Town Topics

Robert Devaney •

After studies and surveys, the District Department of Transportation has opted for a streetcar “premium transit” option at a cost of almost $350 million to build. Approval processes would take at least two years before construction begins. The line would go would go from Union Station to Wisconsin Avenue and K Street.

Here’s more from a DDOT letter:

“The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) announced the completion of the Union Station to Georgetown Premium Transit Alternative Analysis (AA) Study, a comprehensive analysis of alternatives to provide high quality transit in this important east-west corridor. This study was funded through a Federal Transit Administration (FTA) grant.

The completion of this study marks an important step in DDOT’s commitment to provide more and improved transportation choices in the District of Columbia. In this study DDOT partnered with FTA and explored several options to provide premium transit service between Union Station and Georgetown while analyzing the needs of the corridor.

DDOT conducted an active public and stakeholder engagement process and held several public, stakeholder and agency meetings to gather input from the public as it studied several alternatives. Alternative 1, which consists of a streetcar system running primarily along K Street, NW, New Jersey Avenue, NW, and H Street, was ultimately selected as DDOT’s recommended alternative.

With the completion of this study, DDOT will now proceed to the environmental review and approval process, which will be followed by design and construction.

The report is available on project website: www.unionstationtogeorgetown.com.”

Ina Bjorbekk • November 18, 2013

This Monday, Nov.11, ceremonies will take place all over Washington D.C – and America — in honor of military veterans. Veterans Day, formerly known as Armistice Day, has been celebrated since the end of World War I. It became an official national holiday in 1954, when Congress passed a bill making it a day to honor American veterans of all wars. Veterans Day takes place every year on the 11th day of the 11th month, the day in 1918 when World War I officially ended.

It is a federal holiday in the District of Columbia, which also means no parking restrictions in the city, no trash pick-up and government office closures.

Veterans Day Observance
World War II Memorial, 9 a.m

Special ceremony celebrating World War II Veterans. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley will speak, and a U.S. Postal Service commemorative stamp will be unveiled.

National Veterans Day at Arlington Cemetery
Arlington Cemetary, 11 a.m.

To honor those who have served in the armed forces. Ceremony starts at the Tomb of the Unknowns with the laying of a presidential wreath and will be continued inside the Memorial Amphitheater.

U.S. Navy Memorial
Naval Heritage Center, 1 p.m.

Wreath-laying by the Naval District of Washington will take place near the Lone Sailor statue on the Memorial Plaza.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Constitution Avenue and Henry Bacon Drive, 1 p.m.

Veterans and their families will pay tribute to those who have served in military in Vietnam and other conflicts. A wreath-laying ceremony will take place by the Wall.

Freedom Bell Ringing Ceremony
Arlington Cemetery, West side Entrance of the welcome center, 1 p.m.

A ringing ceremony will be held by the welcome center at Arlington Cemetery. Visitors can ring the Freedom Bell to pay tribute to the armed forces or to honor loved ones in the military.

The Women in Military Service for America Memorial
Arlington Cemetery, The Women’s Memorial, 3 p.m.

The Women’s Memorial 16th annual Veterans Day Ceremony to honor all servicewomen, past and present. The ceremony will include a keynote address by Susan Scanlan, president of Women’s Research & Education Institute, a wreath-laying, and veterans’ remarks. Five servicewomen will join Scanlan to pay tribute to military veterans.

Mount Vernon Salutes Veterans
3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Highway,?
Mount Vernon, Va.
11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Performances by the Harmony Heritage Singers and Air Force String Orchestra and a wreath-laying ceremony. Free admission for all active duty, former or retired military personnel in honor of veterans. Veterans are invited to place a flower on George Washington’s tomb. Admission to Mount Vernon: adults, $17; children, $8.

Raise a Glass to Honor Our Veterans
Jack Rose Dining Saloon, 2007 18th St., NW.
6 p.m to 9 p.m

Exclusive tastings of rare single malt whiskies, sponsored by Potomac Wine & Spirits and Jack Rose Dining Saloon, in honor of veterans. Tickets are $100, and proceeds will benefit the Wounded Warrior Project.
RSVP to info@jackrosediningsaloon.com

Honoring Our United States Armed Forces, Our Veterans and Their Families
DAR Constitution Hall, 1776 D St., NW.
7 p.m.

A free concert by the organizers of the National Veterans Day Salute. Host Sheryl Lee Ralph will be joined by artists Katie Armiger, Carolyn Malachi, Y’Anna Crawley, among others, to honor veterans, military and their families.

Robert Devaney •

In one of the most intense, agenda-packed meetings in recent memory, the Georgetown-Burleith Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E voiced concerns, if not flat-out disapproval, about design concepts for the West Heating Plant – Four Seasons Residences, an underground addition for Hyde-Addison Elementary School and the former Georgetown Theater space with a rear addition.

During the Nov. 4 meeting’s police report, Lt. Hedgecock said Halloween was mostly incident-free except for some broken car windows. He indicated police were looking into drag racing along M Street between stop lights late in the night.

In an ironic twist, one of most easily approved items was Georgetown University’s new Northeast Triangle Residence Hall across Reiss Science Building near the wall of Visitation Prep — as well as the re-purposed Ryan-Mulledy-Gervase Halls within the university’s historic Dahlgren Quadrangle. The old Jesuit residences will be renovated for student use. The Northwest Triangle Hall will house 225 students; Ryan-Mulledy, 160. The total of 385 additional beds meets the Campus Plan’s call for additional on-campus spaces by fall 2015. This solution satisfied students, administrators and Georgetown residents. It is seen as an early result of the university-neighborhood peace accords of last year, already perceived as a model for town-gown conflict nationwide.
As the for the Hyde-Addison School (3219 O St., NW) addition with elevated playground and underground meeting rooms and a gymnasium, the design calls for a “landscape solution” that “lifts the lawn,” so to speak, to level the grade from P Street to O Street with a glass wall entrance facing O Street. The $12-million project for the D.C. Public Schools by the Department of General Services was news to many. Some neighbors with adjacent property to the schools expressed frustration at the quickness of such a major project as well as its proximity and noise. Commissioner Jeff Jones asked DGS “to engage neighbors more closely — and notify neighbors of reports, schedules and plans.”

The huge West Heating Plant (1051 29th St., NW) project, set to become the Four Seasons Residences, was met from some approval from neighbors and groups but disapproval from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the D.C. Preservation League. The ANC itself disapproved, calling for a re-thinking of concept in a five-page response. ANC chair Ron Lewis asked the primary question: “Can this building be saved?” There was concern about increased fenestration and brighter lighting during the night. A proposed bridge over the C&O Canal, connecting the Four Seasons Hotel to the condominiums, appeared to be dead on arrival.

With supporters like former D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams and Bob Peck, formerly of the General Services Administration, in the audience, the Levy Group and the Georgetown Group gave an overview of the future look of the reconstructed building with new parkland along Rock Creek and K Street for the neighborhood. The engineering assessment by new owner, Georgetown29K, LLC, found the present structure unfit for habitation as well as rehabilitation. It sees the old heating plant as so systemic with cracks — and rust — that a waiver should be invoked that allows most of the building to be demolished with the west facade on 29th Street being the anchor from which the new rebuilding flows; the group must show “good cause” for such a waiver of the covenant. Commissioner Bill Starrels took the lead in recommendations that call for the building not to be replace and an independent engineering review.

The former Georgetown Theater (1351 Wisconsin Ave., NW) property, purchased only weeks ago by architect Robert Bell, ran into trouble with neighbors in the backyards near its proposed rear additions. Bell’s designs for the theater are seen by many as a salvation to this tattered section of Wisconsin Avenue. Bell said at the meeting the front facade and its iconic “Georgetown” neon sign would be fixed by July 4. Neighbors on Dumbarton Street and on O Street disagreed with Bell and said the scale of his design for the property would about the property lines too severely and restrict the space for homes facing the center of the block. Others said they had just heard about the project. While liking the design in the general, the ANC expressed concern about scale, mass and height of the project. It also asked that the residents and the developer begin simply to talk.

Robert Devaney • October 24, 2013

The advisory neighborhood commission for Glover Park is running a survey on Wisconsin Avenue traffic before it comments on Nov. 4 at a transportation committee meeting, chaired by councilmember Mary Cheh. The survey site states: “Voices have been raised, mostly loudly by people who do not live in Glover Park, against the lane changes on Wisconsin Avenue, which were designed to slow traffic through our commercial center and increase pedestrian safety. The lane changes on Wisconsin Avenue north of Calvert Street have already been reversed. It is possible this hearing will result in a decision to return Wisconsin Avenue in Glover Park back to the way it was before the streetscape project.” For more details, visit [web] (http://www.anc3b.org)

Gary Tischler • October 21, 2013

We lost the next-to-last of the Mercury Seven astronaut Scott Carpenter, the learned film critic of the New Republic and elsewhere, Stanley Kaufman, and the lyrical, Pulitzer Prize-winning Cuban-American novelist Oscar Hijuelos these past few days.

SCOTT CARPENTER

Scott Carpenter, one of the pioneering, original group of brave astronauts who were the first Americans to orbit the earth in the early era of space rivalry with the Soviet Union, died at 88 of complications from a stroke Oct. 10 in Vail, Colo., at a hospice.

He was a Navy man from the beginning, commissioned in 1949, becoming a naval aviator in 1951 and serving in the Korean War. He was a test pilot, and eventually became one of the Mercury 7 Astronauts selected and introduced on April 10, 1959. Among them was John Glenn, who would become the first American to orbit the earth. Carpenter was the second. The backup pilot for the first mission, Carpenter was at Mission Control and was heard to say, “Godspeed, John Glenn,” as Glenn’s spacecraft burst the bounds of earth. Carpenter piloted his Aurora 7 craft on May 24 of that year, eating “Space Food Sticks” in space. He overshot the landing zone for his splashdown, by a considerable distance, but he was found in his life raft.

For the record here are the Mercury 7 astronauts: Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr., died 1998, U.S. Navy; Virgil Ivan (Gus) Grissom, died 1967, was commander of the Gemini mission, killed in a fire during a launch pad test one month before the scheduled launch of Apollo 1; John Herschel Glenn, Jr., former U.S. senator, Buckeye, oldest man in space; Malcolm Scott Carpenter; died 2013; Walter Marty (Wally) Schirra, Jr., died 2007; Leroy Gordon (Gordo) Cooper, died 2004; Donald Kent (Deke) Slayton, died 1993.

John Glenn was quoted as saying “Godspeed, Scott Carpenter, my great friend,” when hearing the news of Carpenter’s passing.

STANLEY KAUFFMANN

Stanley Kauffmann wrote movie—or film—reviews for the New Republic for more than 50 years with a break, writing theater reviews for the New York Times. Think of all the movies viewed for such an assignment—strung together, review after review, year after year, a lifetime in the dark.

Then, think of the straight forward, but deeply felt reviews he wrote. I remember reading him a lot. He took the job and the films seriously, but perhaps this came from being originally a man of the theater as well.

I have some empathy and sympathy for the task. Reviewing films or stage productions involves story-telling and imagery in varying degrees, as well as words, and the telling of the saga of ourselves, we humans on earth.

For Kauffmann, for all reviewers and writers, this meant dealing daily with the sublime and the ridiculous, the sublime, even among the pearls before swine, outdoing the ridiculous, and the latter becoming sublime at times. Ask Charlie Chaplin or Woody Allen, if you could.

What was evidenced in his writing was a passion, a love and affection for what he wrote about. What seemed evident in his bearing was erudition, seriousness, respect, intellect and culture. He made Americans—he was not alone in this—look at foreign films in new ways but rarely did so with the intent of calling attention to himself.

Kauffmann was 97.

OSCAR HIJUELOS

If Oscar Hijuelos had never written another book other than “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love,” he would still be famous, because that’s the book that made him a Pulitzer Prize guy in 1989.

But he did write more: “Our House in the Last World,” the wonderful, almost magical “The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O’Brien,” “Beautiful Maria of My Soul,” “A Simple Habana Melody,” “Thoughts Without Cigarettes, A Memoir,” “Dark Dude,” “Empress of the Splendid Season,” “Mr. Ives’ Christmas” and “Our House in the Last World.” Taken together, the titles alone suggest a style, a way with words, a lot of lyricism, lore, family memories, a great American and family theme.

His career, his output—and they will last pretty much forever—are another great addition to the fabric, the literary quilters of our immigration literature, which is in broad terms pretty much all of the output. It’s a crazy quilt with particular flavors and concerns of a country where everyone is an immigrant, an outsider, and insider, where citizenship and country are about matters of heart and soul, not addresses.

Hijuelos happened to be of a Cuban ethnic background—with that came soul, music, rhythm, mysterious tales, religion, neighborhoods and the tentacles of family.

He died after collapsing on a tennis court. He was only 62.

Robert Devaney • October 17, 2013

According to reports received over the weekend, the Georgetown Business Improvement Business District picked up 86 bags of trash at Georgetown Waterfront Park. Since the park is technically closed due to the partial government shutdown, the BID stepped up to assist. Though the fountain is off, people still visit the park.