Brian Flahaven

• The DC Department of General Services is opening up the Eastern Branch Building (261 17th Street SE) for community tours tomorrow morning  (Sat., April 28) from 9:00 am – 12:00 pm.  Be sure to stop by, check out the building and share your thoughts on future uses.
• On April 25, I attended Mayor Gray’s Ward 6 Budget Town Hall meeting at Eastern High and asked the Mayor for an update on development plans for Reservation 13. Specifically, I asked whether Victor Hoskins, the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, had issued the request for best and final offers to develop the two parcels of land closest to the Stadium-Armory Metro. Deputy Mayor Hoskins said that the office planned to meet with ANC 6B and ANC 7A (the Ward 7 ANC that will include the site next year) sometime in mid-May to get feedback on what should be included in the request. ANC 6B is currently looking to schedule a special call meeting with the Deputy Mayor in Hill East the week of May 14. We hope to have this confirmed shortly.
• ANC 6B will considering a number of liquor license renewal cases at next week’s May 3 ABC committee meeting and at the full commission meeting on May 8. Here is the list of stores up for renewal:
  • Albert’s Liquors, ABRA-077335, 328 Kentucky Avenue SE—Renewal of Class A Retail-Liquor Store license
  • Capitol Hill Wine & Spirits, ABRA-081749, 323 Pennsylvania Avenue SE —Renewal of Class A Retail-Liquor Store license
  • Chat’s Liquors, ABRA-000200, 503 8th Street SE—Renewal of Class A Retail-Liquor Store license
  • Gandel’s Liquors, ABRA-071312, 211 Pennsylvania Avenue SE—Renewal of Class A Retail-Liquor Store license
  • Hayden’s, Inc., ABRA-000437, 700 North Carolina Avenue SE—Renewal of Class A Retail-Liquor Store license
  • JJ Mutt Wine & Spirits, ABRA-025523, 643 Pennsylvania Avenue SE—Renewal of Class A Retail-Liquor Store license
  • S&J Liquors, ABRA-009122, 1500 Massachusetts Avenue SE—Renewal of Class A Retail-Liquor Store license
  • Safeway, ABRA-002195, 415 14th Street SE—Renewal of Class A Retail-Liquor Store license
  • World Liquors, ABRA-000076, 1453 Pennsylvania Avenue SE—Renewal of Class A Retail-Liquor Store license

  If you have any issues or complaints about any of these establishments, please contact me. Also note that ANC 6B will be considering an application for a medical marijuana dispensary on Barracks Row during our May meeting.

• I’m a huge fan of DC’s new 311 smartphone app. If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to download the app, which allows you to report issues with photos to relevant DC agencies. You can download the 311 app on the DC Government’s website.

Have a great weekend (and see you tomorrow morning)!

The Eastern Branch Building, located at 261 17th Street SE, will be open to the community next Saturday, April 28, 2012 from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm. Please stop by and take a quick tour of the former home of the Eastern Branch Boys & Girls Club. During last month’s Reservation 13 community meeting, Mayor Gray said he was interested in working with the neighborhood to determine new uses for the building.

A big thanks to the Mayor’s Office, the DC Department of General Services and the Office of Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells for making this “open house” possible.

Recommendations on various aspects of the Hine redevelopment dominated the agenda at the Tues, April 10 ANC 6B meeting. Around 50 residents attended the three and a half hour meeting at the Hill Center. Here are the highlights:

• The commission voted to send a response to the Historic Preservation Review Board on the latest Stanton-Eastbanc design changes to the Hine project. While the response notes the developer’s significant progress on a number of  commission concerns, it does outline further recommendations for improving the project’s design. In voting to support the commission’s response, I noted that I did not agree with all of the recommendations (particularly on the 7th and Penn. Avenue building),  but felt that the commission’s Hine subcommittee had on the whole voiced some legitimate concerns about the project.
• ANC 6B also voted on a number of Hine subcommittee working group recommendations, including:
  • Response to Stanton-Eastbanc’s proposed list of amenities and benefits
  • Additional recommendations for proposed amenities and benefits
  • Transportation mitigation recommendations
  • Summary of principles from the retail working group, and
  • Recommendations from the public space and community use working group

  I voted against the retail working group document because it included an unnessecarily restrictive recommendation on eating establishments (“should be limited to no more than 25% of total linear retail street frontage”) and a recommendation to limit retail and entrances on the Pennsylvania Avenue SE & D Street SE side of the development. The chair and vice-chair of the subcommittee, Commissioners Ivan Frishberg (6B02) and Brian Pate (6B05) respectively, will use the recommendations as a guide in their negotiations with the developers. I’ll add links to the documents above once they are finalized.

• A special exception and variance to permit Wagtime, an animal shelter and boarding facility, to operate at 900 M Street SE was unanimously approved by the commission. Wagtime’s owners and nearby neighbors agreed to a strong set of operational conditions to ensure that the facility does not disrupt the abutting residential area. Commissioner Kirsten Oldenburg (6B04) deserves kudos for working with Wagtime and the neighbors on this agreement.
• After some discussion, the commission voted to urge the DC Council to amend a proposal by Mayor Gray to extend the hours that bars and restaurants can serve liquor. The commission’s amendment would require any establishment seeking to extend their hours to enter into a voluntary agreement with the affected Advisory Neighborhood Commission. The commission also voted to support keeping the hours for serving liquor at their current limits in the ANC 6B commission area. The DC Council’s Committee on Human Services, which has jurisdiction over the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA), will hold a April 17 hearing on the Mayor’s proposal.
• Judge McKenna of the DC Superior Court’s Community Courts shared information on the new community courts initiative, an effort to sentence non-violent defendants/offenders to community service instead of short-term jail stays. The goal is to have the offender perform court-supervised community service in the area where the crime was committed. You can read more about the community courts on the DC Courts website.
• I shared a brief recap of the ANC 6B Hill East Task Force March 19 informational session on Reservation 13 and thanked residents for attending the meeting and the March 22 community meeting wtih Mayor Gray.
• The commission also voted unanimously to support the renaming of the alley in between 12th, 13th, C and D Streets SE after Eastern Market architect Adolph Cluss and voted to not take any action on a proposed community letter on the CSX/Virginia Avenue Tunnel project.
• ANC 6B’s May meeting will be on Tuesday, May 8, 7:00 pm at the Hill Center.

Parcels F1 and G1 surround the Stadium-Armory Metro entrance on Reservation 13. The gray parcel is St. Coletta of Greater Washington.

During the March 22 Reservation 13 community meeting, Mayor Gray said that he was directing Victor Hoskins, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, to seek Best and Final Offers (BAFOs) for development of parcels F1 and G1 on the site – the two parcels located next to the Stadium-Armory Metro. In the Reservation 13 Master Plan, these parcels are envisioned to include mixed-use retail and residential development.

As I explained in an earlier post, this announcement would normally be good news. While the “parcel by parcel” approach is not ideal, it at least gets development at Reservation 13 off the ground, particularly on the parcels around the Stadium-Armory Metro station. And there was clear interest by at least two developers in developing F1 and G1 back in 2010.

But talk of a Redskins training facility complicates the process. First,  Mayor Gray made it clear at the March 22 meeting that he has not taken parcels F1 and G1 off the table for the training facility. Thus, any developer who considers submitting a BAFO for F1 and G1 must factor in uncertainty about whether the city will ultimately use the parcels for the training facility.

Second, the 2010 request for BAFOs (pdf) issued by the city included a significant sweetener for bidding developers. The request specifically states:

If the District selects your team for the development of Phase I, and subject to the successful completion of Phase I, your team will have the exclusive right to negotiate redevelopment of Phase 2 of the Hill East project.

In other words, the “winning” developer for Phase I (Parcels F1 and G1) would have the right of first refusal to develop the remaining parcels at Reservation 13. It is unclear whether the two developers who submitted bids to the 2010 BAFO request would have done so without this incentive.

I’m curious to see if the Deputy Mayor’s office includes this same language in their 2012 request for BAFOs for Parcels F1 and G1. Given the discussions around using 30 plus of the 50 acres available for development on Reservation 13 for a training facility, I don’t know how they could. And even if they do keep the language, would developers want to put time, money and effort into submitting a bid when the request could be withdrawn or cancelled at any time?

A cynic might envision the following scenario:

1) The city submits the BAFO request for Parcels F1 and G1, but removes the “first right of refusal” language for the winning developer.

2) With the removal of “first right of refusal language” and the general uncertainty surrounding the city’s interest in a Redskins training facility for the site, the two developers decide to not submit BAFOs in response to the new request.

3) The city declares that developers are not interested in developing Reservation 13, so the only “catalyst” for development is the training facility.

Let’s hope that is not the city’s game plan.