Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Do we need the Old Georgetown Board?
• For sale: lots of floors, and perhaps a musical frog.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Everyone seems to hate the look of EastBanc’s proposed building at the Exxon station, even Anthony Lanier (although it’s important to note that Lanier isn’t backing down on his plans to build a five story building on that site).
• DCist takes a look at the Volta Bureau.

GM was out on M St last weekend walking over to the Georgetown Running Company to pick out some new running shoes when he came across the garish billboard seen above. It’s been applied to the windows of the currently vacant space between North Face and the (also vacant) Philadelphia Cheesesteak Factory. The building is owned by East Banc.

The ad is for a beer called “Landshark Lager” an Anheuser-Busch beer made for Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville restaurant. While the yellow parts of the sign above are plastic adhesive signs, the black rectangle is actually a big screen TV playing ads for the beer:

This sign almost certainly breaks the law. While some building can get away with huge signs announcing their impending opening (like there was at the North Face store) this doesn’t appear to be announcing any new establishment. That is, at least GM hopes it’s not. We don’t need something as incredibly cheesy as a Margaritaville in Georgetown.

A sign like this would need to be approved by the Old Georgetown Board (See clarification below).  According the the OGB’s minutes, there was no such approval granted. And GM would be incredibly surprised had approval been granted. The OGB slaps down applicants when their lettering is a few inches too tall. There is no way they’d approve a billboard like this, especially with the television. (GM’s uncertain whether it would also need approval from DDOT. For what it’s worth there have been no public space permits issued recently for this property. Either way it would still need approval from the OGB.)

While you might not find this sign particularly egregious, allowing it to stay would set a bad precedent. In this market downturn, Georgetown has several large empty buildings. If each one were to rent its windows out to Madison Ave. it would create a whole bunch of visual pollution.

UPDATE: GM heard word that the legality of the sign is a little more complicated than he first thought. Apparently it won’t fall under OGB jurisdiction until it’s been there 60 days. However, it is likely governed by the Historical Preservation Review Board and there is no record of the HPRB approving the signage during any recent meeting.

The construction at 1229 Wisconsin Ave. should tell you that that wasn’t the end of the story for the Apple store. One month later Apple was back with a slightly modified design, and finally obtained approval from the Old Georgetown Board.

By the way, one online source says that Apple has posted for jobs for a May 2010 grand opening of the store…

While Vox Populi may have gotten the DCist link love it’s the Georgetown Metropolitan that has the actual approved most recently rejected* designs for the new Apple store at 1229 Wisconsin Ave. Check them out:

As described in GM’s ANC round up, the approved design fits in with the 19th century buildings around it. The roofline matches the building housing Nine West and is decorated by dentil mouldings, echoing its neighbors. Hopefully the actual structure won’t be the blinding white light that the designs make them out to be.

Courtesy of ANC2E

As seen above, there are two millwork courses running above and below the double hung windows. You can also see how the street level is a wall of glass. Hopefully this represents a good compromise between Georgetown’s desire for a historic district and Apple’s desire for shiny surfaces.

Courtesy of ANC2E

Courtesy of ANC2E

This isn’t the final design. Already Commissioner Birch was encouraging the architects to add a border to the bottom of the glass wall. Still, this is the design concept, so it probably won’t change that much.

The design will be heard before the Old Georgetown Board on Thursday where it will probably be approved. No timetable for construction has been set (they haven’t even knocked down the old building yet, so it probably shouldn’t be expected until early 2010 at the earliest).

*UPDATE: The Old Georgetown Board rejected the most recent designs. It’s back to the drawing board for Apple. Read GM’s post mortem here.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Some store named “Anthony” is opening soon on Wisconsin Ave. just above R St. It appears to be a clothing boutique but GM couldn’t confirm that.
• Last month the Old Georgetown Board rejected a design put forward by Ristorante Piccolo to add a roof deck. OGB is fine with the general idea of a roof deck facing onto to Blue Alley, it just wants the 31st St. facing balcony removed first.
• Another G.U. Ten Year Plan Meeting tonight. The topic: Transportation. Expect to hear the words “GUTS” and “route” a whole bunch of times.

I don’t know if you have ever noticed the building that stands on the SE corner of M and 31st Streets…It’s currently occupied by German television Channel 2, I believe. Anyway it is under scaffolding right now and I wonder what they are up to. It’s a beautiful old building but had some regrettable alterations – from a purist’s point of view – made to it over the years.

Ask, and you shall receive.

The current tenant of that space is ZDF (that’s “Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen” or, as the reader suggested, “German Channel 2″). ZDF is a German television station based in Mainz, Germany.

At some point this building was a bank, but GM couldn’t identify what the bank was and when it left. All he could find in the Post archives was a listing for an apartment on the third floor from 1984 (2B/2BA for $249k).

As for the current construction, the Old Georgetown Board approved several changes to the building earlier this year. In January they decided that:

No objection to concept design development details for proposed canted glass wall and zinc roof alterations at entrance link as shown in supplemental drawings received and dated 30 December 2008. Recommend further study of color of zinc, clear glass, alternate fret pattern, minimal horizontal mullions, beltcourse extension, and door at roof. Provide color options in concrete specifications. File new submission of working drawings, including details and dimensions, with permit application for review by the Commission when ready.

They came back in March and decided that:

No objection to issuance of permit for alterations to existing entrance with concrete portal, canted curtain wall with Viracon glass 40% dot, flat-seam zinc roofing, and new mechanical, historic bank building to have new zinc roof with 1″ standing seams, as shown in supplemental drawings dated 18 March 2009. Note: Any subsequent modifications to the exterior design made during DCRA technical review must be re-submitted to the Commission for approval prior to issuance of permit.

It seems that this approval primarily concerns the glass structure or “hyphen” that connects the two buildings along 31st St.

So sadly, it does not seem that there will be much change to this building that currently has zero street presence.

So if you have a similar question about a development around town, drop GM at line at Georgetownmetropolitan (at) gmail (dot) com and he’ll see what he can dig up.

GM reviewed all the minutes from the OGB from January 2007 through last month. For those not familiar with it, the Old Georgetown Board is a committee that was formed by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts to review and approve all visible-from-the-street changes to buildings within the Old Georgetown district. Over the course of the two and a half years since January 2007, somewhere around 700 projects were reviewed by the board (the number isn’t exact since some projects appear multiple times before the board). Here is a chart of the total number of projects presented to the board over time:

If you squint, you can see a seasonal flux in the applications, with it rising through the first half of each calendar year and declining in the second half. The two peaks can be somewhat ignored because they represent September 2007 and September 2008. The board doesn’t meet in August and so there is generally a backlog of applications for the September meeting.

From the graph, you can see that the trough of last winter was deeper than the previous two winters. The slowest month through the whole period was February this year when only 13 projects came before the board for review. That seems consistent with the state of the wider economy. Fewer residents are planning renovations and even fewer businesses are setting up new storefronts.

The encouraging part of the graph is the sharp and consistent uptick since February. Ignoring the two September meetings, June’s total of 31 applications was the third busiest month since January 2007. Could this be another green shoot we’ve been all told to look out for?

One more interesting set of data that GM found is the rate at which home or business owners show up red-faced in front of the board. On a rather consistent basis, contractors start and even finish work before the project is approved by the OGB. You can find those projects fairly easily in the board’s minutes because they also include the phrase “the Commission regrets”, as in “the Commission regrets that the awnings were installed prior to review or permit”. Since January 2007, 96 projects have been so admonished, which represents 13% of all projects reviewed by the board. Unsurprisingly, the rejection level of such projects is much higher than the overall rate. The board rejected 34% of the projects that were started without approval; it only rejected 9% of all the other cases.

Despite this losing strategy, it appears that there’s been a steady increase in such unpermitted projects since January of 2007. Here’s a chart of all the “regrets” cases over the last two and a half years, with a trend line showing a steady rise from a monthly average of 2.5 to one above 4:

Conclusion: Georgetown may be in the middle of a steady recovery and if you feel like participating, read up on the rules! You don’t want to be one of the red-faced applicants staring at a 34% rejection rate.

In May, the owners (who apparently don’t actually live there) requested approval to construct the parking pad. The ANC, perhaps in deference to the strong showing from neighbors objecting to the construction, decided not to approve the designs. According to the architect’s testimony at the June ANC meeting, the OGB also rejected the proposal but left the door open.

In June, the owners and their architect returned to the ANC meeting with plans revised to address the OGB’s concerns (mostly it had to do with fence location, drainage, and the installation of an automatic gate). There was another strong showing of neighbor opposition to the plan (although the owners produced some letters in support of their application). Notwithstanding the changes made to the proposal, the ANC again rejected it.

So what did the OGB do? Well apparently they approved it.

It’s always difficult to divine from the OGB minutes upon what considerations the board based its conclusions. At the June ANC meeting, someone mentioned that the alleyways were historically nothing much to look at. Possibly the OGB decided that since their charge is historical preservation, then maybe a parking pad isn’t exactly unacceptable. Additionally, perhaps they felt that as a matter of equity, the owners should be allowed to build a parking pad since several other houses on the alleyway already have one.

(The owners are back before the ANC again for the July meeting, but it’s for the actual building permit. As of right now, the ANC has it on the “No Review At This Time Calendar” so it is unlikely to try to reject it for a third time. But you never know…)

So why does this even matter you ask? Well it highlights the diverging world views and driving concerns between the ANC and the OGB. One puts neighborhood harmony above all else, the other puts historical harmony on top. And it’s certainly clear with cases like this and the Apple store saga that the OGB simply does not take its walking orders from the ANC. Moreover, it appears that despite the fact that it got somewhat accused of NIMBYism in the whole Apple store affair, the OGB is actually somewhat less responsive to neighbor complaints than the ANC. Something to keep in mind if you find yourself having to navigate the alphabet soup that is the project review process.

Image courtesy of A Culinary Photo Journal used under Creative Commons License

GM was so wrapped up in Apple store talk, that he didn’t get very deep into the Old Georgetown Board agenda from March, but sitting in there is some potentially bad news: Jonathan Umbel’s plan to bring a butcher to Georgetown seems to have stalled.

Umbel first announced his plans to open the “Mad Butcher” in the space just west of his Hook and Tacklebox restaurants last October. This is how it was described back then:

At The Mad Butcher, whole pigs and sides of cattle from local farmers would be brought in and prepared on site. There would be an aging room on the property to treat the meat. The business would sell uncooked meat, and a casual cafe and fine dining restaurant would serve it.

Sounds great. But at the March OGB meeting the board decided to reject Umbel’s design concept for the store because the “concept case has been inactive for a period of time.” The whole project was contingent on Umbel actually buying the property, maybe that deal fell through? You can’t blame anyone for getting gun-shy about opening up a restaurant in this environment (or loaning someone money to open a restaurant in this economy). Moreover, perhaps the reason there aren’t any butchers in this town is because there’s not much of a market for it?

Regardless of the reason, GM hopes that the Mad Butcher isn’t permanently shelved (although he’d be fine if they ditched that name.)

So would you shop at the Mad Butcher if it were open or would you just continue to buy your meat along with all the rest of your groceries?