Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- VERY IMPORTANT: If you want to enroll your child in Pre-K at Hyde-Addison next year, you need to enter the lottery TODAY. Moreover, if you plan on newly enrolling your child in kindergarten through fifth grade at Hyde next year, the school would like to know so that they can plan spaces according. Please contact Principal Dana Nerenberg at 202.724.9055 or via email at dana.nerenberg@ dc.gov.
- ANC meeting tonight to, among other things, adopt a resolution against Georgetown University’s ten year campus plan.
- Huge news: Eastbanc is planing to turn the Key Bridge Exxon into condos.
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
Just imagine what a large-scale construction project on the Exxon site will do to commuter and Key Bridge traffic.
A nightmare lasting how many years?
I agree with “The Old Georgetowner.” The ANC and CAG and Zoning Boards should be asking themselves, “Other than greed, is this necessary?” I think everyone will agree that it is not necessary for the betterment of Georgetown.
While everyone is running around opposing Georgetown University’s self-contained development, there seems to be little opposition to EastBanc’s overdevelopment of the community.
Of course it will be for the “betterment of Georgetown.” EastBanc will be taking an eyesore and turning it into something less of an eyesore. Would you rather have a tasteful building, or a gas station? I do agree that EastBanc has a monopoly, but for the moment it seems to be a benevolent dictator.
asuka —
Once upon a time, perhaps before your time, Georgetown was a village, where you could find everything you might need without getting in a car. That’s all gone now, with electricians replaced by bank chains and ice cream shops (or whatever), hardware stores retracted into fancy-pants plumbing shops, and any number of other neighborhood necessaries replaced by chain stores.
There are only four gas stations left to us — this Exxon station, which is easy to use for anyone crossing the bridge or on their way to Maryland, the one across from the Four Seasons (which has a politically dodgy ownership), the Wisconsin Avenue favorite of transient taxis (because you have to pay in cash), and the across the way station on Q Street (which I won’t bother to characterize).
The Exxon station on M Street is no more “an eyesore” than many other parts of the neighborhood, including — most notably — the largely vacant Georgetown Mall.
Spare me – I’ve lived in Georgetown my entire life (I was literally BORN in Georgetown), so I don’t need to be lectured to about what Georgetown was, is, or will be. A gas station (an Exxon no less – talk about “chain”) is hardly a neighborhood institution; its an eyesore that mostly serves commuters and attracts all kinds of riff-raff on the weekends. The building that will go in its place is far more appealing visually, and will add much more to the neighborhood financially and socially. We live in a city full of corporate gas stations – we can do with one less.
I completely agree with Asuka’s well-reasoned arguments.
The Key Bridge Exxon is indeed an eyesore that primarily serves commuters, and we should be happy that EastBanc is redeveloping the property.
As far as the Exxon site goes, the real architectural eyesore is the mishmash of facades on the backs of the houses on Prospect Street. This building would at least distract from them.