From the Nationals: "The Washington Nationals today announced the schedule for their 2010 Winter Caravan when members of the Washington Nationals will tour the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area from January 27 to Saturday, January 30, and conclude with the second annual NatsFest at Nationals Park on Sunday, January 31. [...] Baseball fun returns to Nationals Park on January 31 for the second annual NatsFest, which will conclude the Caravan festivities. Fans will have the opportunity to receive autographs and take photos with Nationals players, participate in question-and-answer sessions with Stan Kasten, Mike Rizzo, Jim Riggleman and The Washington Post columnist and Nationals Season Ticket Holder George Will, and hit in the Nationals batting cages for a $1 donation to the Nationals Dream Foundation. A behind-the-scenes look at the Nationals clubhouse will be available and fans may enter to win Nationals prizes and memorabilia. Nationals Season Ticket Holders may receive up to four complimentary tickets per account for the event and will receive an e-mail on how to claim their tickets."

A very quick update from tonight's meeting of ANC 6D's alcohol/beverage committee, which voted 3-0 both to recommend support Justin's Cafe's application for a liquor license, and to recommend that a "stipulated license" be granted. This means that the restaurant could operate under a temporary license until its (still as yet unscheduled) hearing in front of the liquor board is completed. The full ANC will vote on these recommendations at their meeting on Monday (Jan. 11).

Just out from DDOT (link to come), official announcement of the upcoming road work that was initially "previewed" in the poorly written "Freeway to be Closed" flashing sign at the Sixth Street exit on the Southeast Freeway:

I rang out 2009 with a sudden burst of creativity, and so am welcoming 2010 with another tweak of the JDLand home page design.

On a chilly morning (with winds high enough to scuttle the planned boat tour), DDOT announced that work is officially underway on the new 11th Street Bridges, the $300 million four-year project to build three new spans across the Anacostia River to provide both expanded freeway access between I-295 and the SE/SW Freeway and a new local-traffic bridge connecting Anacostia and Near Southeast.

A press release just out from DDOT (not yet posted online) alerts the city that construction is about to start on the new 11th Street Bridges:

Just a quick post to say that I'm still here, but with the snow and the holidays converging, I'm not expecting much news over the next few weeks. I'll post big news if it happens, of course, but otherwise I'll be taking it easy here on the blog. I'll tweet little things as they come along (like the great Tommy Wells Snowpocalyse interview outside the Tune Inn with City Paper on Saturday night), so if you're not already following my Twitter feed, now would be a good time, either via Twitter itself or by becoming a fan of JDLand.com on Facebook (where my Twitter updates will then automatically appear in your Facebook news feed).

The Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District held its annual meeting and luncheon on Thursday, on the ninth floor of 55 M Street. Stan Kasten of the Nationals opened the festivities with some brief but energetic remarks about how excited the Nationals are about the neighborhood's continuing development. He was followed by Tommy Wells, who is equally enthusastic about the neighborhood as a prime example of a "liveable, walkable community," saying that people are increasingly choosing "five-minute living." But, he added that if this area ends up looking like every other neighborhood, "then we've failed."

Just out from the Nationals:

Mere moments ago, the city council passed on an emergency basis B18-475, the "Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg Public Revenue Bonds Amendment Act of 2009," which will allow the CFO's office to issue $32 million in city-backed bonds to help fund "phase 3" infrastructure improvements at Capper/Carrollsburg. This would be in addition to the $9.5 million in stimulus money that DCHA was awarded by HUD that will allow the phase 2 townhouses at Capitol Quarter to go forward, possibly by the third quarter of 2010 if current financing negotiations with EYA go smoothly. By passing it on an emergency basis, the city can go to the bond market perhaps before the end of this month or in January, which apparently is a prime time to go a'sellin.

Rounding up the items on this week's agenda:

From last night's meeting of ANC 6D's ABC Committee, some bullet points on Justin's Cafe, the planned "fast casual" restaurant in the ground floor of Velocity on First Street between K and L (some of these are old, some are new, but for those just tuning in...):

At its November meeting, ANC 6D received an update on the progress of Canal Park, but I was out of town and missed the presentation, so I've gotten a quick status update from Chris Vanarsdale of the Canal Park Development Association. He passes along that the design development phase is nearing completion, and that hopefully in a few weeks they'll make available a revised plan view of the park--the middle block has apparently undergone some significant changes, with the addition of a much larger water feature and the reconfiguration of the pavilion in that block. You can see some renderings of the pavilions planned for the south end of the park (at M Street) on my Canal Park page, although there will probably be some revisions to the designs of these structures as well.

A couple events on the calendar for the week of Dec. 7 to highlight:

With the launch a few weeks back of a bike lane on 15th Street NW, attention is beginning to focus on other locations in the city where there is a desire to place new dedicated bike lanes, and one of those spots is M Street SE/SW, running from Sixth Street, SW to 11th Street, SE, which is a route that Tommy Wells has been interested in for quite a while.

The council's Committee on Public Works and Transportation is having a hearing on Dec. 10 on four bills, including B18-277, the "Ward 6 Residential Parking Protection Pilot Act of 2009." This bill, which was introduced back in May, mainly serves to bring to all of Ward 6 some of the enhanced parking rules that came to Near Southeast, Southwest, and Barracks Row under the Performance Parking Pilot. A Tommy Wells blog post at the time spelled out the specifics of the bill; the one portion that seems to be new for Near Southeast residents is the change in the cost of Residential Parking Permits, which would remain $15 per year for the first permit in a household but would go up to $50 for the second permit and $100 for any additional permits. (This is of course for the residences in Near Southeast that actually qualify for RPP stickers; the multi-unit residential buildings do not, as the comments around here have made clear over the past few months.)