Power Supply launches

March 12, 2013

A new Paleo delivery system has launched from local resident Robert Morton, which eliminates processed food, including grains, dairy, sugar and preservatives. The Power Supply mission is to build healthy, accessible meals and it has charted benchmark and baseline standards to help users understand where their food falls. Customers place an order using the MyPowerSupply.com website, and meals can be ordered for lunch and dinner in three or five day increments. Prices range from $35 for three day’s worth of lunch meals, to $119 for five day’s worth of lunch and dinner meals. Customers can alert the company to permanent substitutions for ingredients as well. Power Supply delivers meals on Monday and Thursday to Crossfit gyms across D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

Power Up for Spring


Get ready to ring in the summer with the Garden Marketplace March 22 through 24 at the Washington Convention Center. The show features hundreds of displays of products and flowers, including water lilies to bamboo table fountains and exotic bulbs. The show goes from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day.

D.C. Environmental Film Festival Heats Up


The D.C. Environmental Film Festival returns March 12 with 190 documentary, feature, animated, archival, experimental and children’s films. The films will be shown at more than 75 venues around Washington, D.C., including museums, embassies, libraries, universities and local theaters. The critical role of rivers and watersheds will be a special focus of the 2013 Festival’s films, selected to provide fresh perspectives on global, national and local environmental issues. Filmmakers and special guests will discuss their work at the festival. Most screenings are free to the public and include discussion with filmmakers or scientists.

E.L. Haynes High School Opens in NW


E.L. Haynes High School opened March 7 at 4501 Kansas Ave., NW, and a ceremony included remarks from Mayor Vincent Gray, Councilmember Muriel Bowser and a keynote from Maria Gomez, founder and president of social services non-profit Mary’s Center. Founded in 2004 and designated a Tier One High-Performing School by the DC Public Charter School Board, E.L. Haynes Public Charter School currently serves 950 students from grades pre-school through ten and is recognized locally and nationally for advancing student achievement. E.L. Haynes High School now fulfills the school’s college preparation promise and is a non-selective public high school designed so that every student will successfully complete a college-prep program. The 33,000-square-foot addition adjoins 12,000 existing square feet of space, adding 400 students. The facility includes science labs, a gymnasium, specialized spaces for the arts, a technology lab for video game design and programming courses and an indoor/outdoor cafeteria. The project team included architects Shinberg Levinas and general contractor Forrester Construction. Grants from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, Qualified School Construction Bond, and support from The Campaign for E.L. Haynes Public Charter School funded the project.

Jack?s Boathouse Fight Now Up to CourtMarch 13, 2013


The same day the National Park Service announced that B&G Outdoor Recreation of Massachusetts would be awarded the contract to operate at the site of Jack?s Boathouse at 3500 K St., NW, it also handed an eviction notice to Jack?s owner Paul Simkin March 1.

?The NPS violated the federal judge?s restraint order,? said Simkin, whose eviction by the National Park Service in December was changed to a wait-and-see. ?Our lawyer has filed an emergency motion for sanctions against NPS for violations.?

In its announcement about the new contract, the NPS said Jack?s did not put in a bid. Simkin responded that is because of his business?s legal action against NPS. He said a NPS letter to him states in part: ?The NPS indicates its agreement not to take any action against the plaintiff until March 31, 2013. So, that?s why this is all the more confusing, March 1, to be given an eviction notice.?

Bidding on West Heating Plant: No Takers Yet?

February 15, 2013

Got a half million bucks to get on some serious real estate bidding? It is one of the last major pieces of land in Georgetown available for commercial development. The General Services Administration will sell its surplus property, directly south of the C&O Canal and just east of Rock Creek. Bid increments are $200,000. It is assumed you will have millions more on hand to continue in GSA’s e-Bay auction which began Jan. 18 and is slated to end Feb. 19.

According to the Jan. 22 Washington Business Journal, “The West Heating Plant in Georgetown has yet to draw its inaugural bid, four days after the General Services Administration launched the online auction. It’s too early to say whether the investors have opted to pass on the site or whether the lack of activity is a strategic measure designed to keep bidders from running up the property’s price too quickly.”

Georgetown developers and citizens have been waiting for this move for at least a year. Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans, the Citizens Association of Georgetown and the National Park Service have asked for part of the site to be set aside as green space, connecting with the canal and creek. Developers and commercial real estate owners, such as the group organized by Richard Levy that envisions Four Season condos in the old Art Deco industrial building, have the money and plans drawn and ready to go.

The 29th Street building itself was the site of a June 19, 2012, House hearing that chided GSA’s slowness in disposing of old, unused gov- ernment property.

Park Service Puts Boathouse Area Up for Bid; Jack’s Attorney to File Complaint by Friday


The National Park Service has reviewed its temporary halt to an eviction of Jack’s Boathouse and wrote to Jack’s on Jan. 18 that it has decided “to issue a new temporary concession contract for non-motorized boat rental and storage devices and to allow you to continue your operations until such time as the contract is awarded, provided that your occupancy comports with National Park Service standards . . .”

The Jan. 18 letter from NPS regional director Stephen Whitesell to Jack’s Boathouse owner Paul Simkin rescinds the Park Service’s Dec. 18 letter sent to the popular canoe and kayak renting facility on the Potomac River in the shadow of Key Bridge that first brought up the eviction — and howls of protest in late December from fans of Jack’s.

The Park Service wrote in its Jan. 18 letter to Simkin that it “will release a Request for Qualification (RFQ) for non-motorized boat rental and storage devices at or near the location of the present operation. We will evaluate all responsive proposals, including yours should you wish to submit one . . . “ The deadline to respond is in two-and-a-half weeks, Feb. 6.

Meanwhile, Charles Camp, attorney for Jack’s Boathouse LLC, will file a complaint with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the end of the week, he said.

Camp said, “I am more convinced than ever that the National Park Service does not the power to do this [evict Jack’s]. Camp said he has looked over the letter of exchange and cited the assigned duties and rent but said there is “not a lease,” and he added, “The delegation of D.C. duties is to the National Park Foundation.”

There was no development allowed in the Park Service’s agreement with the District, Camp contended. “The NPS wants a concession there,” Camp said. “That’s development.”

Adding to his argument, Camp said, “Under the 1980s’ agreement [between D.C. and the NPS] rent money is to benefit the Georgetown waterfront.”

Understandably, Jack’s owner is clearly upset about this latest obstacle in his fight to remain on the shores of the Potomac and operate his business, a Georgetown tradition since the 1940s. Simkin has owned and run Jack’s since 2005. He has operated under a lease controlled by the Park Service that has not updated since 1982; the monthly rent remained a little more than $350 for years. Simkin said he has made significant improvements to the property that cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Several weeks ago, Simkin has retained attorney Charles Camp, who first wrote to Park Service, citing a detail of September 1985 reso- lution by the District Council, concerning the transfer of D.C. public land in the area around Jack’s: “The National Park Service shall assume responsibility to repair, maintain, and protect all wharves, piers, bulkheads, and similar structures that are located on the transferred land or in the adjacent waters.”

Upon learning of the Jan. 18 letter, Simkin issued this statement: “We thought we were doing the right thing. We thought by following the rules, making our customers happy, increasing our customer base . . . approximately 18 -fold and creating a special environment that people from all-around the world, not just D.C., wanted to be a part of, that we were doing things the right way. Without being too cliche, it’s the American way. We somehow failed. I think we’ve just been too naive. We are being steamrolled into oblivion by the National Park Service, and we still don’t know why.”

“If this were a simple rent matter, we would have been happy to pay what was asked. We were never asked. In addition, we have now learned that they [the National Park Service] should have been paying, all of these years, for dock maintenance — something that has cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket.

“If something doesn’t change soon in the next few days, we are finished. Jack’s will be gone forever. The legal expenses here are killing us, as is the Park Service’s failure to respond to us in any meaningful way and leaving us absolutely in the dark. Its willingness to see a D.C. resource turned into a typical corporate entity will prevail. In fairness to my employees, I’ve had to tell them that the future at Jack’s appears bleak. That’s 27 persons.”

Campus Police Warns Students About Burglaries … Again


One more time, kids: please lock your doors. Seems each semester, this warning is repeated. Last week, a rash of burglaries hit Georgetown University main campus dormitories and a classroom building from Jan. 28 to Feb. 8 at Copley, Harbin, McCarthy and Regents Halls., according to the university’s public safety department. Most items taken include a laptop, phone and watch. In all cases, doors to the rooms were unlocked. One of the suspect was described as “a black man with a thin build. He’s about 5’10 and was seen wearing a green jacket. Anyone with information should call police,” according to WJLA.

One of the Georgetown Cuddlers Gets a New Trial


The D.C. Court of Appeals overturned the 2010 conviction of “an Arlington man accused of breaking into homes and sexually assaulting male Georgetown University students as they slept,” according to the Washington Examiner. The court ruled Jan. 31 that Todd Matthew Thomas “can get a new trial because prosecutors were allowed to tell jurors that he was previously convicted of sexually assaulting another man in Virginia.” Thomas had been sentenced to 26 years in prison for burglary and assaults on five male Georgetown students between 2007 and 2008. The assaults occurred on 33rd and 35th Streets near the university’s main campus. During the trial, Thomas has claimed another “Georgetown Cuddler” had committed the crimes, because there were similar attack on female students — and he had been wearing an electronically monitored ankle bracelet at that time.

Residents Express Frustration With Glover Park Traffic


Just north of Georgetown, the new traffic patterns formed by Glover Park’s $5-mil- lion Wisconsin Avenue Streetscape Project have many neighbors fuming over the reduced lanes on the avenue. The project put rush-hour lanes at two, down from three; the intent was to make the area more walker-friendly. Others like the wider sidewalks, such as the one next to Holy Rood Cemetery. The debate may seem like it is driver versus pedestrian, but it is more than that as residents worry about traffic overflow.

Comments abound on community forums. Indeed, there is a Facebook page for venting: www.facebook.com/GloverParkTrafficJam.

Rick Gersten wrote in the Georgetown Forum: “This plan apparently was generated by the need to promote smart growth planning. I, as many of you do, support smart growth planning. However, we can’t stand by and allow the city and those who favor this project to be protected, without changes, simply because ‘smart growth planning’ has been the reason for it. … We have either experienced firsthand or have heard from others the reasons we have no Metro in Georgetown. Here it is: The decision to not have metro was made by a few people who derided those who were in favor of that project. We are experiencing that same type of attack in reverse by a few influential people who stand by the original plan of the relined Wisconsin Avenue project.”

Cynthia Anthony added this in the forum: “To avoid the traffic mess on Wisconsin Avenue, I now drive farther into the residential area. … When I have driven straight up Wisconsin in non-peak hours (which used to be a pretty short trip) there are very few cars actually using the left-hand turn lanes. We’re now all crammed into the one lane, and if someone gets out of a cab, or a bus can’t fit all the way into the curb, there’s goes the traffic flow. “

Another Glover Park resident wrote directly to the Georgetowner: “Sure the neighborhood harps about it. But it is perhaps the best thing that ever happened for everyone down the hill in Georgetown — and everyone in the neighborhood. Stand up here for a while and wait to see how that open median allows fire trucks, ambulances and motorcades to double their speed from Calvert Street to Holy Rood. … I was out in front of Pearson’s the other day, and there was a Secret Service guy on a big Harley parked watching the avenue: a hook-and-ladder headed south at full speed, cleared Calvert and with the median open must have kept going 40 miles per hour south; then, there was a motorcade north. Think of the mess those two would have made with the old system.”