* Washington City Paper's cover story this week is "
Inside Baseball", a series of vignettes about "winners and losers" around the
ballpark. It highlights neighbors such as the Market Deli at
First and L and Positive Force around the corner on New Jersey Avenue (and former neighbors such as Ken Wyban, owner of the house at
Van and N that was demolished), and talks about the "lost" views of the Capitol from many sections within the stadium. Plus there's quotes from a couple of residents of the nearby housing projects in Southwest that they've "been told" they're going to be moved out, despite vehement denials by the Housing Authority.
* A three-person arbitration board ruled unanimously that the Nationals and not the District should pay for "ancillary items at the new stadium, such as golf carts, fork lifts, and medical and office equipment," saving the city $4.2 million and keeping expenditures within the $611 million cost cap,
according to WTOP.
* Links to the avalanche of stories about the
new on-street parking plan around the ballpark are at the end of my
entry about it from yesterday. Perhaps the saturation coverage--and the advertising campaign by the team scheduled to start next week--will indeed
drill into the noggins of the public what's been said for months now: that really, truly, you're not going to find on-street parking, and traffic's going to be crazy anyway. So just
take Metro. (And read this
Dr. Gridlock blog entry and its comments to get a sense of the wide-ranging views of the public on using Metro. And have fun with the writer who discussed the "questionable neighborhood" the N22 bus goes through--you know, Capitol Hill.)
* But can we also drill into the collective conscience that there's not "only 1,200 parking spaces" at the ballpark? Yes, the ballpark footprint itself has only 1,200 spaces, but the team has contracted with close-by lots to cobble together more than 4,000 spaces. As we found out in
the Post, those didn't even all get taken by season-ticket holders and in fact may now allow for a small number of spaces to be made available on gamedays to non-season ticket holders.