtransporter.blogspot.com/2015/12/0552692371_88.html
زورو موقعنا
https://buyusermedinafurniture.wordpress.com/
https://buyusermedinafurniture.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/%D8%B4%D8%B1%D9%83%D8%A9-%D8%B4%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AB%D8%A7%D8%AB-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%B9%D9%85%D9%84-%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%86%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84/
تابعونا على تويتر شراء الاثاث المستعمل بينبع والهيئة الملكية واملج وبدر والعيص
https://twitter.com/elasmrelasmr841
تابعونا على تويتر شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة وبينبع والهيئة الملكية واملج وبدر والعيص شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالعلا ومهد الذهب وخيبر
https://www.facebook.com/sheraayanbu
تابعونا على الفيس بوك شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة
https://www.facebook.com/mostamalco
زورو موقنا شركة التقوى لشراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة
http://www.takwaclean.com/
لشراء الاثاث الجديد والمستعمل بالمدينة المنورة
على اليوتيوب تابع شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XBcC2BIkRA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDG5aPKdqlk
تابعونا على مواقعنا
شركة شراء اثاث مستعمل بالمدينة المنورة

شركة شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة

شركة شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة

شركة شراء الاثاث المستعمل بالمدينة المنورة

شركة شراء اثاث مستعمل بالمدينة المنورة

 
At 4:49 AM, Blogger Mutual Fundwala said...

This information was really amazing and informative. Thank you so much for sharing this blog with us.
Best Performing Mutual Fund

 
At 6:50 PM, Blogger شركة رواد الحرمين said...


شركه عزل فوم بالرياض

أيضاً تسبب في سقوط الطلاء وظهور التشققات، ولكن من الآن لا داعي


شركه تنظيف منازل بالدمام
للقلق لأن شركة عزل أسطح تقدم لعملائها الكرام في كافة أنحاء المملكة العربية السعودية .
افضل شركة عزل أسطح

شركه تنظيف مكيفات بالرياض
شركه عزل فوم بالدمام

 
At 2:09 AM, Anonymous buy prescription drugs online said...

Wow, what an amazing information!! Thanks so much.

 
At 11:06 AM, Blogger qoya said...

شركة تعقيم بالدمام
شركة تعقيم بالخبر
شركة تعقيم بالاحساء
الفرق بين الهيروين والكوكايين
شركة تعقيم بالقطيف
شركة تعقيم بالجبيل
شركة تعقيم بجدة
شركة تنظيف منازل بالدمام
شركة مكافحة حشرات بالدمام
شركة تعقيم بالدمام

 
At 12:12 AM, Blogger sara mohamed said...

شركة تنظيف بالجبيل
شركة نظيف بالدمام
شركة تنظيف بالقطيف

 
At 10:36 AM, Blogger achraf said...

افضل مواقع الاستضافة

 
At 8:59 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

استضافة ipage

 
At 9:24 AM, Blogger cima said...

السينما ليك
افلام اكشن
فيلم اكشن
افلام اون لاين
افلام هندية
افلام للكبار

 
At 10:24 AM, Blogger Student Loan forgiveness said...

Student Loan forgiveness , may sound too good,
but there are legitimate ways to get it through a free government program.
Student Loan forgiveness 2021 is very creazy thing you need to know.
Student loan rehabilitation &
Student access loan is something we provide.
If you need Student Loan lower contract us.
We also provide some tips aboutStudent Loan refund.

 
At 10:25 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Student Loan forgiveness , may sound too good,
but there are legitimate ways to get it through a free government program.
Student Loan forgiveness 2021 is very creazy thing you need to know.
Student loan rehabilitation &
Student access loan is something we provide.
If you need Student Loan lower contract us.
We also provide some tips aboutStudent Loan refund.

 
At 8:22 PM, Blogger achraf said...

ip location

 

Post a Comment

<< Home