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Georgetowner •

Before the rain and cooler air swept in, the weather for the annual Volta Park Day was perfect Oct. 6. Food, music, games, rides and a flea market greeted the young and old who visited and filled the park at Volta Place and 34th Street. It was an easy and fun gathering that showed off the best of Georgetown, especially its youngest residents.

John Lever, a member of the Friends of Volta Park, had this to say about the day: “Generally, Volta Park Day is less about making money than getting the community involved in Volta Park. For the year, the Friends of Volta Park tries to cover $50,000 in needed maintenance and upkeep for our little park which the city would otherwise not provide. Through our Volta Park Gala in the spring and with sponsorships, we have been able to get close to our goal but still need more than $10,000 dollars from the community. This event builds awareness of the great facilities so the public can help. Go to www.voltapark.org to lean more.”

Lever added: the West team of Georgetown’s west side beat the East team of the east side in the annual softball game.
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Georgetowner •

This Saturday, join volunteers of the Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy and National Park Service rangers in saluting a Georgetown treasure, now 75 years old.

Georgetowner •

The Washington Folk Festival brings traditional music to Glen Echo, the Ireland 100 festival wraps up and the District starts getting its jazz groove on.

Gary Tischler •

The classic sex symbol lives on.

Georgetowner • May 27, 2016

We wish everybody a Happy Memorial Day — and ask that you take time to remember all those who have defended America, especially those who have fallen in the defense of freedom.

Meanwhile, please bear with us over the next few days as we transition to a new, improved website. Rest assured that all of Georgetowner.com’s previous content and latest stories will reappear in a more elegant and easier-to-navigate form.

Gary Tischler • May 26, 2016

It’s less than a month until the June 14 D.C. Primary Election, so it’s not too surprising that candidate forums and debates and the like are in full swing across the District.

As political events go, these forums in front of citizens’ groups, ANCs and advocacy organizations come and go. Traditionally in this town, few people pay intense attention, what with Memorial Day coming up and summer, after days of rain, about to start at last.

The many forums in other locations may account for the fact that the 2016 candidates’ forum held by TENAC, the D.C. Tenants Advocacy Coalition, at Sumner School last week was often a disjointed if enthusiastic affair, with candidates going in and out, apparently from forum to forum. But with TENAC’s redoubtable chairman Jim McGrath as host, the event also offered up a small corner of local politics and activism in action — this in a time of great and often furiously fast changes in the District.

TENAC represents those residents of the District who rent, those who are not home or condo owners. According to TENAC, these folks make up two thirds of the city. They are in the eye of the storm when it comes to the issue of affordable housing, with its unwieldy and often misleading definition and standards, not to mention rent control, which tenants see as a program under attack. TENAC is also involved with the rights — housing, rent control, care facilities — of the city’s elderly, aging and transitioning population, likewise facing challenges in this age of growing prosperity for some, though far from all.

The meeting was a mixed bag, a little awkwardly constructed to coincide with a presentation by a group opposing the sale of the Washington Home and Community Hospices to Sidwell Friends School. Candidates were asked if, given the opportunity, they would use eminent domain as a tool to address that issue. The proposed and impending sale of the Washington Home has become controversial, highlighting the plight of the city’s elderly residents and their families.

The turnout at the forum by candidates was sporadic. Ward 2 Council member Jack Evans, who is up for reelection but running without opposition, showed up to note his long-time support for tenants’ rights, as did Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. Among the signs and flyers were “Dump the Trump” and “There Is No Substitute for Rent Control.” McGrath said that, while the city is booming financially, rents are going “through the roof” and “renters are suffering tremendously.”

“We have to make sure that we keep rent control secure,” he said.

Some candidates suggested that the D.C. Council should hold meetings on the Sidwell Friends–Washington Home issue. There was talk about eliminating property taxes for seniors, about aging in place. Somebody said that Hawaii was the most expensive state in the country in terms of rent and real estate costs, but that D.C. was moving up fast. Several TENAC members posited the idea that residents of retirement homes like the Washington Home were actually tenants and should have tenants’ rights.

Vincent Gray arrived with his arm in a sling (“rotary cuff injury,” he explained). Gray is back in the running for his old seat in Ward 7, now occupied by Yvette Alexander. He said that on matters like the Washington Home, budgets and rent control, “you should demand transparency. Don’t let them cancel hearings. Insist on having hearings, on transparency.”

In these kinds of meetings, the human element is always present. Politics are not just local; they’re closer and more centered than that. Both Evans — who ran for mayor twice and often lets people know he’s the longest serving member of the Council — and Gray, who was elected mayor of this city, have personal connections to the Washington Home. The wives of both men spent their last days in hospice care there.

Moments like these, when a memory like that surfaces, remind you that politics, at whatever level, is always local, even as local as the heart.
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Richard Selden • May 25, 2016

At a May 17 public meeting at the Carnegie Library, District Department of Transportation staffers shared their plans to extend DC Streetcar — the spanking new system operating since February on a 2.4-mile stretch of H Street — to Georgetown. One of the options presented has dedicated streetcar lanes for nearly the entire route; the other has dedicated lanes only from Mount Vernon Square to Washington Circle (Foggy Bottom). Without dedicated lanes, the cars mix in with automobile, bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

The proposed route, about three and a half miles, takes New Jersey Avenue to a reconfigured K Street, cutting down under the Whitehurst Freeway. Overhead-wire, wireless (underground or battery) and combination power systems are being considered.

Once the planning process is complete, construction might start in 2022, with the line opening a few years later.

The current H Street line had an average weekday ridership in April of about 2,300, with about 3,200 riders on Saturdays. The absence of dedicated lanes reduces the speed of the short trip, making it less attractive to would-be passengers.

A May 19 meeting will cover the line’s eastward extension to the Benning Road Metro station. Another meeting is expected to take place this fall.

Streetcars last ran in Georgetown in 1962.

Percy Metcalfe •

Georgetown is set to welcome a summer farmers market at a corner that could use some life. The small parking lot at Wisconsin Avenue and P Street NW, part of the former Neams and Marvelous Market property, will offer produce and other items from Licking Creek Bend Farm of Needmore, Pennsylvania, beginning June 5.

Across from Thomas Sweet ice cream parlor, the property at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and P Street housed the famed Neams Market for decades until 2000, when Marvelous Market opened at the spot and then closed in April 2014.

The incoming market will provide the community with healthy, naturally grown produce from a 60-acre farm tucked away in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

Michael Tabor and Esther Siegel, husband and wife operators of the organic farm, are no strangers to the D.C. farmers’ market scene. Their fresh produce has been sold at the Adams Morgan Farmers Market every summer since the mid-1970s.

The outdoor market will be at 3217 P Street, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., every Sunday, regardless of the weather, selling non-GMO fruit and vegetables, grown without chemical pesticides, picked just the day before.

Sivan Properties, Inc., purchased the property in 2015 from the Neam family.