Editorials and Opinions

Georgetowner • October 8, 2010

-We write in response to a press release and neighborhood mailing by Tudor Place Foundation announcing the public presentation of a Master Plan for Tudor Place, the historic house museum and garden in Georgetown. The Plan includes the construction of a two-story above ground Visitor Center on 31st Street, a large one story Education Center behind 1670 31st Street, a large Greenhouse visible from 32nd Street, and a large Collections Storage addition at the south end of the historic Garage that currently tops out at six stories above 32nd Street. All of these projects are to be located at the perimeter of the property and will transform the Tudor Place from a residential into an institutional property and will diminish its historic character.

We, the undersigned sixty-plus neighbors of Tudor Place, are adamantly opposed to several aspects of this plan. We believe that other community residents, if faced with the same circumstances, would react as we have—politely, proactively and persistently—to create a plan satisfactory to all parties.

We support the goals of this Master Plan, which are to ensure the long-term preservation of the historic house and the archives and collections, to better secure the property, and to continue the educational mission of the Foundation.

We live on the streets around Tudor Place, and we value the historic house, especially its landscape. We have been staunch supporters of Tudor Place over the years, volunteering time and donating funds. We have testified at past BZA hearings in support of Tudor Place.

When we first learned of the Master Plan earlier this year, we were stunned that the Plan had been in preparation for two years without any consultation with the surrounding community. We were shocked by the scope of the proposed plan: a near 50% increase (about 10,000 SF) to the existing physical plant at Tudor Place (about 21,000 SF including the 10,000 SF main house).

Since then, a “working group” of neighbors has generated alternatives that would accommodate the expressed needs of Tudor Place while reducing the impact of the proposed construction on neighboring properties. While Tudor Place has responded with minor adjustments, the most negative aspects of the original Plan remain.

When asked about digitizing the archives and storing them offsite so that the building space could be reduced, Tudor Place told us that digitizing was very expensive and that the collections should not leave the property. We accepted that.

We asked about Tudor Place purchasing one of the larger nearby houses and configuring it to accommodate their needs. We were told that was too expensive.

We asked if the historic value of the 1960s fallout shelter preempted its use as collections storage. After being initially told that Tudor Place would consider this option, we have since been told that the fallout shelter will not be considered for collections storage. We have accepted that.

We asked if the Greenhouse could be located on the south side of the historic garage building where a smaller greenhouse is now located. We were told that while this could be acceptable, it was however the only suitable location for the planned collections storage facility. We have NOT accepted this.

Tudor Place has done little to accommodate our concerns and has dismissed our proposed alternatives as inefficient or too expensive. The obscenely large collections storage addition to an already enormous building along 32nd Street has now been reduced to a very large addition, still larger and rising much higher than the houses that face it. We proposed placing this storage facility underground. The large one-story Education Center is still proposed a short distance from neighbors’ properties. We proposed locating it closer to the existing building where it would have little or no impact. The Greenhouse has been reduced slightly in size but will still be a dominant presence in the currently vegetated hillside.

We have presented Tudor Place with viable alternatives to their Plan that would satisfy their needs as well as the concerns of the neighbors. This $10-12 million plan will take Tudor Place into its next 50 years. Isn’t doing the right thing worth some minor sacrifices in efficiency or cost? We are looking for a Plan that will unite the neighborhood in support.

Signed

Neighbors of Tudor Place

Jennifer and Tim Altemus
Melissa and Doug Anderson
Laura Blood
John Boffa
Mary Bradshaw
Maria Burke
Julie Chase
Carl Colby and Dorothy Browning
Kathy Bissell and Lee Congdon
Mary Ellen Connell
Paul Deveney
Ellen Clare and Scott Dreyer
Duane Ford
Robert Gabriel
Margaret and Stephen Goldsmith
Helen Darling and Bradford Gray
Edward and Vi Fightner
Susan Gschwendtner
Sally Hamlin
Patricia Hanower
Gretchen Handwerger
Laura Harper and Arnold Robert
Bill Helin
John Hirsh
John Hlinko
Laine Katz
Kate Langdon
Dana Madalon
Jack Maier
Nell Mehlman
Mary Mervene
Gerald Musarra
Nancy Paul
Carlos Ortiz
Georgina Owen and Outerbridge Horsey
Corry and Jim Rooks
Carol and Leigh Seaver
Leigh Stringer
Mindy and Dwight Smith
George and Elizabeth Stevens
Denise and Les Taylor
Danielle Tarraf and Philipp Steiner
Hardy Weiting
Jane Wilson
Lawrence Williams
Dorothy Worthington

Gary Tischler • October 6, 2010

-What people remembered about that morning was how incredibly blue the sky was — the kind of gorgeous day it was, making you feel grateful how heart-breakingly beautiful it was.

We had skies like that this Labor Day weekend, a break from the oppressive bouts of heat. Blue as a baby, a Dutch painting.

On the Tuesday that became a simple number — 9/11 — I hadn’t yet made it a habit to turn on my computer first thing after brushing my teeth. Instead, I headed out the door to take a 42 bus downtown near the White House, on my way to a photography exhibition opening at the Corcoran Gallery. I didn’t bring my camera, and I didn’t have a cell phone. I didn’t have a clue.

As the bus neared the Farragut stop, you began to see a large number of people on the sidewalks, most of them on their cell phones, which was not yet a common sight. Many of them appeared agitated. More and more people started to pour out of office buildings and the Executive Office Building.

At Pennsylvania Avenue, with the White House as a backdrop, I walked up to a policeman and asked him what was going on. “Oh, not much,” he said. “Two planes were hijacked and rammed into the World Trade Center in New York. Another one just hit the Pentagon. There’s one that’s supposed to be coming here.”

He nodded toward the White House. My first thought was why the hell are we standing here? But I didn’t say anything except maybe “Jesus” or “Oh my God”. I couldn’t say. I decided to stay and see what happened.

That was the start 9/11 for me. I saw a group of Christian stockbrokers fall to their knees outside an office building where they were convening and they prayed. I saw people start the long walks home to Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and the Maryland border. I saw people gathered around a television set in the Mayflower Hotel, and I saw the real-time collapse of the second tower. It looked unreal. A nurse who was here for a medical convention said “I’m going home to a different world.”

Somewhere in a place called Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a fourth plane had crashed in a field near this small town outside Pittsburgh, after passengers had stormed the cockpit and fought the hijackers. On Thanksgiving two years later, we visited the site: there was a big memorial full of flags and angels there and a huge indentation in a field a distance away. The town was small, and it had a football field. It snowed into the quiet
land.

I remember the days afterward: the president’s speech, his stand on the rocks, the awful images from New York, the rubble, the many dead, and the pictures of falling bodies. I remember a girl, late at night, sitting on the steps, holding a lit candle. I remember being among a group of people in Adams Morgan, who had gathered to hold candles and sing folk songs from our youth — “We Shall Overcome.”

I remember two survivors of the attacks — one from the Pentagon and a blonde office worker from the World Trade Center, who came to the Corcoran where an exhibition of photographs from 9/11 was opening. They told personal stories of their trials and still mourned those lost. The fact that the stories were plain-spoken and true made them seem like incantations.

I remember that The Georgetowner ran something like five cover stories continuously after 9/11 on 9/11. The streak did not stop until the death of Beatle George Harrison, which seemed in a strange way oddly celebratory and sad at once.

I know this much: wars came and continue, American soldiers continue to serve and die, and we and the rest of the world have an enemy that appears implacable in its devotion to destruction, violence, bombings, and war as a way of showing their hatred of cultures and nations that are different from them. This seems never ending — the carnage and that contrary idea of a holy war. This is the world we live in. They call themselves by many names — Jihadists, Taliban, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas. Here we call them terrorists. There the entire region seems in turmoil — Iraq after us, Afghanistan, Pakistan, flooded and bombed at once. It is a cauldron of suffering.

That blue-sky day prevails in my memory. I saw the Oberammergau Passion Play in Bavaria this summer, in which the man playing Jesus — a dentist — wailed at Gethsemane, crying out to God that “you have thrown me into the dust of death.”

That’s what we saw that day: the dust of death. It blotted out the perfect blue sky.

Georgetowner • June 17, 2010

This past week the council completed its work on the FY 2011 budget. States and localities around the nation, of course, are dealing with problems similar to those facing the District: a significant decline in revenues matched up against state and local budgets, which have seen sharp growth through the current decade. Much like the housing mortgage market, irrational exuberance in the stock market or the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, state and local governments have been overleveraged for a few years and now that revenues have remained flat for a third straight year, it would make sense to make some adjustments.

A good case in point is the dust-up which occurred over the funding for the proposed streetcar lines on H Street N.E. and in Anacostia. I’m pro-streetcar and supported the mayor’s original proposal, although I agree with the sentiment that we should put some more planning into what we are doing. That being said, as part of our budget deliberations last month we took what was a program funded by reallocating existing funds and changed it to a program for which we will now borrow an additional $47 million. I think this is a bad idea. As you may know, about two years ago the council passed a law to put a 12 percent cap on our borrowing, which I fully supported. What this means is if our operating budget for the year is $1 billion (it’s more like $5 billion!) then we can only borrow up to 12 percent of that, or $120 million. Borrowing an additional $47 million puts us very close to that line, not just for FY 2011, but going forward the next couple years.

I don’t think we should play it that close. In fact, I would advocate we do the very same thing with respect to our operating reserves and fund balances, because we don’t know what the future may hold. If the District’s revenues go down farther — witness the plunge in the stock market over the past month, which would impact our income tax collections — then the 12 percent cap becomes smaller. If we either leverage our debt all the way up to that line, or spend our fund balances or reserves all the way up to the line, then when something bad happens we have no margin for error. No margin at all. That should make people nervous — I know I am.

We should not borrow the additional $47 million. We can fund the streetcar project by maintaining the original proposed cut to the various Great Streets projects that are not going forward, by making the necessary recommended cuts by the Committee on Human Services and by reversing the plan to spend $7 million in cash on a proposal for small business streetscape relief (which is money we don’t have). It is likely the mayor and the council will revisit the budget when we come back from the summer recess on September 16, and hard decisions may well need to be made.