Georgetown’s Future: Dreams and Realities

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE . . .

The Washington watchword is change: change everywhere. Change in Adams Morgan, change in Petworth, Brookland, big changes to the downtown infrastructure and skyline. And, who knows, maybe someday the blessings of change will reach as far as Wards 7 and 8.

And guess what? Change is coming to Georgetown.

The village known as the place most resistant to change is about to change – if all the buzz about ongoing projects and future vision is any indication. There’s been a lot of talk – and at least one recent meeting – about the contents of the Georgetown Business Improvement District’s action plan.

The Georgetown 2028 Plan was presented to the public in December of 2013. But, much as a rumor gets around as something brand new, changes in Georgetown are a hot topic these days.

“Georgetown was getting left behind a little bit,” Georgetown BID CEO Joe Sternlieb said. “People weren’t talking about it as much as they had. It wasn’t the only place to go on a Saturday night anymore.”

We’re talking gondolas over the Potomac, a Metro station in Georgetown (somewhere in the near or far future), special lighting under Key Bridge, even the big Kennedy Center renovation, which will better connect the center to the river and to Georgetown.

We’re talking a lot. Georgetown’s reputation for elitist inclination is grounded mostly in the perception of a 1960s rejection of a Metro station (and the fact that the term affordable housing seems to be an alien term). What’s coming – if it happens, and there are a lot of ifs – is not necessarily dramatic, all the high-end goodies aside. The end result may be that Georgetown, and Georgetowners, will be more connected to the rest of the city and its other wards, villages and neighborhoods.

In fact, there’s always been change in Georgetown. The historic core remains, and probably always will. That’s the advantage of being a historic district. But the commercial part of Georgetown has always gone through changes. Many of the restaurants and shops and bars from the 1980s are gone, replaced by something different. The flavors change, but the overall image doesn’t.

The proposed changes have to make a grueling journey through all the bureaucracies that the city and village has to offer. Big dreams of shining cities and gondolas are susceptible to change and resistance. Just look at what’s happened to the long-awaited H Street streetcar project, or the hit-and-run zoning battles being waged over pop-ups.

The buzz is likely to be ongoing. It’s a marketing and educational issue as much as anything. Gone are the days (we hope) when residents and commercial interests clashed hysterically and unreasonably. Thanks to the late Art Schultz – who also helped promote the legislation that led to the creation of BIDs – there’s a more friendly and cooperative attitude in the village, one more receptive to new ideas and newcomers.

In the end, though, here’s a fairly safe prediction: Georgetown will still be Georgetown, recognizable and historic, if a little more wired and connected to the city of which it’s a singular part.

CHANGE IS COMING: BID AND OTHERS TAKE ON THE FUTURE

Gondolas and Metro stops and parklets, oh, my.

We are sure about some new buildings and businesses, as well as expanded bus service. And we are fairly sure about a Metrorail station (a question of when) and even a boathouse or two (a question of where).

As far as the imagined aerial gondola from the west side of Georgetown to the Rosslyn Metro stop, it is possible, shall we say, but it is also a great publicity stunt for the village.

Causing all this ruckus and media buzz about the town’s future is the Georgetown Business Improvement District with its “Georgetown 2028 15-Year Action Plan,” presented in December 2013.

The report and the resulting discussion are welcome in a town – founded in 1751 as part of Maryland – where George Washington was a frequent visitor and the likes of Thomas Jefferson and John Kennedy lived. The village has lost some of its commercial mojo and is no longer the nightlife capital of the capital, but that is not point here.

As Ward 2 council member and Georgetown resident Jack Evans likes to say: “Now is the golden age of Georgetown.”

Evans is one of the influencers, ranging from the District government with the advisory neighborhood commission, the Old Georgetown Board (part of the federal Commission of Arts), the Board of Zoning Adjustment and the National Park Service to the Citizens Association of Georgetown, the Georgetown Business Association and Georgetown University, the largest private employer (with Medstar Georgetown University Hospital) in D.C. Center-stage of late: the Georgetown BID, which gets its funding from taxing member property-owners and business tenants. The BID covers commercial M Street down to the river and commercial Wisconsin Avenue up to R Street, along with parts of some side streets.

After years of disagreements, it appears that peace reigns in the land. After all, CAG and Georgetown University reached an agreement on the university’s 2020 Campus Plan in a process that then-Mayor Vincent Gray called “historic.” (Already, three new student dorms are underway.) Before that, the citizens and the merchants came to terms and now almost speak with one voice.

Along the banks of the Potomac, the Georgetown Waterfront Park has been completed, and the ice skating rink at Washington Harbour is a winner. And, now, boathouse proposals by the NPS are heating up again.

The two public schools in the neighborhood, Duke Ellington School for the Arts and Hyde-Elementary School, are undergoing significant renovation and reconstruction. On the east side and the west side, thanks to Anthony Lanier’s EastBanc Co., gas station property will become condo space. Richard Levy and his partners hope to remake the defunct West Heating Plant, south of the Four Seasons Hotel, into a condominium. Also, architect Robert Bell is remaking the old Georgetown Theater into retail and residential spaces on Wisconsin Avenue. Micro apartments are slated for the former Latham Hotel on M Street.

Into this mix, the Georgetown BID presented its grand scheme after months of meetings with experts and community leaders: “Simply put, the 2028 vision is to build an economically stronger and more sustainable Georgetown commercial district while bolstering the residential community by preserving what is great about Georgetown, fixing what is broken and creating what is missing.”

The BID’s strategic plan contains 75 action items, of which the following are highlights:

First and foremost is the preservation of the C&O Canal, a crown jewel of Georgetown. The BID is helping fundraise for a new canal barge and also wants to put a dock on the canal near 34th Street. It is noted that 2028 is the bicentennial of the canal.
The new barge and its education programs could cost $3 million. (The dock runs around $40,000 and may be ready this summer). As far as the deterioration of Lock 3 is concerned, the repairs could cost around $5.5 million.

The Georgetown Metro station would be part of a $3.3 billion expansion of the system. It may be ready by 2040 and is something out of the BID’s control.

Quick changes are also looked for. Temporary parklets at Luke’s Lobster and Baked & Wired and temporary widening of sidewalks have proved popular and will continue. New small public spaces have been made available. Already set up is signage around town – something lacking for decades – pointing the way to landmarks. There are designs for large entry signs for Georgetown, too.

Free Circulator bus service up Wisconsin Avenue from K Street to Whitehaven Street is also a quick way to get visitors moving around town. Will streetcars ever make it to K Street?

As a way to connect to Metrorail, an attention-grabbing gondola would cost $20 million and take about five years to complete. The BID defines: “A gondola lift consists of a loop cable between two stations with individual cabins accommodating anywhere from four to 20 passengers…. A gondola lift can carry more than 4,000 passengers in each direction, per hour, similar to light rail transit and much larger than a typical bus route running at five-minute intervals.” The BID has $100,000 earmarked for a feasibility study – with more money needed from Arlington Country and others – that will determine if an aerial gondola ever gets off the ground.

Also proposed is the artistic lighting of the understructure of Key Bridge and Whitehurst Freeway.

All this was taken up at a Feb. 3 BID annual meeting at the House of Sweden, where the 2028 Plan was discussed and ideas taken from residents and businesspersons. The day before the meeting, the Washington Post ran a splashy roundup piece about the plan in its Style Section, while other media outlets have been reporting about the BID’s plans from the get-go.

Yes, change is coming.

FUTURE BOATHOUSES ON THE POTOMAC

In the next few years, if the dreams of Georgetown and George Washington universities come true, the Georgetown riverfront will look very different. At a National Park Service (NPS) public “scoping” meeting held on Feb. 5 at the D.C. Palisades Public Library, the agency unveiled plans they intend to make a reality for the hotly contested Georgetown waterfront – from 34th Street to a parcel of land just upstream of the Washington Canoe Club.

The 1,500 feet of riverfront – not long ago a vast wasteland of dumps, rendering plants and sewage runoff areas – is now considered some of the most valuable land in the city, and it is owned and controlled by the NPS.

The NPS push toward new rowing facilities is based on the belief that the Thompson Boat Center has long been inadequate for the growing needs of rowers. The project to change the area into a center for elite collegiate and scholastic rowers, as well as a place for recreational paddlers to launch from, has been bounced around since the 1970s.

At the library meeting, the future possibilities for the area were limited to four scenarios, beginning with a “No Action Alternative,” under which no changes would take place. The other options were labeled low-, medium- and high-density solutions.

In determining the necessity for the new boathouses, the NPS relied on its own 2013 Boathouse Zone Feasibility Report. The report specified that the combined number of college athletes involved in competitive rowing from the two schools was 280, a number they say is too high to be serviced properly at the existing Thompson’s space.

To help the recreational boater, the NPS under three of the four plans is intending to build sanded “beaches” from which no-rental recreational paddlers can launch, as opposed to floating docks.

Working under a firm deadline, Peter May, the NPS Regional Director for Lands, Planning, and Design for the National Capital Region, stated that the public would have until March 5 to weigh in with comments about the proposals presented at the library meeting. Under the NPS overall plan, additional opportunities for public comments will be given later. Only unnamed white boxes where structures are planned were shown on the map renderings displayed at the meeting.

When asked by an audience member what schools were being considered for each outlined spot, Kevin Brandt, NPS Superintendent for the C&O National Historical Park, stated, “The short answer is that we don’t know. We have not identified specific groups or universities or individuals that go with these white boxes.” When asked when the information would be available to the public, Brandt commented, “We think maybe by the time that we get to the end of this project, we will have a much better idea, but at this point we don’t know.”

The NPS officials, when asked, could not yet state how the project would be funded, nor what criteria would be considered internally at the NPS in making their final decisions.

In the Q&A period of the public meeting, the NPS chose not to answer questions posed by audience members regarding parking, traffic congestion, project timetables or the use of powerboats in the area. Queries relating to the status of the mostly shuttered Washington Canoe Club, as well as the possible impact of the city’s massive Clean Rivers sewage project, were not answered at the meeting by the NPS, which stated that the information will be provided to the public at a later point in the planning phase.

When asked what D.C. officials had been involved in the planning and the determination of the four scenarios, Peter May stated that various city agencies, among them the Department of Transportation and the Office of Planning, were consulted, but he could not provide any specificity as to which officials and their level of involvement. When contacted after the meeting, D.C. Council member Jack Evans stated that his office had not been contacted by the NPS regarding any of the proposed concepts, nor has he been asked by the agency for input. Officials from the Mayor’s office also expressed their surprise about the meeting after being contacted by The Georgetowner.

Following the public comments phase scheduled to end March 5, the NPS will undertake the additional steps mandated under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). These steps are expected to take 18 to 24 months to complete.