The Georgetown Metropolitan

This week, GM is going through the fantastic recommendations from the BID’s Georgetown 2028 report. Yesterday he discussed some of the more significant transportation pieces of the report. Today he discusses the other major section of the report: public space.

The public space working group started from the simple notion that regardless of how one arrives at Georgetown, we’re all pedestrians once we get here. And as also mentioned yesterday, one of the underlying strategies of the report is to develop a “waterfront district” by bringing more commercial life K St. and the streets between K and M. And the public space recommendations address that head on by looking for ways to improve the streetscapes in the commercial sections of Georgetown.

The concepts put forward by the public space working group didn’t have the concreteness of the transportation working group recommendations. So some of these ideas are really just that: ideas. But they’re exciting nonetheless.

Gateways

One of the weaknesses identified by the report is the lack of a “gateway” at the entrances to Georgetown. There’s nothing really announcing that you’re here when you arrive. GM can’t tell you how many times he’s been stopped on the streets of Georgetown and asked by a tourist where Georgetown is.

The ideas pitched by the working group include more prominent signage at the main entrances to the commercial district. That could mean simply a freestanding sign, or a more radical approach like this on K St.:

(Again, this is just more of proposed concept, not a specifically proposed design)

Sidewalks

While GM would love to see permanently widened sidewalks on M and Wisconsin, that simply doesn’t have the support yet. But the report proposes the next best thing: temporary widenings. We saw this successfully done at the French Market last spring.

GM personally hopes this can provide proof of concept that the sidewalk should be widened at least every weekend, but even just occasional widenings would be a good start. Continue reading →