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From both the Post and Bruce Johnson of Channel 9 (using my pictures again), news that the standoff about tickets to the two luxury boxes at Nationals Park for baseball games has been resolved. Attorney General Peter Nickles personally delivered the 19 tickets per game for Suite 61 to council chair Vincent Gray this morning. Says the Post: "The suite has 19 seats. With 13 council members, the chairman will create a "fair rotation," said Dawn Slonneger, Gray's chief of staff. The chairman would like to have nine more seats in the lower section so that the council has 28 tickets, the number it had to RFK stadium where the Washington Nationals played before the new stadium opened this spring, she said. Under the old system, Gray received four tickets to each game while the other 12 members got two each."
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More posts: politics, Nationals Park
 

Word has just arrived that there's a "Preview Grand Opening" this weekend for JPI's first two "Capitol Yards" apartment buildings, the brick siblings at 70 and 100 I Street (officially known as Jefferson and Axiom at Capitol Yards). There's apparently now a leasing trailer on I between Half and South Capitol (next to Wendy's perhaps? I haven't been by in a few days), and tours of the new buildings will start there, with the preview running from 10 am to 6 pm on Saturday and Sunday (the 17th and 18th). The two buildings will have almost 700 rental units available, and should have some pretty amazing views of the neighborhood and the Capitol dome (and the freeway!). (The building permits for rooftop pools on both buildings just came through within the past few days.) The official web site is at capitolyardsdc.com; you can see the history of the project (which broke ground in fall 2006) on my 70/100 I project page. These are the first residential units to open in Near Southeast since Capitol Hill Tower was completed in spring 2006, and they are the first rentals. It's expected that Onyx on First (now apartments, at least last I heard) will be opening later this year as well, adding another 266 rental units to the neighborhood.
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More posts: 70/100 I, jpi
 

* My Ballpark and Beyond column in today's District Extra of the Post includes a series of items I've posted here over the past few weeks, including the signing of sales contracts at Capitol Quarter, the return of the DOT Farmers Market, work starting/not starting on the Pattern Shop Lofts at the Yards and 1345 South Capitol, and the plans Monument Realty has for 50 M Street. (The column's just going to run every other week from now on, which will be festive given that the amount of news out of the neighborhood has dropped by about 70 percent since the ballpark opened; so my desperation for content will be even greater than before).
* Tim Lemke reports that the D.C. Building Industry Association is presenting today "a 2008 Building Achievement Award to the ballpark project team, in recognition of the accomplishment of building the stadium in under two years while facing significant budget pressure."
* A native of Chicagoland has good things to say about the ballpark, especially its "green" aspects.
* It took a while, but here's some press coverage of the May 6 high school baseball game at the ballpark between B-CC and Whitman.
* Keith Olbermann's video tours broadcast during the past two weeks of the under-construction Yankees and Mets ballparks have made me wistful.
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More posts: Nationals Park
 

City Paper's latest issue brings us "What Parking Crisis?", detailing how hard the city and the Nationals worked to plan for the expected parking catastrophe when the ballpark opened, and then surveys the nearly empty the parking lots during the recent homestand, along with the decline in use of the Nats Express and the lack of much problem with on-street parking by fans in Southwest and on Capitol Hill. (It also mentions the $550,000 a year the DC Housing Authority is getting from the Nats to lease the T, U, and W lots in the old Capper footprint, whether all the spaces are used or not.) Gregory McCarthy of the Nats is quoted as saying that it's still early in the season: "Summer is not here. The inventory of lots was based on the experience we think will unfold. The parking situation is still evolving." It also mentions last week's community meeting on the on-street parking restrictions, which I summarized here.
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More posts: parking, Nationals Park
 

May 14, 2008 2:42 PM
This tidbit is outside of my boundaries, but news is slow these days, so I'll pass along news that the city has just released its solicitation looking for a master developer for 50-plus acres in Hill East, the area along the Anacostia River near RFK and Barney Circle. Responses are due by August 1. It's expected that the redevelopment would take a decade. You can find out lots more about the solicitation and the area itself at hilleastwaterfrontdc.com. There's also a press release, but it's not online yet. Here's the Post's DC Wire blog about the plans.
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May 14, 2008 10:13 AM
Handy timing: not long after my long and wordy survey of retail space that will be coming online in Near Southeast over the next few years, the Capitol Riverfront BID has released a Retail Opportunities map, showing basically the same data in a purty graphic format, for those of you who prefer colors to prose....
 

May 13, 2008 5:33 PM
From DDOT: "The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) will be conducting operational testing of the swing span of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, a.k.a. South Capitol Street Bridge this weekend beginning on Friday, May 16th at 10pm. To conduct a full operational test of the swing span, and ensure the safety of motorists and workers, the bridge must be closed during the testing activity. The initial closure is scheduled for Friday evening, May 16th from 10pm - 5am, weather permitting. If all results return positive no further closures will be necessary. The rain date is scheduled for Saturday from 10pm - 5am. Motorists will be detoured to the 11th Street bridges. Variable Message Signs will be posted along the north and south bound routes leading to the bridge to alert drivers to alternate routes."
 

May 13, 2008 3:28 PM
From DDOT: "The Barracks Row Main Street in Washington, DC seeks an artist or artist team to design, create and install an urban mural for the SE Freeway overpass that divides the south end of 8th Street SE, now known as Barracks Row. The goal of this project is to create a unique landmark that expresses the character of the surrounding neighborhood. The large mural will help draw residents and non-residents for repeated viewings to the area and reinforce a sense of place within this community." Deadline is June 13, with the schedule calling for the work to be completed by early 2009. see the announcement for more details. The money is coming from federal highway funds, but the project itself is being run by the Barracks Row folks along with DDOT.
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More posts: 8th Street
 

May 13, 2008 9:02 AM
A raze permit has been filed for the now-vacant white one-story garage on the northwest corner of First and K, where DRI Development is planning to build the first phase of its three-building 825,000-sq-ft Square 696 office/retail project, a 300,000-sq-ft building that is expected to begin construction later this year. This garage was, until the end of February, home to both Four Star Cab and Merritt Cab, both of which relocated when their leases expired.
A peek into CoStar (link may not work right, and CoStar doesn't allow direct links to listings for plebes like me) shows lease listings for both 50 K Street and 90 K Street, each also labeled "The Plaza on K," which I imagine also is referencing the 8,000-sq-ft public plaza planned for K Street at First Street. 90 K appears to be the first building planned for the site, listed at 300,000 total square feet and 12 stories, with a "year built" date of 2010. Its sibling 50 K is listed at 285,000 sq ft and 12 stories, with no "built" date (though both listings have an April 2010 occupancy date in their detail pages). See my Square 696 page for a rendering of the project, plus a site map and photos of the block in its current incarnation.
 

May 12, 2008 1:26 PM
Responding to my inquiry about the windows that have recently been removed from the Pattern Shop Lofts building on the south side of Third and Tingey streets in The Yards, the folks at Forest City have let me know that interior demolition work is indeed underway on the World War I-era building. The existing interior walls, ceilings, plumbing, asbestos {cough} and whatnot is all being removed, in preparation for the actual construction/renovation work that is scheduled to begin later this year. Two floors will be added to the top of the building as part of its transformation into a 170-unit apartment building, which will also have 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. It's expected to be finished next year. (Its neighbor across Third Street, the Boilermaker Shop, is currently out for bid, and construction is expected to begin this summer to turn it into a 46,000-sq-ft retail space by fall 2009.)
Meanwhile, work has stopped at the 1345 South Capitol Street site (directly across from the ballpark), with the old buildings demolished and the site mostly cleared. Camden Development has been planning a 276-unit apartment building for this location, but I've been told that the company is "trying to decide what to do" with the project.
 

May 12, 2008 12:02 PM
Hmmm, perhaps it's not a go yet after all--the July 26 date for the Eagles to be in concert at Nationals Park is now removed from their July tour date list, after popping up there last week. The WashTimes had reported last week that the concert was under negotiation, but then a few days later one of JDLand's commenters noted that the date was on the band's web site. And now it's not. We shall see.
 

May 11, 2008 3:37 PM
The agenda for Monday's ANC 6D meeting has been sent around (although not posted on their web site, sigh), and it has a couple of Near Southeast items. There will be a presentation on the plans for the Waterfront Park at The Yards, in advance of a May 29 Southeast Federal Center Overlay District Review covering new structures that will be built to house retail pavilions at the park. There's also apparently a public space permit application from the Onyx folks at 1100 First Street for a fence along L Street, plus garden masonry piers and light fixtures. And the developers of the 250 M Street office building are back again, after having not gotten very far at last month's meeting with their request for support for a second-stage PUD modification at a May 28 zoning hearing to increase the building's height (but not its square footage) from what was originally approved, since the commissioners wanted a new round of community benefits in return for their support, which W.C. Smith balked at given that the project isn't requesting to take any new amount of public space. We'll see if there were any negotiations since then. The meeting will be at 7 pm at St. Augustine's church at 6th and M streets, SW.
 

May 9, 2008 2:01 PM
Since it's such a rotten day, I'll go back to when the sun was shining (Tuesday), and give you my first-ever photos from the roof of 20 M Street. (I've taken a few photos from inside the 10th floor going back to April of last year, but from the roof I don't have deal with the pesky glass reflections.) Here are these new photos matched with the oldest ones from the same angle, so you can compare 13 months' worth of changes easily; you can also look at all the photos if you want to watch the progression of changes. There's views to the north (above), showing the digging now underway at 1015 Half Street along with the construction progress at 70/100 I, 909 New Jersey, and Velocity (plus the site-clearing at 23 I). To the south is the increasingly-shiny 55 M, as well as the ballpark, of course. I also tossed in some photos toward the west, showing the skyline of Southwest.
 

May 9, 2008 10:17 AM
* Don't forget the Metro track work this weekend, and the impacts it's going to have on getting to the ballpark. Read Metro's press release for how it will handle getting fans to and from Saturday's and Sunday's games. (Dr. Gridlock's posted about it again this morning.)
* Now that the ballpark is open, some are wondering what the need is to keep the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission running; read this WBJ piece for a good overview.
* Today's Post has a big article on what DC is going to look like in the future, saying that "the overarching key to redefining Washington resides along the miles of undeveloped land that borders the Anacostia and Potomac rivers, terrain slated for at least four new neighborhoods that District officials and developers hope will be built during the next 20 years," and mentioning the Ballpark District, Southwest waterfront, Poplar Point, and Hill East as the new destinations that could "counterweight" the Mall. (A nice rendering of the vision for the Southwest waterfront is included, too.)
* Ballpark concessionaire Centerplate had a rough first quarter of 2008, reporting a net loss of $11.2 million.
* A columnist from Idaho likes Nationals Park.
* Patriot Transportation Holdings sent out its earnings announcement, which has a nice summary of where the Florida Rock project stands, mentioning that the National Capital Planning Commission gave its "no adverse effect on federal interests" stamp to the project at its May 1 meeting (here's the report). May 22 is the date that the Zoning Commission is expected to give final approval.
* Remember the Community Benefits Fund that was a big part of swaying council members to approve the financing for the stadium? City Paper takes a look at what Mayor Fenty is doing with the money.
* The Nats are holding a youth baseball clinic at the ballpark for more than 100 children from Prince George's County on Saturday morning (May 10) at 10 am. (No link yet.)
* I had to laugh when I read this Post article about the opening of the new Southern Maryland Blue Crabs ballpark last week, since it read an awful like what we all thought we'd see after Opening Night at 1500 South Capitol: "[A]n otherwise celebratory Opening Night last Friday was marred by traffic jams and a significant parking shortage that left some people to walk more than a mile to the new ballpark. 'It was horrible to get here,' said Jane Thomas, who parked on Route 488 and estimated it took her 45 minutes to reach the stadium from her La Plata home. 'They're going to have to figure out what to do about that traffic, because I want to come to games, but I won't do it if it's always this bad.'"
 

May 8, 2008 2:32 PM
From the greatest source of news ever: "An 8,976-foot foul ball off the bat of Washington third baseman Ryan Zimmerman crashed through the U.S. Capitol Building rotunda Sunday afternoon, prompting both the Nationals and the opposing Pittsburgh Pirates to gasp, turn to each other in shock, and immediately run full speed out of Nationals Park. 'As soon as I hit it, I knew it was headed straight toward Capitol Hill--I just kept saying to myself, 'Not the dome, not the dome, not the dome,' Zimmerman said.
"Both teams, all four umpires, and the 32,457 fans in attendance winced in horror, however, as the ball kept carrying, made a loud smashing noise, and left a gaping hole in the rotunda's neoclassical architecture. 'We are so dead,' Zimmerman added. As the teams grabbed the bases and scrambled out of the stadium, the Pirates yelled to the Nationals that they were in "big trouble." The Nationals refuted that claim, screaming that 'if [Pirates left-fielder] Jason [Bay] could run at all, he would've tracked down the ball and caught it' before it struck the 200-year-old structure, which stands 1.7 miles from the ballpark.[...]
"According to eyewitnesses in the Capitol, the ball smashed into the dome at about 3:35 p.m., tore through the Apotheosis Of Washington--a 150-year-old, 4,664-square-foot fresco painted on the inside of the rotunda--and broke the arm off of a National Statuary Hall sculpture of William Jennings Bryan. The ball then bounced into the Senate Chamber, where it interrupted a vote on a $542.5 billion defense authorization bill, and landed directly in the mashed potatoes of early-dinging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), covering him with gravy and prompting him to exclaim, 'Zimmermaaaaannn!'
"Although McConnell had no evidence at the time that Zimmerman was responsible for the damages, he was the chief suspect, as he is the only National able to hit the ball farther than 300 feet. Furthermore, Zimmerman dented McConnell's 1998 Buick LeSabre last week when he overthrew first base by 15,000 feet on a routine grounder."
(Read the entire thing, and don't miss the "photo.")
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May 8, 2008 11:13 AM
The Post has a piece about last night's community meeting assessing the first 30 days of the new Performance Parking plan that restricts curbside parking in Near Southeast, Southwest, and southern Capitol Hill, so I get to skip the basic roundup (yay!); there were also reporters from other outlets there, so I'll link to those as they appear, though the ABC7 report is so full of errors that I will pretend I didn't see it. I'll just hit a few points that stood out for me (keeping in mind that my focus is south of the freeway):
* Some people don't like it, some people do. But I guess you want to know more than that.
* It sounds like the midnight end time for the restrictions will be gone within a few weeks--it's just a question of where they move it to (9:30 seemed to be the number that Tommy Wells came back to a number of times). It sounds like they're already making that move along Pennsylvania Avenue and Barracks Row, after the restaurant and bar owners reported a massive drop in their business in the past month. (On the other hand, businesses with primarily daytime traffic, such as Moto Photo, say that their numbers have improved with the new restrictions, since turnover of spaces is improving; apparently the double-parking has dropped off a lot, too.) Because the specifics of the plan weren't written into the legislation (leaving it up to the Mayor), changes can be made on the fly, without having to go back to the council.
* A lot of people want the restrictions to only be in effect on event days (ballgames, concerts, etc.), though there was then some consternation about how people would *know* it's an event day. Beyond that, Tommy explained a number of times that this plan isn't just about baseball, it's about trying to get ahead of the massive influx of visitors and development in the area over the next few years, and having strategies in place to prevent these neighborhoods from going the way of Adams Morgan or Georgetown. But, when people see that a number of the Nats parking lots are less than full during games, they feel that the entire parking plan is a "solution in search of a problem."
* Even though the signs say that restrictions are enforced starting at 7:30 am seven days a week, the director of DPW said that Sunday enforcement begins at 1 pm. Churches have been given a number of visitor parking passes, and the long-simmering battle between churches and residents over parking was a big undercurrent at this meeting. Tommy says he will meet with every church and its surrounding neighbors to hammer out ways for problems to be addressed.
* A lot of Capitol Hill Tower folks were at the meeting, but I've learned my lesson and will say little about their parking issues (since I get sniped at no matter what I say). As with most multi-unit residential buildings in the city, CHT residents do not get residential parking permits to allow them to park on streets. They do have an underground garage, but there is a battle between some residents and the building's developer over how the garage is being handled. Some have now been given visitor parking passes to allow them to park on nearby streets.
* Tommy says the parking lot under the freeway at 8th Street should be available for public parking by the end of the summer. (I will file this in my large I'll-Believe-It-When-I-See-It folder.) And he's definitely eyeing the little-used "W" surface lot at the old Capper Seniors site at 7th and M as perhaps employee parking for Barracks Row, though no specifics were mentioned.
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More posts: parking, Nationals Park
 

May 7, 2008 11:07 PM
(Remember when I used to do two of these a day?)
* Tim Lemke blogs about today's Sports and Entertainment Commission meeting, including that the ballpark "punch list" is down to about 11,000 items from the original 27,600, though there's only 15 "top priority" and 200 "high priority items." Also, the Nats haven't yet started paying their rent, because they say the DCSEC still owes them some required actions. (But once those actions are completed, the Nats will owe all rent from Opening Day onward.)
* From a few days ago, a press release touting the Sports Commission's "purchase of 14,600,706 kWh of renewable energy credits (RECs)," offsetting 70 percent of the electricity use at the LEED Silver-certified ballpark.
* Yahoo gnashes its teeth over attendance. And a bad review of the ballpark comes in from Johnstown, PA. (h/t BPG)
* One of the biggies of Nats blogging is calling it quits--Chris Needham of Capitol Punishment. Great run, Chris, sorry to see you go. My site stats will suffer greatly from the loss of your coveted What to Read Today links.
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More posts: Nationals Park
 

May 7, 2008 9:44 AM
* A reminder that tonight is Tommy Wells's community meeting to get feedback on how the new on-street parking regulations are going in Near Southeast, Southwest, and on Capitol Hill. It's at 7 pm at the Capitol United Methodist Church, at 5th and Seward Square, SE (on the south side of the Square). I'm sure it'll be a blast.
* Metro is needing to do replace a switch at Mt. Vernon Square, necessitating four weekends worth of major delays on the Yellow and Green lines, starting this weekend and going through June 8. Here's Metro's press release detailing how service will be impacted, and how they will attempt to handle the crowds at Nationals Park during the May 10 and 11 and June 7 and 8 home games: "People attending these games should add more time into their schedules if riding or connecting to the Yellow and Green Line as there will be longer waits for trains before and after the games." This quote from WMATA in today's Post story is a little more stark: "If fans 'leave the stadium and keep walking straight to Half Street [the Navy Yard station entrance closest to the stadium], there will be such a backup that they won't be able to walk around the crowd.' " Fans are being told to build in 30 to 45 minutes into their trips.
There will be special shuttle trains between Navy Yard and L'Enfant Plaza, along with shuttle buses starting at the end of the seventh inning that will run between Navy Yard and Federal Center SW. Plus, the N22 shuttle from New Jersey and M to Eastern Market and Union Station will run every five minutes. Read the press release for further details; here's Dr. Gridlock, too.
 

May 6, 2008 3:24 PM
I've been waiting a loooooong time for this particular set of before-and-afters. With thanks both to Mother Nature for the beautiful day (after a rainout last Thursday) and to the Nationals for indulging me, I now have a set of before-and-afters for the old intersection of Half and O streets, SE. And, as you can see from above, it's a little different.
The intersection died almost exactly two years ago, replaced now by second base and shallow centerfield. I cannot vouch for 1000-percent matches between the old and new angles (I didn't bring a GPS with me to pinpoint my positions, and ground level is now about 15-20 feet below where it was in 2006), but I think it's close enough for you to get the idea. The two shots above are (top) looking north and (bottom) looking west, with the old black Ziegfield's building visible in both "before" shots. But you can see all of the angles (in bigger images) here.
UPDATE: And, since the archive photos are kind of small, here's some larger images of the view from around second base. I'll figure out how to add them into my official ballpark galleries later....
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More posts: Nationals Park
 

May 6, 2008 5:10 AM
Word has arrived (and EYA has confirmed) that people who snagged reservations for market-rate townhomes at Capitol Quarter are starting to be brought in to sign actual sales contracts. Those with the earliest reservations (which go back to October 2006) are having their contracts written this week, and over the next few months all reservation holders will do likewise. Construction is still expected to start this summer, with some of the early-reservation-people being told to expect delivery of their houses in early 2009, though perhaps a bit sooner.
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More posts: Capper, Capitol Quarter
 
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