To undercut this argument, the ANC just issued a supplemental submission to the Zoning Commission. The ANC writes:

GU’s grudging, small-scale responses to community concerns throughout this case have been  disappointing. Instead of responding meaningfully to Chairman Hood‟s suggestion to the  University that it propose truly new, large, and effective approaches to the neighborhood issues, GU has instead come back with small-scale tweaks to existing off campus student programs.

The ANC takes a particularly cynical view of GU’s quality of life measures:

GU reserves the right to modify any and all of its student conduct measures at any time… And GU certainly cannot expect us to believe that any 11th-hour clamp-down it may have attempted over the past several months – in the spotlight of an impending Zoning Commission decision – will or could be sustained by GU over the long run.

In the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished category, the ANC addresses GU’s new trash pick up program:

By the University’s own count, as GU has informed ANC 2E commissioners, a trash truck it sends around the student-centric areas of the community daily at 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. has been picking up over one and a half tons of trash every day…The University, after years of turning a blind eye, has belatedly taken some remedial action. But the University does not seem to appreciate that during the 20 or so hours every day when the GU trash truck is not picking up the trash, another 1.5 tons of trash is dumped outside for all in the community to experience. The trash truck proves beyond a doubt the existence of a serious problem. It clearly does not sufficiently mitigate, let alone solve, the problem. In an odd way, it may even exacerbate the undisciplined seven-days-a-week strewing of GU-related trash in the community.

This echoes somewhat a comment GM made recently. By picking up the students’ trash in bags, the school fails to discourage students from leaving bags of trash out on the street. Residents often get fined for this since it encourages rats, so there’s no reason to treat students differently.

But one thing this complaint fails to do is to put the 1.5 tons into context. That’s 3,000 lbs. Or somewhere between 2-3 lbs. of trash per off-campus student. The EPA estimates that the average American produces 4.4 lbs of trash a day. Presumably some amount of trash the students are producing doesn’t end up in their houses’ trash (e.g., a cup of coffee they buy and throw out at a coffee shop) so it’s not like this is evidence that they’re big recyclers, but it doesn’t do much to say that 1.5 tons of trash is to be unexpected from so many people. It’s seems that the issue shouldn’t be how much trash students are producing, but rather how they are handling it.

Anyway, that’s just a couple of points they raise. Here’s the document:

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• O and P St. construction walk-around.
• Some responses to that WaPo editorial on the Ten Year Plan.

On Sunday, the Washington Post published an editorial on the Georgetown University campus plan. It was highly critical of the DC Office of Planning and the effort by community groups to insist that the final plan call for the housing of all undergraduate students on campus.

They write:

Imagine a city telling its largest private employer — one that pays millions in taxes and salaries, strives to hire local residents and voluntarily does community service — that it can’t grow anymore, that it might have to cut back. That seems far-fetched in light of today’s scary economy, but it’s essentially what D.C. officials are telling Georgetown University by insisting it either house all its students or cut back enrollment. The District seems distressingly disinterested in promoting a knowledge-based economy.

The editorial attempts to contrast the Office of Planning’s position against the city’s overall goal of adding residents. It argues that:

What’s most troubling about the city’s posture is the notion that an increase in young people, particularly those in search of an education, is somehow undesirable. What happened to the idea that these are the very kind of people that should be lured to make the District their home?

It’s an interesting argument. And it’s definitely the case that the presence of universities greatly contributes towards making a city a haven for the so-called Creative Class. But to suggest that the city is “disinterested in promoting a knowledge-based economy” simply because it maintains enrollment caps on universities is a bit hysterical. Besides, the vast majority of jobs in this city are either in the government or government-related, which will be here whether GU enrolls 14,000 or 15,000. Also, the editorial seems to have been written by someone without a strong familiarity with the situation; before it was corrected, the editorial talked about the neighborhood of “Fox Hollow”.

But that is really beside the point. What GM finds most interesting about this editorial is that it is clearly the product of a concerted lobbying campaign by GU. The thrust of the article is directed at the Office of Planning report, but that was issued in May. The only reason the Post is writing about this now is that the final Zoning Commission hearings are coming up.

Over the past month or so, GU has been rolling out a host of new initiatives to address the issues of off-campus students. They now pick up trash from students’ houses twice a day and run a late night shuttle to M St. They also increased the reimbursable detail of MPD officers patroling the neighborhood. And just last week, it announced that it will start working with DCRA to identify bad landlords.

As far as GM can tell, these are great initiatives! (One major quibble though: by picking up the students’ trash from bags, the school is encouraging students to leave trash out in bags, which attracts rats. They should insist that the students use cans, just like everyone else is supposed to do. It’s a small thing, but it really matters towards reducing the rat problem.)

But the thing is, there is nothing about these initiatives that they couldn’t have been rolled out last year. By rolling out these initiatives a month before the final hearings, it sets up the opportunity for GU to say,”Hey, we listened to their complaints, and we fixed it. So you can just disregard all that earlier testimony.”

The Post’s editorial fits neatly into this strategy (for instance it mentions that “Georgetown has increased police, provided additional garbage pickup and disciplined chronic troublemakers.”) So that’s why GM is convinced it was published as a result of GU lobbying. Which, to be clear, is not a criticism! If GU wants to win this fight, it better be doing stuff like this.

For what it’s worth, GM is the Secretary of the Citizens Association of Georgetown, but he’s not involved with CAG’s Campus Plan effort. Mostly he just wants the issue behind us.

In many ways, this was a presentation years in preparation. Commissioners Ron Lewis, Bill Starrels, Jeff Jones, and Ed Solomon each spoke, but it was Ron that carried the heavy load. Where the Office of Planning’s case was undermined last week due to an apparent lack of preparation, nothing of the sort was on display last night.

Essentially the story that the ANC put forth was this: the 2000 campus plan was adopted on the promise that it would remedy an existing problem with students in the neighborhood. The ANC argues that not only did the plan not address the existing problem, the school took advantage of the lack of an overall student cap and grew every category but traditional undergrads as much as possible. Thus, they argue, the situation with the undergrads are at best no better than they were before the 2000 plan, and in the meantime, a new problem with excessive graduate and non-traditional student growth has produced a new problem.

GU attorney Maureen Dwyer was much less successful poking holes in the ANC’s case than she was with the OP’s presentation. Simply put, Ron and the others have lived and breathed this topic much more than the staff at Office of Planning ever could, so they were much better equipped to parry Dwyer’s cross-examination.

The commissioners seemed impressed with the ANC’s presentation as well, but so far it’s been difficult to get a good read on which way they’re leaning. But it was probably a good night for the anti-campus plan crowd.

On the plus side for the university, seven witnesses were able to testify in favor of the plan at the end of the night. This testimony included three non-GU-affiliated residents, most notably among them former ANC commissioners Grace Bateman and Jonda McFarlane. Bateman and McFarlane both argued that the student problem is overblown and that there are many benefits in having students around which outweigh the drawbacks.

The main attraction of the night was the testimony of the Office of Planning. As discussed here, that office issued a report devastating to GU’s position. So it was very interesting to here what they had to say about their report.

The main speaker for OP was Jennifer Steingasser, who was apparently the main drafter of the report. Her testimony begins around the 1’12″ mark of the video.

In her speech she emphasized several aspects of OP’s report. She explaining that she welcomed GU’s move from using an average to an absolute in calculating the student cap. But she argued that rather than use either of the methods suggested by GU or the ANC, such as the full-time equivalent calculation, they should simply count the number of students absolutely.

She explained that OP rejected the GU hospital element of the plan because it was clearly just a placeholder and none of the specifics had been fleshed out. She stated that any major development there should be handled by an amendment.

When discussing the more controversial elements of her report, Steingasser started from the comprehensive plan (GM’s not going to say he told you so, but he did). There are sections in the comp plan that address the interaction between large institutional uses and their residential neighbors. She stated that in looking at these sections their guiding philosophy was to conserve and enhance the neighborhood. In doing so, they looked at parking, traffic, and neighborhood character.

Stiengasser also put a heavy emphasis on the physical differences between Georgetown and other residential neighborhoods near universities. She argued that the lot sizes are smaller and that there is an absence of through alleys (hey, GM told you that too!). As a result, she argued, most residents must park in the street and have all service and utilities come in from the street too.

So looking at all of that and the tremendous growth in students at GU, she said that OP decided the best approach was to recommend all students be housed by GU by 2016. This doesn’t mean they would all be on campus, but rather that they would have to be in GU-owned housing (outside of 20007). The solution tacitly recommended by many of the neighbors is that GU should rent out apartment space in Rosslyn and house students there.

One thing that Steingasser repeated a couple time was that OP would love to see more mixed use on campus. In GM’s opinion, this is something that GU seriously lacks. If indeed they are forced to house 100% of their students on campus, as OP recommends, converting many of their single use buildings into mixed use may be the route they need to take.

Following Steingasser’s report, GU cross-examined her. For supporters of OP’s report, it wasn’t pretty. GU’s lawyer Maureen Dwyer appeared to poke hole after hole in OP’s report. Most significantly, she demonstrated that it looked like OP was recommending an immediate reduction of 1,000 students. GM has to say, the OP staff didn’t seem entirely particularly prepared for GU’s cross-examination.

OP wasn’t the only party that testified last night. At the beginning of the night, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh weighed in against the plan. Following OP’s testimony, a group of GU students testified in favor of the plan.

Last Friday, GM wrote about the stunning report from the Office of Planning calling for GU to house 100% of its undergrads by the fall of 2016. Buried in that news was that DDOT also chimed in on the campus plan, and it wasn’t good for the university either, although it was not uniformly negative.

The overall thrust of DDOT’s report is that it cannot support the campus plan at this point due to a lack of information. The agency praises the school for some of the measures it takes to address transportation problems. However, DDOT was very critical of the school’s failure to deliver adequate studies on the effects of the proposed changes.

Canal Road Entrance

The agency praised GU for delivering a transportation study, however it found major faults in the school’s efforts. Primary of them was that much of GU’s transportation plan depends on the ability to turn left from the Canal Rd. exit during rush hour. Right now that is prohibited, but GU wrote in its campus plan:

In the 2010 Campus Plan, the University is prepared to fund construction of an internal loop road that will improve GUTS service on campus by creating stops for major routes on both the north
and south ends of campus. Combined with signal timing adjustments at the University’s Canal  Road entrance and relief from left-turn restrictions and Canal Road capacity constraints in
consultation with DDOT, and assuming receipt of necessary regulatory approvals, the internal  loop road also will permit the University to reorient GUTS buses away from neighborhood streets.

DDOT agreed that allowing an eastbound turn onto Canal Rd. during rush hour would make sense, however it notes that this is a “highly congested regional corridor” and criticizes the school’s study on the future states of this corridor with the change. DDOT requests that GU resubmit a study with projections for the road in 2020 and 2030, taking into account the entire stretch of the corridor within the District, not just in the immediate vicinity of the school.

You’ve got to feel for the school somewhat on this issue. It’s because of the neighbor’s demands–unreasonable demands in GM’s opinion–to stop running GUTS buses on Reservoir Rd. that GU is looking to the Canal Rd. in the first place.

Loop Road

DDOT also supports the concept of the proposed loop road. However it criticizes the school for not producing evidence of substantive conversations with the National Park Service, which manages Glover-Archbold Park.

38th St. Reallignment

Georgetown proposes realigning the 38th St. exit with 38th St. north of Reservoir–right now the exit is 20 feet or so to the west. The neighbors are against this change, as they believe it will increase cut-through traffic. DDOT supports the change in theory, but criticizes the school for failing to perform a study on how this change would affect traffic flow and whether it would result in the increase of cut-through traffic that the neighbors fear.

Parking Management

DDOT asserts that with so many students living in the neighborhood, this results in more cars parked on the street. This is based off of its assumption that group houses tend to have higher autos-per-household than non-student households. DDOT doesn’t cite to any concrete evidence that this is even true. And GM is pretty sure that to the extent there’s any evidence, it’s in the other direction. For instance, according to the American Community Survey, only 23% of households in West Georgetown had more than one car, while in East Georgetown, that number is 32%. Certainly many factors go into that, but it’s certainly the case that a lot more students live in the West Village than the East Village.

Regardless, DDOT concludes that there doesn’t seem to be any plan on the horizon to deal with this problem–GM’s not sure if that’s a reference to the long-planned performance parking plan–so the only answer is to get the students out of the neighborhood. As far as logical arguments go, GM thinks this is pretty shabby. For instance, if those group homes begin to be occupied by 20-something professionals instead of students, who’s to say the cars-per-household won’t go up? (Full time residents are a lot more likely than students to register their cars here and get a parking permit).

Transit

The GUTS bus is a phenomenally successful transit system that moves more than 2 million riders per year. However, GU and the hospital still have way too many of their employees drive to work alone. Specifically, 46% of the combined 8,302 GU and hospital employees drive alone to work, and only 396 of them participate in SmartBenefits. This is probably why DDOT wrote that GU should be more aggressive at limiting the vehicular traffic to the campus. Unfortunately, DDOT’s suggestions to address this problem are somewhat flimsy. They essentially boil down to increasing the marketing of transit options, setting goals to reduce car use (no directions how to do that, though), and Capital Bikeshare. These are good tactics (GM particularly likes the idea of giving all students free memberships to Capital Bikeshare) but they aren’t terribly “aggressive.” If DDOT wants real reductions in vehicular travel to the campus, they need to insist on much higher parking fees, which are extremely low compared with other parking options in Georgetown.

DDOT leaves a lot of space to maneuver back in support of the campus plan should the school quickly deliver all the information that DDOT is requesting, but GM’s not so sure the school has enough time to do so before the Zoning Commission makes its ruling.

Here’s the report:

DDOT final comment 5-5-11

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Both the Office of Planning and DDOT came out in opposition to GU’s campus plan yesterday (well, technically OP supported it, but with conditions that GU will likely find incredibly objectionable). GM will have more on this later this morning.
• Some waterfront restaurants starting to reopen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Washingtonian updates its guide to Georgetown. Could be titled: The Top 50 Things About Georgetown You Probably Already Knew.
• GU cedes ground to neighbor demands, will find 250 more beds on campus (or somewhere off-campus that isn’t in the neighborhood–read: Rosslyn) and lower main campus enrollment, primarily by moving a lot of continuing education students to satellite campuses. GM tried to take a look at the the new submission, but the website wasn’t working for him. Once he gets a chance to take a look at the new plans, he’ll write something up this week.
• If Linda Greenan’s job wasn’t hard enough, now she’s going to have to go before the community and ask to be able to do late night construction on Nevils this summer.
• A ton of people were searching for articles on Serendipity3 over the weekend. GM was up in NYC this weekend, so he hasn’t stopped by, did it finally open?

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Absolutely fascinating article on the archeology going on with the streetcar track project.
• Shouty lawn signs not the tool of just one side in the ten year plan fight.
• Cleaning up the canal.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• PoP finds a reasonable request on M St.
• Vox Populi compliments West Village residents. Sorta.
• Not down with seeing the crashers get interviewed? How about Oliver Stone?