"Temporary" uses as a way to foil development: Bruce Monroe Elementary School site, DC | from school to park to housing

Washington City Paper photo.

Like how the Capital Crescent Trail in Montgomery County--created from a railroad spur once delivering coal to a power plant in Georgetown DC, and was always intended for rail service once it was purchased in the late 1980s--was used as a reason to oppose the creation of the Purple Line light rail ("Purple Line opponents hope for last-minute stop to Montgomery Co. trail closure," WTOP radio, 2017), from the outset I said creating a "temporary park" on the site of the old Bruce-Monroe Elementary School--which was intended to be adaptively reused for housing--was a bad idea.

-- "Predictable outcome: people want to make a temporary park permanent as a foil to development," 2015
-- "Be careful when you create "temporary park uses" on sites slated for development, because people will end up advocating against development," 2018

According to DCist, the local courts just rejected an appeal aimed at stopping the conversion to housing ("Appeals Court Affirms Long-Awaited Development Plans At Bruce Monroe Park").  I really like how the poster mis-states the original intention for the site, and of course, positions the use as a "giveaway to developers."  From the article:

First submitted in May 2016, the original proposal for the parcel included a series of apartment buildings on the site of the old Bruce Monroe Elementary School, which was demolished in 2009; those buildings would include a roughly 90-foot tall apartment building, a 60-foot apartment building dedicated to senior housing, and eight townhomes. Those buildings would create 273 units of housing, some of which would have replaced the existing 174 units at Park Morton while it undergoes redevelopment. Some units built at the Bruce Monroe site would be affordable, while others would remain market rate. The mixed-income development will sit at the heart of a rapidly gentrifying area of D.C. that has seen average household income nearly double over the last 25 years. 

D.C.’s zoning commission approved the development plans in 2017, but soon after, a group of neighbors filed a zoning appeal to contest the approval. The group argued that the development plans don’t align with the neighborhood’s existing footprint, and that the buildings would block light and generate unsustainable traffic. The Court of Appeals initially agreed that D.C.’s zoning commission didn’t do enough independent analysis of the project’s potential impact on the neighborhood, arguing that the commission’s approval too closely matched the language used to describe the project by D.C.’s development team. The court asked D.C.’s zoning commission to address seven issues with the development, and the city has worked to respond to the court’s concerns ever since.

And this is why for profit developers are generally unwilling to authorize "temporary" uses on their properties by third parties, because it can help build opposition to the project overall.

Many years ago Dan Malouff, a planner, founder of the website BeyondDC, made the apt observation that people against development will always advocate for parks instead.  This is another example.