Demolition of Brightwood car barn continues in earnest

Having been stalled for several months due to a historic landmark designation application that was ultimately voted down by the Historic Preservation Review Board, demolition of the Brightwood car barn, on Georgia Avenue between Missouri Avenue and Peabody Street NW, continued today. This is the site of one of the six proposed Walmarts in the District.

Behind the effort to recall ANC4B04 commissioner Doug Smith

John Beverly, the president of Concerned Citizens of Brightwood East and the man who has spearheaded the effort to recall ANC4B04 commissioner Doug Smith, says that he initiated the effort due to Smith's "lack of communication with residents" and "lack of involvement" in community issues. Smith serves as treasurer of ANC4B; he also created and co-chaired the Large Tract Review committee which examined Walmart's development proposal for the Curtis Chevrolet site.

When asked for specifics, Beverly said that Smith left 4B04 residents in the dark about issues surrounding that development. I told Beverly that, as a 4B04 resident myself, I've attended quite a few meetings on that very topic. When asked if he had attended any of the meetings, he said he had not, because he didn't know about them. He blamed Smith for not informing his constituents that the meetings were being planned.

The strange thing is this: Doug Smith is a contributing member of Concerned Citizens of Brightwood East. Smith told me that he joined the group around the same time he began campaigning. Smith said that since he was elected, he's communicated with the group regularly, even bringing flyers announcing his special 4B04 meetings to their meetings.

I thought this might be a digital divide issue, as older residents often don't make use of email, and 4B04 has a sizable number of senior citizens. One of the biggest topics of discussion at the Large Tract Review committee meetings was how to reach out to those community members who don’t have access to email and therefore may not be aware of the development’s progress. But when I asked Beverly how past ANC4B04 commissioner James Sydnor used to disseminate information to constituents, he said that it was mostly by email, and that he was satisfied with Sydnor's level of communication. (One thing Smith hasn't done is establish a list of his constituents' email addresses in order to disseminate information through email blasts; Smith told me this is something he will work on.)

I told Mr. Beverly that there have been questions about the recall effort posted on the Brightwood listserv and asked if he had seen them. He said that he was not a member of the listserv. "Other ANCs want to support him, and that's fine," he said, "but this is a 4B04 issue."

The recall election will be held on February 28 at MPD's Fourth District Headquarters (6001 Georgia Avenue NW).


By the way, I had been wanting to track down Concerned Citizens of Brightwood East for quite a while, and was happy to have reached Mr. Beverly. He informed me the the organization formed a little under two years ago, and generally meets on the second Wednesday of each month, though they're now in recess until March. A website is under construction; til it goes live, if you're interested in being alerted about Concerned Citizens of Brightwood East meetings, drop me an email and I'll make sure you get onto Mr. Beverly's notification list.

Walmart signs lease on Curtis Chevrolet land; community benefits advocates spurred to further action

Report from the Washington Post's Jonathan O'Connell:

Of the four sites in the District where Wal-Mart announced that it would like to open its first stores in the city, the one on Georgia Avenue has generated more controversy than the other three combined.

Opponents of the store have held rallies, gathered petition signatures, put up yard signs, made T-shirts, written letters to elected officials and filed a request for part of the site to be declared historic.

Which is why some Wal-Mart watchers were surprised to learn that the chain has signed its first lease in the city for the Georgia Avenue store, where it plans to open in a former Chevrolet dealership at the corner of Georgia and Missouri Avenues in Northwest.

Local opposition to Wal-Mart, generally led by organized labor and anti-poverty advocates, has centered around the Georgia Avenue store for good reason. Of the four sites it is the only one in the midst of a deeply rooted residential neighborhood. The location is also adjacent to many small businesses — prompting concerns that some local shops could suffer — and it is at an intersection that is already wracked by traffic.

But as a development, the Ward 4 store is easiest. There is no public land involved and no apartments or other stores being built above or below it. It’s really just a Wal-Mart.

Where is the city government on all this? District officials and Wal-Mart representatives have been discussing a “community benefits agreement,” but no announcement has been made.

“We haven’t heard anything from the mayor about how the negotiations are going,” said Mackenzie Baris, lead organizer for DC Jobs With Justice.

She said with the Georgia Avenue lease in place, she was done waiting and had begun asking members of the D.C. Council to hold hearings on legislation that would make the chain’s entrance into the city much more difficult.

“The mayor is clearly not moving quickly enough to make sure that community benefits are in place before these stores are finalized,” she said.

Yet another hole appears in the Brightwood Car Barn wall

I took the above photo this morning. Work is clearly continuing, despite the fact that the building is pending historic landmark status and no raze work is supposed to be done before the October 27 hearing with the Historic Preservation Review Board.

Walmart assured me via Twitter that work had, in fact, stopped. I replied that that's not the case. The rep has yet to respond:

Work seems to be continuing on Brightwood Car Barn, despite pending landmark status

I noticed late last week that a garage door and part of a wall have been removed from the Brightwood Car Barn, despite the fact that the structure is pending historic landmark status and therefore is not supposed to be razed prior to the Historic Preservation Review Board's hearing on October 27. For comparison, this is what the wall looked like before last week:

Historic Preservation Review Board files application to designate Brightwood Car Barn as historic landmark

From an email from Tim Dennee of the Historic Preservation Office:

This is to inform you that today the Historic Preservation Review Board has received and filed an application to designate the following property
as a historic landmark pursuant to the Historic Landmark and Historic
District Protection Act of 1978 (D.C. Official Code § 6-1101 et seq.):

Brightwood Street Railroad Company Car Barn
5917-5929 Georgia Avenue, NW
Square 2986, Lot 38

Pursuant to D.C. Official Code § 6-1102(6)(B), the properties are
considered historic landmarks temporarily, effective the date of filing
(i.e., immediately).

Permit applications related to these properties cannot be issued without
historic preservation review pursuant to D.C. Official Code § 6-1104
through 6-1108. ...

We are aware there is a pending application to raze this property. It
cannot be issued without the necessary review and clearances as stated
above. Please notify your staff of this matter.

We are scheduling a hearing on the matter for Thursday, October 27, 2011.

Thanks to Richard for the tip.


Brightwood Car Barn HPRB app

DCRA issues stop-work order to Foulger-Pratt

Word from DCRA is that a stop-work order and citation have been issued to the developer Foulger-Pratt for beginning to demolish the Brightwood Car Barn without obtaining the appropriate permits.

UPDATE: DCRA has apparently done the research and discovered that Foulger-Pratt actually did apply for the necessary permits, but the address of the building was off by a few numbers (!), hence the confusion. The stop-work order has been lifted.

Message from DCRA director Nicholas Majett regarding the Brightwood Car Barn

The Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) sent its chief building inspector to the Curtis Chevrolet site last night after being alerted that the demolition of the car barn had begun, even though the owner did not have a permit to do so. DCRA director Nicholas Majett followed up today:

"The inspection revealed that a section of the roof was removed. While questionable it did not rise to the level of demolition or raze. The owner has not applied for a permit. We intend to question the owner and then make a decision on whether or not any enforcement action is warranted."

Photos: Demolition of Brightwood Car Barn begins

Roof partially removed.




Interior of the Car Barn...look up, you can see sky where the roof used to be.

The Brightwood Car Barn, one of the few standing car barns from the era of DC's first streetcars, is now in the first stages of demolition, despite past efforts of the DC Preservation League and other preservationists to save it. Walmart and Foulger-Pratt have said that they intend to use the bricks from the car barn to construct part of the Walmart store that is planned to be built on the site.

UPDATE: I spoke with ANC Doug Smith and he confirmed what I suspected; the ANC was not informed that the demolition was moving ahead. This has taken everyone by surprise.

ANOTHER UPDATE: CM Bowser said that DCRA is sending an inspector over.

AND ANOTHER UPDATE: DCRA's chief building inspector visited the site last night (Tuesday, 9/6); here is what DCRA director Nicholas Majett had to say following the inspection.

UPDATE 09/08/11 12pm DCRA has issued a citation and a stop-work order to Foulger-Pratt.

Office of Planning releases Large Tract Review for proposed Georgia Avenue Walmart location

Final Large Tract Review Square 2986

Video: Respect DC Coalition's musical flash mob at Laurel Walmart

The Respect DC Coalition has been working to ensure that Walmart agrees to a Community Benefits Agreement in DC. Walmart has so far not agreed to do so (representatives from Walmart have in fact evaded questions about CBAs at several community meetings I've attended).

ANC4B's resolution on proposed Walmart development submitted to Office of Planning, along with subcommittee reports

This is ANC4B's finalized resolution on the proposed Walmart development at Georgia and Missouri Avenues. It, along with ANC4B's Commmittee on Square 2086's reports, has been submitted to the Office of Planning for review.

WalmartResolution6-27-11Adopted (3)

ANC4B unanimously votes to oppose Square 2986 Large Tract Review unless Commission recommendations are met; Walter Reed LRA meeting Thursday

After much deliberation at last night's meeting, ANC4B finally voted to not support the Large Tract Review for Square 2986 (aka "the Curtis Chevrolet Site" or "the site of the potential Walmart") unless a long series of recommendations are adopted. The recommendations are in the areas of transportation demand management, traffic circulation, building design, safety, neighborhood impact, and community benefits. I only have access to the draft resolution at this time; I'll link to the final resolution once I get a hold of it.

ANC4A has also unanimously opposed Walmart's LTR.


.....

On Thursday night, the Walter Reed Local Redevelopment Authority (LRA) will meet for the first time since the announcement was made that the General Services Administration no longer wanted its 30+ acres of land on the site, and that all of the Georgia Avenue frontage will go to the District. This decision will significantly alter the development plans devised by the LRA and the community through a series of meetings last spring.

WRAMC LRA Committee Meeting
When: Thursday, June 30, 2011, 7:00 PM
Where: Ft. Stevens Senior Recreation Center
1327 Van Buren Street, NW

DDOT: Walmart has satisfied the Large Tract Review requirements for the Curtis Chevrolet site

DDOT, the agency that had denied Walmart's initial traffic plan, now says that the company has submitted sufficient data and analysis to meet the Large Tract Review requirements. In a letter to the Office of Planning, DDOT said that "the Applicant has identified mitigation measures in order to reduce the transportation impact of their proposed development to include increased roadway capacity and safety, which will require the loss of curbside parking." See the full letter below.

DDOT and the Office of Planning have yet to respond to the report submitted by ANC4B's Large Tract Review Committee.

Final Walmart Georgia Ave Lg Tract Review Jun 23

Walmart's mailer to DC residents: it's as if they're conducting an ill-fated political campaign

Walmart is feeling a little wobbly about the chances that the four sites that they've chosen for stores in the District will actually become realities, and here's proof. Yesterday, the mailer you see here was received in mailboxes all across the city. You're looking at the "Ward 4 edition" right now; the version that was sent to parts of the city that don't contain potential Walmart sites received different versions (i.e., the headline on the one I saw that was sent to Ward 3 residents proclaims "Walmart's new DC stores will create 1,200 jobs", rather than the Ward 4-specific language you see above). The piece looks very similar to the kind of literature we're used to receiving from candidates during campaign seasons, complete with a disclaimer notice ("Paid for by Walmart Stores, Inc.").





The "73%" statistic is a reference to a telephone poll that Walmart conducted in the fall of 2010, just before they announced their intentions to move into the District. At community meetings, Walmart representatives have repeatedly referred back to the results of the telephone poll. I was not one of the 800 people surveyed, but I've spoken with a few people who were and I've been told that the questions asked were posed more circuitously than "Do you want a Walmart in your neighborhood, yes or no?" (I have yet to obtain a copy of the actual questions that were asked.)




The mailer's interior again emphasizes that Walmart will create new jobs, though they neglect to mention that they're also likely to take jobs away, as small businesses in the surrounding neighborhoods struggle to survive in Walmart's shadow. And, as David Merriman and Joseph Persky of the University of Illinois wrote in their recent Washington Post piece on Walmart's entry into Chicago, "In considering whether to encourage or oppose Wal-Mart’s entry into the District, our results suggest that job creation should not be an overriding factor." Merriman and Persky note that over a period of two years, the number of jobs Walmart created in Chicago was offset by the number of jobs that were lost due to small businesses' shuttering after Walmart's arrival.

"Access to healthy food" is also emphasized here. But as we've learned from the USDA's recently uploaded online tool, Ward 4 is actually not considered a food desert at all. Richard Layman has also taken note of this. From Layman's post:

WRT Brightwood, considering that there is a below average Safeway at Petworth but the store is going to be upgraded to be roughly comparable to the City Vista store, plus the store at Piney Branch Road, plus the Giant Supermarket at Eastern Ave. and Riggs Road just across the border in Maryland, plus the proposed Safeway at Riggs Road and South Dakota Avenue as part of the Cafritz project, plus the Safeway on Connecticut Ave. in Chevy Chase, not to mention the Yes Grocery, I think it would be hard to say that people are underserved...

I found a mapping tool, and started mapping 3 mile retail trade areas from a handful of supermarkets that serve Brightwood: Safeway in Petworth, Safeway at Piney Branch Road, Safeway in SW DC, Safeway in Chevy Chase, the Yes Grocery on Georgia Ave. NW, the PanAm Market at Michigan and Eastern Avenues, the Giant Supermarket on the DC-Maryland border at Eastern Avenue and Riggs Road in Prince George's County. But since so much of the city was covered just with these stores, I decided to start over.

I changed the radius to 1.5 miles from the store location. It doesn't include the proposed Safeway location on Riggs Road NE or the proposed Walmart on Georgia Avenue NW or New York Avenue NE. It doesn't include the PanAm store on 14th Street NW, or independent supermarkets in Mt. Pleasant, nor Florida Market. A lot of stores aren't listed.

I'm not saying that I don't think Ward 4 could use more food options than it currently has, just that Walmart's avowals that they're rescuing us from the bowels of food-desertism are rather baseless.

Of course the mailer mentions nothing about the true folly: that it's becoming more and more apparent that the site, near the intersection of Georgia and Missouri Avenues, can't realistically support the proposed development without having a serious adverse affect on traffic, pedestrian safety, and quality of life in the surrounding residential area.




The best part by far is this tear-off response card (which requires a stamp, as postage will not be paid by the addressee; how...presumptuous). The first item that citizens are asked to check reads: "I would like more information on the efforts to bring Walmart to DC" (emphasis mine). Efforts? I didn't realize Walmart felt that they were fighting such an uphill battle; which I suppose is a good thing, as it means that the groups that have been advocating for smart development at the Curtis Chevrolet site are making a difference. The next item reads: "I would like to sign a petition supporting Walmart coming to DC" (again, emphasis mine). I've no doubt that we'll see Walmart's "community action" reps roving the streets of Ward 4 trying to obtain our signatures in an effort to show our elected officials exactly how much they're wanted/needed. The third item is a call to increase the size of their community action network: "I would like to get involved in the efforts to bring Walmart to DC". Yes, Walmart is attempting to bolster a "grassroots" effort on their own behalf.

I would prefer it if the company would directly address the issues that it knows it's dealing with at its proposed Ward 4 site. In February, we (myself and a small group of neighbors) met with Victor Hoskins, the deputy mayor for economic development. We drew him a map of the proposed site, the surrounding streets and current traffic patterns, the six schools that are within a three-block radius of the site (yes, you read that right, six schools within a three-block radius...and five of them are elementary schools), the proximity of the Fourth District Police Headquarters building, and the proposed location of the loading dock off of Missouri Avenue (and how the 18-wheelers will turn from narrow, two-lanes-in-each-direction Missouri Avenue into the loading dock area). Hoskins sat back, looked at the drawing, and said that it looked like a total mess to him, and that if it's really as bad as the drawing made it look, there was a good chance that the project wouldn't pass a traffic study.

We're seeing now that Hoskins was onto something. Yet Walmart still refuses to acknowledge that. They want this deal to go through that badly.


View Larger Map
The section of Missouri Avenue that will soon be the site of a loading dock entry, if Walmart gets its way.

ANC 4A unanimously opposes Walmart LTR as currently submitted

Here are 4A resident Michele Baskin's notes from Tuesday night's ANC 4A meeting, during which 4A's commissioners moved to oppose Walmart's current Large Tract Review.

I made it out to the ANC 4A mtg at Fort Stevens Rec Center on Tuesday night where Walmart's LTR submission was on the agenda. It was really unclear what the commissioners would choose to do since DDOT released their letter earlier in the day noting problems with the LTR and requesting a hold on approval.

All commissioners were present but very few community members. About 3/4 the way through the meeting, Muriel Bowser made an appearance.

The commissioners were originally going to vote on the comments from the ANC either in support of or opposition to the LTR plan. It was suggested that they postpone the vote in light of DDOT's letter. Dave Wilson, the commissioner tasked with creating the ANC's comments, suggested that they go ahead and vote on the LTR as is, in case the window for submitting comments did close as scheduled on May 30th. He also stated that the concerns brought up by DDOT were the same concerns he was bringing up in comments, making the DDOT letter in support of the ANC's proposed comments. After much wrangling around process, a very lengthy motion was crafted (I am still trying to get the exact working from Wilson or Whatley) that stated that ANC 4A was in opposition to Walmart's LTR as written but that this would be suspended if Walmart submitted a new LTR in response to DDOT's letter or if the comment period was extended to June 30th at the earliest, at which point any new submissions by Walmart would be reviewed and a new motion submitted. There was a lot more legalese, but basically this was a vote to oppose the LTR as currently submitted. The vote was 8-0 to oppose the LTR by Walmart.

So let me repeat, ANC4A is on the record as opposing the current Walmart LTR in a unanimous fashion.

The commissioners also took up a separate motion concerning a community benefits agreement. There was much discussion about the reality of enforceability and the fact that Wal-Mart has never signed one of these. There was also concern that it would be problematic to have each ANC in the city craft their own CBA or list of demands. I suggested that the ANC take a look at the draft from Respect DC, and it was agreed that they would table any CBA motions until Respect DC's proposal was read.

Bowser suggested that the ANC need not worry about a CBA because she and her fellow councilmembers would take care of it. She seems to think that she can leverage LTR approval and building permit issuance to get favorable terms and a binding agreement on a CBA.

There was much mention of the upcoming ANC4B meetings and people were directed to next week's meeting to receive more information around the Walmart issue.

The next ANC 4B meeting regarding Walmart will be held on Thursday, May 12, at Emory Methodist Church, 7100 Georgia Avenue NW, 7-9 pm.