The Georgetown Metropolitan

Hello, and welcome to the July Northwest Georgetown ANC Update!

Disruptive DC Water Construction Coming

Lead poisoning is no joke. It can seriously harm your brain development and impact your life permanently. Some have made the persuasive case that lead poisoning explains the explosion of crime across the world in the latter part of the 20th century (and its eradication explains the subsequent fall in crime at the end of the century).

I say that all just to preface the bad news: the streets around our part of Georgetown are going to be a mess over the next year or so as part of an effort to completely rid our water system of old lead pipes. You see, some of the water main pipes in Georgetown (and other parts of DC) are made out of lead. In other words, pipes that deliver water you probably drank sometime in the last 24 hours traveled through lead pipes. Now, luckily hardly any lead (if any at all) is actually leaching into the water. But it’s still a bad idea to leave them there, and DC Water is getting rid of them.

They are working in three phases:

Phase 1 is in east Georgetown on 29th and P Streets. This is already underway and will continue through this summer. Phase 2 gets closer to our part of Georgetown, along P and 32nd Streets. That will start this August and run through November. Finally, Phase 3 will be the most impactful to my constituents. It will cover Wisconsin Ave. between P and Q streets. And it will also include the first block of Volta Place off Wisconsin Ave. This work will begin next January and run through next April.

The work will be pretty impactful. They plan to be often shutting down one lane of traffic during the day, using flaggers to alternate traffic through the one lane. That includes Wisconsin Ave. Work will be wrapped up by the evening, at which point both lanes will be reopened. The next workday it will all happen all over again.

This is in contrast to the work being done by DC Water on Q St. right now east of 28th. That work is shutting down an entire lane for the entirety of the project. Only westbound traffic is allowed on the block (which is diverting Metrobuses down P St.).

So at least it won’t be as bad as that. But it will be a pain. Hopefully it will be over when they say it will.

And remember, it’s to get lead pipes out of your water supply. That’s worth a short term hassle as far as I’m concerned.

Oh, and if you live on these blocks, DC Water will be checking each service line (i.e. the pipes that bring water from the street into your house) to see if they are also lead. If they are, they will replace it for free. If it’s not, well, that’s nice to find out too.

Volta Park Construction Complete

As many have observed, the Volta Park construction is complete. Much of the work they did is not visible but will become apparent the next deluge. Whereas in the past, floods of water caused erosion you could observe in real time. Now (hopefully) the water will be quickly absorbed into the new network of drainage pipes.

Of course there’s visible work too, including a brand new field of thick grass on the ball field and an infield that no longer ends with an ankle-killing ledge. There is, of course, the fence in the northwest corner that drew objections. I am hopeful that it will help keep the dog activity segregated from any organized events, like little league, on the ball field. I have received multiple complaints over the years from parents of children bitten by unattended dogs. This should help prevent that happening again.

There are still some issues that remain. Portions of the new grass are already dead. I’ve reported that to DPR for remediation. The grass in the northwest corner beyond that fence is in really poor shape. They put grass seed down, but the soil is so hard-packed that the see has zero chance of actually taking root. That will take fixing too.

Speaking of Volta Park, this week Councilmember Pinto’s office confirmed that despite the steep budget challenges, the council was able to fund a new splash-pad for the park. This was an idea I’ve been pushing for for years, so I’m happy it will come to fruition.

Summer Sign-Off:

We have no ANC meeting in August, so this newsletter will also take a break. But if anything comes up that you need help with, don’t fail to reach out to me at 2e02@anc.dc.gov. Here are few more things to remember:

• Volta Pool is open 12-8 pm Tuesday through Friday and 10 am to 6 pm on the weekends. Jelleff Pool is closed for the (much delayed) renovations of the rec center.
• For Fourth of July, no boats are allowed in the water near Georgetown. Pedestrians will be still allowed to go the Waterfront Park and Key Bridge, just leave the kayaks and paddle-boards at home. Also, the fireworks are starting super later (10:30 pm) and will run super long (45 minutes). So if you’ve got kiddos that need sleep, or doggos that need some peace, maybe skip town?
• Trash and recycling will be picked up Saturday morning (i.e. the Fourth) due to the federal holiday following on Friday.

And with that, have a great summer!

If your trashcan has an approximately rat-sized hole on its lid I will give you a single guess at how it got there. This is a serious problem because rats love trash. They literally eat it up. So when your trash can has this hole in it, it is like a flashing neon OPEN sign to rats telling them that a 24 hour diner is here for the patronizing.

Which brings me to what you can do to address this problem. The city will replace your can free of charge if you use 311. (Now, there’s a separate question about 311. I’ve been hearing a lot of reports of the app being essentially non-functional. So I would recommend either calling 311 on the phone or using the webpage, which I can confirm is working right now). So please, if you’ve got a can with a hole, reach out to 311.

But, you say, “I don’t have a rat-sized hole in my can. In fact I don’t have any hole in my can. What can I do to help keep the rat population down?”

Well I’ve got good news for you too.

You can reach out to the city rat abatement program to have them come out and inspect your property to identify any possible rat attractions that it might contain. Reach them at rodent.control@dc.gov. You can also do this by 311 by requesting rodent inspection and treatment. Again, it’s all free.

Better yet, if you and your neighbors can organize and make the request together, the city inspectors can come and make a more comprehensive inspection of your whole block. While it’s great to reduce the rat attractions on your own property, if your neighbor’s property is still a problem, you’ll still have a problem too.

Rats has been here forever, and they’ll likely be he forevermore. But there don’t have to be so many. And the only way to get the numbers down is if we all pitch in together and do our parts. So get cracking!

Last week DC Democrats made a fairly dramatic swing to the left across the board in their primary election. As the DC primary is the de facto general election for most of the important political seats in the city, these results are in effect the final results. But did Georgetown follow that trend?

(There’s a funny rule called Betteridge’s Law that states anytime a news article poses a question like that, the answer is always “no”. And that’s true here!)

With one exception, Georgetown did not follow the citywide trend. It voted for Kenyan McDuffie, Brooke Pinto, and Lisa Raymond, each of whom came up short in their races against outspokenly left-leaning candidates.

The one exception was actually not technically part of the Democratic primary. This was the special election to fill the non-Democratic At-Large seat that Kenyan McDuffie vacated to run for mayor. Former councilmember Elissa Silverman comfortably won that seat back (she lost it to McDuffie in 2022). Georgetown also favored her comfortably, with 59% of its vote going to her (which is actually higher than her overall total of 55%).

(I should also note that in the other at-large contest, the left-leaning candidate that won overall, Oye Oeolewa, lost in Georgetown, but only just. He lost to Lisa Raymond in Georgetown by only 10 votes.)

The fact that Georgetown was so out-of-step with the rest of the city on the choice for mayor is rather notable. It’s only the second time this has happened since the Marion Barry years. There have only been a handful genuinely contested primaries since then: 2002 (Anthony Williams first run, which was hampered by a screw-up that forced him to run as a write-in), 2006 (Fenty’s one victory), 2010 (when Gray unseated Fenty), 2014 (when Bowser unseated Gray), and this year.

Georgetown voted with the rest of the city in 2002, 2006 (Fenty remarkably won every single precinct this year), and 2014. It split with it in 2010 (Georgetown voted overwhelmingly to re-elect Fenty) and last week. I’m sure partisans of both candidates can divine a message in that, but I’ll pass on offering one myself.

Here are the vote totals for Georgetown with the overall winning candidate bolded:

DEM Delegate to U.S. House

• Brooke Pinto: 924 (59.6%)
• Robert White: 419 (27.0%)
• Kinney Zalesne: 116 (7.5%)
• Greg Jaczko: 55 (3.5%)
• Trent Holbrook: 34 (2.2%)

DEM Mayor

• Kenyan R. McDuffie: 913 (57.6%)
• Janeese Lewis George: 454 (28.7%)
• Gary Goodweather: 77 (4.9%)
• Hope Solomon: 71 (4.5%)
• Rini Sampath: 42 (2.7%)
• Vincent Orange (“VO”): 23 (1.5%)
• Ernest E. Johnson: 3 (0.2%)

DEM At-Large Council (2 seats)

• Lisa Raymond: 320 (24.3%)
• Oye Owolewa: 310 (23.5%)
• Kevin B. Chavous: 207 (15.7%)
• Fred Hill: 182 (13.8%)
• Greg Jackson: 118 (9.0%)
• Dwight Davis: 66 (5.0%)
• Candace Tiana Nelson: 55 (4.2%)
• Leniqua’dominique Jenkins: 25 (1.9%)
• Dyana N. M. Forester: 25 (1.9%)

As reported in the Georgetowner, Cady’s Alley’s long standing heart, Kafe Leopold, closed yesterday. The local favorite was open for 21 years.

As Anthony Lanier has recounted many times before, as he was developing Cady’s Alley, he couldn’t convince a restauranteur to take a chance on the space. So he simply decided to do it himself, so he teamed with Paul Guzzardo to recreate the Austrian cafe’s of his homeland. It was a big success and has been well loved by locals and visitors alike ever since.

The Georgetown reports that the decision to close was not like so many of the other stories we’ve heard in recent years. It wasn’t a hike in rent, Guzzardo just wanted to retire. It’s a retirement well earned.

I always loved the feel of Leopold’s, even if I didn’t get to it as much as I’d like. Having honeymooned in Vienna and Salzburg, a trip here would bring me back to that trip, sans red-eye flight. I do hope whatever replaces it is similarly transporting.

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s your weekly news round-up:

• Why Halcyon House, the non-profit, is leaving Halcyon House, the house.
• ANC Report from our last meeting.
• As you may have heard, Robert White won the Democratic nomination for DC Delegate, meaning that Brooke Pinto will remain our Councilmember.

A boot store is apparently taking over the former Sprinkles store front at 3015 M st., according to plans filed with the Old Georgetown Board.

The store is Thursday Boots. Presumably they’re also good for Friday through Wednesday. And in keeping with the theme of yesterday’s article: this is a DTC store that is now branching out with a handful of locations in hip locales. For this one that includes the usual suspects of Flat Iron and Soho, NY, Wicker Park, IL, San Francisco, and the less usual suspect Paramus, NJ.

If this store is anything like Georgetown previous leather boot store, Frye and Company, it will smell amazing. Here’s hoping.

The much beloved Random Harvest closed up shop earlier this year. And signs on the windows announce what is to follow: East Fork.

East Fork is a Asheville, NC-based ceramics shop that specializes in home goods. So in that sense, it’s a nice continuation of the legacy of Random Harvest, which also aimed to fill your home with nicely crafted goods.

But in another less obvious way, this store is very much of the zeitgeist in Georgetown, circa 2026. It is a DTC (direct to customer) store that is just now branching out to a small number of stores in various chic neighborhoods across the country. (In this particular case it is just Brooklyn and Georgetown so far; Suck it Back Bay!). This is a description that could fairly describe just about 95% of all the retail stores that have opened in Georgetown since 2020. The spin here is that it’s ceramics, not clothing or eyewear.

And there’s nothing wrong with that! Georgetown circa 2015 or so was a neighborhood with the exact same shops you could find in any mall in any dreary suburb of America. The rebirth that came after the wildfire of 2020 has allowed all these wildflowers to bloom.

But there’s a risk in going too deep with these types of stores. That’s because the (often private equity) owners of these brands surely would love to one day be in every mall in every dreary corner of America. I’m not saying that will happen with this particular brand, which seems lovely. But in general the novelty of these types of stores may ultimately be fleeting by design.

Once a tourist approached me on M St. asking where the stores were. I pointed all around. She replied, “but we’ve got all these at home.” To which I shrugged. I don’t think that scene would happen today. But in 2030? We’ll see…

A stop sign camera has been installed at the intersection of 33rd St. and O St. It appears to capture drivers who drive northbound on 33rd St.

I am very glad to see this installed. This intersection has had some egregiously dangerous driving for a long time. For instance, this is a scene I came upon at this intersection in April. No car should be going so fast through an intersection to allow it to end up in such a position:

I am glad this camera was installed and part of its effectiveness is letter people know it’s there. So here is your notice! Come to a complete stop at this intersection!

Also, it’s important to remember that you have to stop before the stop line, not the cross-walk. The stop line is the white lane about four feet before the cross walk. Stop there!

I am hopeful this is just the first of multiple cameras we see installed in Georgetown. Too many pass-through drivers treat stop signs on the side streets as polite suggestions, not legal requirements. This is especially true along 35th St. in my district. Drivers routinely blow through stop signs all along this corridor. And, of course, the intersection just east of 33rd and O, O and Potomac, sees drivers blow through the stop sign so much that it’s surprising to see someone even remotely stop. This would also be a perfect spot for a camera.

Photo by Adam Fagen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s your weekly news round-up:

• Q&A Cafe has NBC4 local news anchors next week.
• The CitizenM hotel is set to open this month.
• GU transitions to its new permanent president at the end of the month.

The Volta Park ball field is finally open. The work ultimately took about ten months, which was extended at least four months due to the discovery of an unanticipated grave. That was on top of years of delays caused by permitting challenges and other logistics. Ultimately it took about five years from the original decision to fund the work back in 2021. It takes a long time to do stuff around here, unfortunately.

The field looks great. Most of it, at least. There’s already a large patch of dead sod in left field:

I’ve followed up with DPR about this and they are checking with the contractor about getting it replaced.

The fence that drew some objections has also been installed:

It helps better define the quasi-dog park area as distinct from the ball fiend. This should particularly help during times when many dogs are here at the same time there’s a game going on. Most dog owners are good, but enough are careless and inconsiderate that conflicts have happened in the past, including kids getting bitten. The fence should help, although dogs have no problem getting around it via the bush, so owners still have to be vigilant.

(Also, keep in mind that it’s still illegal to have dogs off-leash anywhere in the park, including this area. Multiple people have been ticketed by the city recently for this, so keep that in mind.)

This area did not get new sod. It got seeds, but honestly the soil is so compacted that the seeds aren’t going to accomplish much. It will need to be aerated and re-seeded at some point or it will turn into a mud patch.

The park is fully open. There won’t be any ribbon cutting. Friends of Volta Park are still working with the city to get rat-proof trash cans installed. Stay tuned on that.