3200 block of R St.
Don’t Forget: CAG Meeting Tonight on Zoning
As mentioned here last week, tonight the Citizens Association of Georgetown is hosting a meeting to discuss the ongoing zoning rewrite. The meeting will be structured like a debate, with the Office of Planning’s Travis Parker presenting the case for the changes, and Nancy MacWood will present the case against the changes, or at least some of the more controversial topics.
The tenor of the debate could be affected somewhat by the recent hubbub over whether or not Mayor-elect Vincent Gray should keep on the Director of the Office of Planning, Harriet Tregoning. What initiated this recent scuffle is that the Committee of 100 wrote a letter to Gray asking that he not keep Tregoning or DDOT director Gabe Klein. Continue reading
Filed under Citizens Association of Georgetown
The Morning Metropolitan
Photo by Jason Pier in DC.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- GU students supposedly stocking up on Four Loko before it gets banned.
- Know your fish monger.
- When you go to Montrose Park these days, watch out. Those osage oranges are falling hard and often.
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
Raise Parking Fees on Multi-Car Households First
Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that as part of his final effort to close the city’s budget gap, Adrian Fenty is considering doubling the fee for residential parking passes. This is actually not a bad idea at all. We charge a laughably small fee for street parking: $15 a year. Only in the world of cars is it considered reasonable that private individuals are able to squat their personal property on 180 square feet of public property and only pay 4 cents a day.
So doubling it does seem like a quick and easy way to raise revenues while spreading the pain pretty thin. But it would be a failed opportunity. Before we consider raising the fee for households with one car, we ought to raise it for houses with two cars, and raising it even more for houses with three or more cars.
See how this would play out in a parking-challenged neighborhood like Georgetown: According to the 2000 Census, there are roughly 4,936 cars in Georgetown. There are only 4,640 households in Georgetown. Of those households here’s how the car ownership breaks down:
- 20% of households have no car
- 57% of households have one car
- 23% of households have more than one car
Filed under Parking
The Morning Metropolitan
GU Med School by ehpien.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- Citronelle bar expanding its hours.
- The Ritz-Carlton, Bourbon Steak, 1789, and La Chaumiere all lauded for their fireplaces. Metrocurean also identifies Dupont’s Tabard Inn as a great fireplace spot, which is actually across the street from one of GM’s favorite cozy winter spots: the Iron Gate.
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
The Story of How Georgetown Found it Grid
If there is one thing that people love the most about Georgetown, it’s the small blocks filled with 18th and 19th century homes. But how exactly did it come to be that way? GM has written about Georgetown’s past a lot, but never much about its actual birth. Today he’ll fix that.
Much of the land that would eventually become Georgetown was originally granted to a Scotsman named Ninian Beall in 1703. Beall named this 705 acre plot of land the Rock of Dumbarton in a reference to his native country.
The location of the land that would become Georgetown became an important aspect to the town’s early development. Located as it is just south of Little Falls, this land is the furthest north that ocean-bound ships could reach on the Potomac. As such, it was a natural location for a tobacco port. Landowner George Gordon constructed a tobacco inspection station along the Potomac shore and soon a thriving commercial port developed.
In 1751, merchants of this new tobacco port successfully lobbied the Maryland colonial legislature to authorize the creation of a new town. The men chosen as commissioners of this new town approached George Gordon and George Beall (son of Ninian) to purchase their land. The Georges were not interested in selling their land and sued the commissioners for condemning their land. A jury full of Bealls and Magruders (ancestors of the Magruders grocery store) awarded the Georges £280.
Whether the decision to name it Georgetown was in honor of these two gentlemen, or the reigning monarch, King George II, is a fact lost to time. Continue reading
Filed under History
The Morning Metropolitan
Photo by Lauren(elle)n.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- Chris Matthews will be at the next Q&A Cafe. Side note: since GM’s name is also Christopher Mathews, he occasionally gets calls on his home phone from people looking to argue with the guy on TV. For the record, there’s no relation; GM spells his last name with one “t”.
- Georgetown Tobacco store owner interviewed by NY Times, says he may stop selling cigarettes after new regulations announced.
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
You must be logged in to post a comment.