There's no getting around the fact that parking is going to be tighter this year, thanks to the following:

* Lot F at 1st and M, and the cash lot that sprouted immediately to its south last year, are both gone, thanks to the beginning of construction on Ballpark Square, the large residential/hotel/retail project.

* Season ticket holders' Lot P in the garage of 1015 Half Street has exited the inventory thanks to the fact that the building is finally starting to get tenants. (And Bonchon!)

* The cash lot at Half and M is no more, because construction has just started on a Homewood Suites hotel.

* Also gone is the cash lot at New Jersey and I, where work is now underway on a new apartment building.

(Are you sensing a pattern?)

One bright spot in the offing, though--a 220-space lot will return to the northeast corner of 1st and N on the former Spooky Building 213 site, but it still has to be built--they are hoping it'll be done later this summer.

I have confirmed that the cash lots at South Capitol and M, South Capitol and N, and the two Yards lots on N and Tingey streets will be available this year. But confirmation on some of the other cash lots--especially the ones on the west side of South Capitol--will have to wait until this weekend or Opening Day. (Any and all intel on these lots will be much appreciated!)

Also watch for lots of construction around the neighborhood, with some street parking eliminated (but you weren't using that anyway, RIGHT?). And the walk from your lot to the ballpark might require tiptoeing around some closed sidewalks, especially on the west side of 1st Street south of M.

As for getting to the stadium, note that, if you use Maine Avenue in Southwest to get to the ballpark, the construction at the Wharf may impact your route--plus it has done quite a number on the asphalt along there.

Finally, if you use South Capitol Street alongside the ballpark, keep it to 25 mph, because there are currently speed cameras set up in both directions.

Check the parking page for more information.

From lots of new food to the new Norfolk Southern club level to the new not-for-plebes Club 24 to the new grass to the soon-to-be-new team store to the new mumblemumble metal detectors, there was a lot to cover.

Which means I took a lot of photos. Virginia biscuits? Check. Korean BBQ tacos? Check. Grilled cheese sammiches? Check. Club-level choo-choos? Check. Stormtroopers? Check. (No, really.)

Here's a smattering (click to enlarge), but go look at the gallery, which also has a lot of detail about what you'll see during the 2015 season. I'll also be adding here links to the more straightfoward coverage of the day.

UPDATE: Here's the Post on the new food and the Sam Adams 10th anniversary offering. Here's MASN's coverage. And Eater's. And MLB.com's.

I went back on Sunday and found it much quieter, and saw at least part of the reason that the pedestrian walkway had been closed - a new curb had been built, and new concrete poured along the gutter, as you see in the photo below. I also saw evidence of the old cobblestone, as you also see in the photo.

But this was apparently just the first part of a process that then resulted in new asphalt being laid down on Monday, as you see in the other photo below.

I had actually noticed last Thursday that the old asphalt was starting to show cracks and appeared to be sinking toward the new 82 I excavation, so this work was probably pretty critical.

And in other good pedestrian news along New Jersey, the stairs up from/down to Garfield Park are being repaired today.

If you are interested in more conversations about the subject, a group calling itself Capitol Riverfront Citizens for Pedestrian Safety (on Twitter at @SaferWalksSEDC) is working to keep a close watch on the state of things.

* ALL-STAR GAME: The rumors keep flying that Nationals Park will be the site of the 2018 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, but when Tom Boswell says he is "virtually certain" he will be happy with the 2018 announcement when it is made, well, one does take notice. Official word could come on April 6, when new commissioner Rob Manfred comes to Nationals Park to throw out the Opening Day first pitch.

* NLRB MOVE DELAYED: There's been some wondering about when the National Labor Relations Board will arrive at 1015 Half Street, and WBJ has the story of the "costly planning snafu" that delayed the move by six months (it looks like late June may now be the date).

* 11TH STREET BRIDGES VERSION 1.0: DDOT's latest dive into its photo archives includes a shot of the construction of the highway version of the 11th Street Bridges, back in 1964, before there was a highway to connect them to. It also shows the original "local" bridge.

* 503 ERRORS: I know that the site is throwing "503 Service Unavailable" errors with some frequency these days. I'm begging the hosting company to get them fixed, but in the meantime, at least the errors generally never last more than a few seconds. Count to 10 and hit refresh, and your requested page should appear (though then sometimes it takes a little longer for images and formatting to return). UPDATE: And then the site took a breather for an hour early this afternoon, which seemed to finally get the attention of the hosting folks, though I think there are still all manner of configuration issues that they need to fix. Why this has to happen in March and not December, I don't know....

April 1: The Waterfront Church is holding an Ultimate Nerf Battle for students in grades 5-12, from 6 to 8 pm at the Courtyard by Marriott (2nd floor) at 140 L St., SE. Admission is free.

April 4: As part of the mega Cherry Blossom Festival, there will once again be Lantern Making at Canal Park, with sessions at 10 am and noon. There will be a "variety of Japanese cultural activities," as well as a moon bounce (for the KIDS, not you!). It's co-hosted by Capitol Riverfront BID and DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

(Also on April 4 is the Nats-Yankees exhibition game, but we'll discuss that later, along with Opening Day on April 6.)

April 11: There will be an Anacostia River cleanup event, from 9 am to noon, at Anacostia Park, put on by Anacostia Riverkeeper, Near Southeast Community Partners, the National Park Service, and others.

April 24: Another year of the Truckeroo food truck festival kicks off at the Fairgrounds, from 11 am to 11 pm.

April 24-26: Did you know that, had he lived, William Shakespeare would have been celebrating his 451st birthday this year? It's true! And so the Folger Theater and the BID are marking the occasion with Bard in the Yards, three nights of outdoor films at the Yards Park. The 1993 version of Much Ado About Nothing will kick things off on Friday, April 24, followed by the DiCaprio/Danes version of Romeo + Juliet on Saturday, April 25, and wrapping up on Sunday, April 26 with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in The Taming of the Shrew. All showings are free, and will begin at sundown, somewhere between 7:30 and 8 pm each night. Actors from the upcoming Folger production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead will introduce the flicks. Conversing in iambic pentameter will be optional.

Remember to keep an eye on the JDLand calendar (scroll down the home page) to be reminded of what's on the neighborhood agenda.

It will be open every day at 11:30 am, staying open until 9:30 pm Sunday-Wednesday and 11 pm Thursday-Saturday, except on Nats game days, when 11 pm will be closing time Sundays through Wednesdays. with midnight the post-Nats closing time Thursdays through Saturdays.

The menu is here, and note the $9 lunch special from 11:30 am to 2 pm Monday through Friday, with a choice of wings, drums, strips, or a combo, plus one side.

If you go, feel free to post your review in the comments.

There's also the expanded service for Nationals games, with buses running when there are Sunday home games from 10 am to 10 pm and until midnight when any home game starts at 4 pm or later.

And, as mentioned previously, today also marks a change in the route's stops near Union Station, with buses headed toward Navy Yard only serving the stop at Massachusetts Avenue and Columbus Circle. This means buses will no longer stop at 1st and Mass and 2nd and Mass.

And perhaps later this year the route will be extended to the Southwest Waterfront, though there's been no recent new news on that.

I snagged a peek-through-the-fence shot of the hole, though before long I'll get to start taking photos of it from up above, on the viewing platform at Nats Park. (While I, uh, watch baseball, too. Yeah, yeah, that's it.)

Here's the riverfront view of the Riverfront footprint (below left), matched to the rendering of the same spot (center). Plus, at right, a shot looking from Diamond Teague's pier to the staircase at Nats Park, giving a sense of the plaza that will be there (and that one sightline from the staircase to the river will still exist after the apartment building is completed).

/This building, the first phase of the overall 1.1-million-sq-ft mixed-use redevelopment, is expected to be finished in late 2016. It will have a little more than 18,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, and two levels of underground parking (as you see!). There will also be an extension of the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail.

The Phase 2 land immediately to the west of the new building is expected to be temporarily remade as a "beach" area, including volleyball courts, with additional space for parking and other temporary uses. Which is all separate from Bardo's potential "brew garden" plans for the two acres to the west of THAT site, on the portion of the Florida Rock footprint that edges up to the current Douglass Bridge.

See my Florida Rock page for lots more photos and renderings.

UPDATE: I finally made it up onto the Douglass Bridge on Sunday for the first time in forever to take some photos, and got an even better view of the excavation and its position in relationship to the ballpark. So, let's all look at this and start to mentally prepare for the change in the view not only of the ballpark, but from the ballpark.

With new sidewalks not yet in place in front of the Park Chelsea/800 New Jersey developments on the east side of the street, and with 82 I apparently not being covered under the regulations that resulted in the wide wide sidewalks you see all along the rest of the avenue, excavation and site work has been taking place right up to the (former) curb line on the only side of the street where pedestrians can walk. This has been going on for a few weeks, and while the temporary in-the-road-but-separated-by-plastic-barriers pedestrian path isn't optimal, it's also not unusual in these situations.

But this morning a large truck was parked in the former pedestrian path, with flagmen directing traffic in what had become just two very narrow north-south traffic lanes--and now there was absolutely nowhere for pedestrians to walk, in a location where it's very hard to take an alternate route on foot, unless you want to walk allllllll the way over to South Capitol and alllllll the way back to New Jersey once you get north of the freeway and train tracks, or backtrack southward to K so you can then walk north on 2nd or 3rd.

I've sidestepped a lot (A LOT) of construction during my 12 years of JDLand-ing, and I am generally pretty laid back about it--I'm not walking a dog, or pushing a stroller, so I just kind of grumble and pick my way through.

But the situation this morning--when two flagmen on either end were each telling me a different lane in the street in which to walk, and later exacerbated by seeing the line of seven or more dump trucks that were idling back to and around onto K Street while waiting to haul off excavated dirt--well, it escalated past even my high bar of tolerance, especially since I know how many people now walk along New Jersey to go to Capitol South, or the Capitol complex, or wherever.

And with the Nats returning to the neighborhood one week from today, and with thoughts of the number of stadium-goers who also do that New Jersey Avenue walk before and after games, I did the normal thing in 2015--I mentioned the situation on Twitter.

Which led to a lot of other people speaking up on Twitter, many of whom have been complaining about the issues surrounding this construction since it began back in February. Before long, Ward 6 council member Charles Allen tweeted that he had contacted the director of DDOT, and that "he's looking into it."

And while it shouldn't be the case that residents' complaints are ignored until either a) a loudmouth blogger fires off a tweet or b) baseball arrives, the truth is that the Nats' 2015 season is going to present a lot of challenges for anyone arriving in any way other than coming out of the Metro at Half and M.

There will be less parking available this year (which I'll detail in an upcoming post), and with 13 active construction sites east of South Capitol between the freeway and Nats Park, cars and pedestrians and bikes and fans and residents and commuters will be fighting a lot of battles, even though for the most part there won't be at gametime the sort of active work that snarled New Jersey and I this morning.

In addition to this New Jersey Avenue construction possibly bedeviling fans using Capitol South, the blocking of the sidewalk on the west side of 1st Street south of M for Ballpark Square construction in the block just north of the stadium--and the apparent temporary loss of the bike lane there as well--will end up making lots of fans just walk in the street instead of crossing back to the east side of the street, away from the ballpark.

And there are other spots where sidewalks are now blocked off or narrowed, or where street parking is temporarily banned, which are the sorts of issues that lead to grumpy drivers and grumpy pedestrians, which can lead to bad things.

One hopes that there will be attention paid to ways to ensure a safer passage to the ballpark, but one also hopes that any real effort to mitigate these construction/sidewalk/traffic/pedestrian issues doesn't happen only during the hours that red-and-white-bedecked masses are around.

In the meantime, be careful out there, and not just right where you see construction. (I watched a dump truck blow through a red light at 1st and Potomac, taking me back to the last era of crazy amounts of construction, but that was in 2007 when the resident population was about 1/10th of what it is now.)

UPDATE: One thing I should have emphasized more clearly is that this was obviously a Saturday-type operation, where the assumption is that such a setup will be less disruptive than on a weekday, and so the contractor can then get more done (in this case, hauling of dirt) in a shorter timespan. This intersection is just a tough one, since, as I said above, it doesn't easily allow for alternate north/south passage if something is going on.

UPDATE II: I went back on Sunday, where, as I expected, things were much quieter. And I also saw that part of the reason for the closure of the pedestrian walkway on Saturday was to build a new curb, and also pour some new concrete. I had noticed actually on Thursday that the old asphalt had a big crack in it and seemed to be dropping off toward the new excavation hole, so obviously this was a fix for that, and probably a pretty critical one.

Note also at the bottom of the photo evidence of old cobblestone.

Now the Bardo folks, who already operate a similar brew garden in Northeast, are trying to raise $200,000 to "do this thing deluxe," to create what it calls Bardo Riverfront, described as "100,000 square feet of BeerDisneyLand." This would include flush toilets instead of porta-potties, a bike shop, a kiddie playground, and "the largest dog park in DC," as well as parking for 500 bicycles, cornhole, food trucks, outdoor movies "projected onto a floating screen in the river," and other ideas.

(Their main web site has a festive graphic of how they envision the layout.)

Donations of $20 now will get you four pints of beer when it opens, or four pitchers for a $50 donation, or numerous other options up to a $5,000 donation allowing you to take over the entire place on any Monday-Thursday when the Nats aren't playing. If you don't have money to contribute, you could donate wood trips, or "big tree logs to make into totem poles."

More details as they become available....

I checked in with Forest City, and they've passed along that there were some last-minute changes requested by the DC Board of Veterinary that needed to be made to the facilities, and it took a little time to then get approvals.

Things once again appear to be on track for an opening, in April--when I hear a date, I will alert the masses.

The Banfield web site has the page for this location up and ready to go, and it shows operating hours as 9-7 Monday through Saturday and 10 to 5 on Sunday.

June 4: Back to the Future

June 11: Selma

June 18: The Princess Bride

June 25: Rush Hour

July 2: Independence Day

July 9: Bring It On

July 16: LEGO Movie

July 23: Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory

July 30: Big Hero 6

August 6: Pitch Perfect

August 13: The Goonies

August 20: Guardians of the Galaxy

August 27: To Kill A Mockingbird

September 3: The Sound of Music

The official start time each week is "sundown," but the BID invites you to come around 7 pm with picnic in hand. All movies are free and open to the public.

* MUSIC: The Friday Night Concert Series at the Yards Park is coming back for its fifth (!) year, starting at 6:30 pm each week. The schedule of musical acts:

May 15: Jimi Smooth

May 22: Still Surfin'

May 29: Sponsored by Tour de Fat: Lineup TBA

June 5: Scott's New Band

June 12: DC JazzFest at The Yards: Soul Rebels & Sharón Clark

June 19: Texas Chainsaw Horns

June 26: Jah Works

July 3: Almost Journey

July 10: Hand Painted Swinger

July 17: Wesley Spangler

July 24: Justin Trawick

July 31: White Ford Bronco

August 7: Morrison Brothers

August 14: Jeff From Accounting

August 21: Lloyd Dobler Effect

August 28: Special Guest TBA in August!

September 4: Crowded Streets

September 11: Sara Gray

UPDATE: Washingtonian has a sneak peek, with pictures, and says March 30 is the opening date. And Eater has its post up now too, and there's confirmation of that date on the Bonchon Navy Yard Facebook page. So, prep your taste buds!

* OPENING DAY GETTING CLOSER: The Capitol Riverfront BID has put together an initial list of Opening Day Specials and Events, which I imagine I will mention again with more fanfare when April 6 is upon us. If you liked 106.7 The Fan hanging out in Canal Park for the Winter Classic, they are doing it again for Opening Day. And Bluejacket is having a big Opening Day Fest.

* PARK CHELSEA GETTING CLOSER: With a July 1 target date to start leasing, the huge residential building at New Jersey and I is rolling along, and they've posted some interior construction photos on their web site. (But what I really want is their update on getting I Street opened....!)

And now I can't get Paul McCartney out of my mind.

* NATS PARK MAGNETOMETERS: There was a media event on Monday to unveil the new magnetometers at all entrances to Nats Park. (I'll note that this sign about the procedures will probably not be met with glee.) I wasn't at the event, but I did get my own shot on Sunday of the new installations at the Center Field Gate, as you see at right. The new security screening procedures will be in place starting with the April 4 exhibition game against the Yankees. Arrive early! (WaPo)

* US-NY CIRCULATOR CHANGE: "From 3/29, catch the Union Station bus to Navy Yard only at Mass Ave and Columbus Cir 1st & 2nd St stops discontinued." (@DCCirculator; more here)

* YARDS PARK WORK: "We're almost ready for Splash Season! Please 'pardon our dust' as we prepare the water features and basin. We'll update here when finished!" (@YardsPark)

* PEEKING AT CSX: At right is a shot of the now-cleared area just south of the freeway and behind the 70 and 100 Capitol Yards apartment buildings. This work has had hearts aflutter that there could be some new development coming there, but it is actually just CSX clearing its considerable tract of land as prep work continues for the Virginia Avenue Tunnel.

* PEEKING AT EVERYTHING ELSE: I'm going to have to recalibrate my normal mission to over-document projects in blog posts, given the breadth of work underway in the neighborhood. That said, I can't pass up a quick sharing of the cellphone photos I took Sunday afternoon while peeking through fences at the Homewood Suites, 82 I, Hampton Inn/Ballpark Square, and 909 Half sites. (Click all to enlarge.) It would have been even better if I had included the other holes in the ground, at 1111 New Jersey, 800 New Jersey, and Florida Rock, but I failed.

Bring the flyer to Nando's between 5 pm and 10 pm, order food, and Nando's will donate 40% of fundraiser sales to help raise money for the school. (Don't fret either the Feb. 17 date on it or about the RSVP stuff.)

This is the third in the series of fundraisers for nearby schools put on by the Near Southeast Community Partners group and Nando's, and there's a mini-competition going on to see which school raises the most money. So, if you're in the mood for chicken and mushed minty peas on Tuesday, print out the flyer and head to Tingey Street....

* MORE GROUND BROKEN: I had posted a photo last week of the new fence at not-Ballpark Square but wasn't quite ready to say that construction had started. However, the pile driver has arrived, and steel beams are already sticking out of the ground, so I think it's now safe to add the residential/hotel portion of the project to the ludicrous lineup of developments currently underway. (The office component at 99 M is expected to get started before long as well.) It's also the fourth to break ground just within the past month or so, joining residential projects 909 Half and 82 I and the Homewood Suites hotel at 50 M. And I think that's probably it for major projects getting started until the end of this year or early next year.

* BONCHON GETTING CLOSER: The paper is off the windows, so I was able to see where things stand at Bonchon--and it's looking well along. (Not pictured are the five or so boxes containing large flat-panel TVs.)

* DEMO PERMIT APPS: Applications have been submitted to demolish two buildings on the DC Water site--a 50,000-square-foot brick building and a 1,980-square-foot wood shed. Whether these are on the footprint of the planned movie theater/accompanying residential, I cannot tell you.

* SPRING! SPRING! There's now quite the inventory of outdoor tables at Willie's Brew & Que, and work is underway for a patio at the Big Stick (photo by Mr. JDLand):

* MORE ABOUT FOOD: I mentioned it in passing before, but there's been enough tweets sent my way to mention again that work has now started at the Scarlet Oak space at 909 New Jersey. And there's purty window ads now, to both get their name out there and to THWART my PEEKING. And closer to the river, at the Lumber Shed, both Due South and the Navy Yard Oyster Company have gotten their building permits.

With all that cleared out of the hopper, I now may be a bit scarce for the rest of the week. Hopefully the site will behave, though.

The designs for two new buildings coming to the current Trapeze School site at the Yards (known in the parlance as Parcel O) are going before the National Capital Planning Commission in April for an early "35% design review."

One is the 140ish-unit condo building being planned by PN Hoffman. It will front Tingey Street between 4th and a newly (re-)built 5th Street. Its design echoes the brick+glass look that Arris will have when it is completed. It will be the first condo project within the Yards.

Immediately to its south will be a two-towered 190ish-unit rental building to be developed by Forest City. There will be 16,700 square feet of ground-floor retail across both buildings, along with 246 below-grade parking spaces, and in addition to the return of 5th Street there will also be a one-block extension of Water Street along the block's southern side.

Both developers are looking to begin construction late this year or early next year.

In honor of now having renderings, I created a Parcel O project page--and while putting it together, I found the photo at right, showing the corner of 5th and Tingey from May, 2004, back when there was a 5th Street (such as it was). This view matches the rendering at far right in the row of three.

As for the Trapeze School, it will be moving later this year to the southeastern portion of Spooky Park, at the corner of New Jersey and Tingey.

JDLand.com runs on a shared server, and late last week one of the other sites on the server must have made someone veeeery angry, because a Denial of Service attack was launched that ran until Monday evening. On Monday morning, I decided it was time to get off that rickety server and into a new shared environment (with the same company), but it took another 24 hours for them to get me my files from the old server.

I have no doubt there are still bugs to be squashed, and I will be spending my day looking for them.

In the meantime, thanks for everyone's patience. I know it didn't matter anywhere near as much to you readers as it mattered to me, but I hated knowing how annoying it was to come to the site and have it not respond.

Hopefully things will be back to normal now. Though as long as I stay in a shared environment (which is about four times less expensive than getting a virtual private server), these sorts of things can happen.

UPDATE: A few things are not yet back to life--the RSS feed, the little box on the home page showing the most recent comments, and an updated Permits/Crime list. Otherwise, so far, the move itself hasn't been too bad, other than the very sore jaw from five days of clenching my teeth.

UPDATE II: The above lingering items are now fixed. I imagine there's still other stuff somewhere that's not working, but nothing leaping out at the moment.

Just up the block, at 7th and L, the Lofts at Capitol Quarter is starting to look like a real building as well:

Click on any and all to enlarge.

* CLOVER FEST: If you're not navigating around distance runners on Saturday morning, you may be dodging wobbly attendees from this year's Clover Fest beer tasting festival at 1st and N SE during the afternoon and evening.

* MONTADITOS BANKRUPTCY: "The Florida operator of the Spanish mini-sandwich chain 100 Montaditos has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Miami." Bankruptcy filings were also submitted for nine of the chain's restaurants in south Florida and the Arlington, Va., location. No word on whether it has any impact on the Tingey Street location. (Miami Herald)

* BLUEJACKET OPENING DAY FEST: Bluejacket is having an Opening Day Fest on Monday, April 6. Free to enter, but there's also a food/drink package option.

* TRUCKEROO: The 2015 Truckeroo schedule is out, starting April 24. (Yes, the Fairgrounds/Bullpen is going to remain open this year.)

* THREE BEDROOMS: I wrote back in October about the Yards West zoning hearing where this all first percolated, but GGW has taken a look at the notion of incentives for three-bedroom apartments. Then City Paper's Housing Complex blog tackled the subject as well.