1900 block of Wisconsin Ave. (click the photo for a better look)
The Plans For the Jelleff Sports Fields
As discussed at length here at the Georgetown Metropolitan, over the winter the District entered into an agreement with the private Maret School for the school to renovate the dilapidated Jelleff sports fields in exchange for an easement granting the school exclusive rights to use the field during prime hours for a decade. Today, the Old Georgetown Board will be considering several design elements of the plan, including the proposed lighting and the fences.
GM expressed strong misgivings about the manner in which the District Department of Parks and Recreation entered into an agreement with Maret. It appeared to be, essentially, a sole source contract without a genuine public request for proposal and GM argued that the deal should be scrapped and reopened for bids. The ANC agreed.
DPR didn’t.
While GM still is disappointed in all the parties involved in the crafting of this agreement, it’s a done deal and, frankly, it’s time to move on. The sooner the field is built, the sooner children can benefits from it and the new pool (and, not for nothing, the sooner Maret’s ten year easement extinguishes). In the meantime, GM is pleased to report that since the confrontational ANC meeting, Maret has reportedly been a good partner with the neighbors and the primary stakeholders in the field, including Stoddert Soccer, Hardy Middle School and the British School. And in defense of Maret, GM should say that he learned that while the agreement was being formed Maret reached out to CAG to include them but was essentially ignored. (If only it had somehow related to drunk Georgetown students maybe CAG could have been bothered to care). Continue reading
Filed under Development
The Morning Metropolitan
Your New Safeway.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- Social Safeway Mark II is open, right now!
- The Safeway gala last night somehow justified an extremely long WaPo article.
- Had enough Safeway yet? Check out the time elapsed movie of the construction.
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
More Details on the Fillmore School Deal
GM reported on Monday that the Corcoran College of Art + Design had sold the historic Fillmore School building at 1801 35th St. to EastBanc. Few details were available at the time, but since then GM has learned of some more key elements of the proposed plan:
The Condos:
A EastBanc representative confirmed the project to GM and added that the main building will be converted to approximately 15 condo units. This is only one more than the number of condos that were built in the old Phillips School building, which will likely serve as a model for EastBanc’s project (they could theoretically look to the Wormley School conversion as a model, but in that case the developer made the units too expensive and has had a tough time selling them off, so EastBanc should probably treat that project as a warning not a model).
Townhouses:
Much like EastBanc’s proposals for the Georgetown post office, they are also contemplating building townhouses where the Fillmore School parking lot is right now. The parking is rather large. By GM’s eyeballing, it looks to be about 4-5 times larger than the parking lot of the post office, where EastBanc has proposed to build four townhouses. So it would reason that EastBanc could proposed somewhere around 16-20 townhouses.
The Phillips School also involved townhouses being built on the parking lot. At that property, the developers added fourteen townhouses to the parking lot, which was slightly smaller than the Fillmore School parking lot. That would seem to support a mid-teens prediction for the Fillmore project. Continue reading
Filed under Real Estate
The Morning Metropolitan
Riggs Bank by Vpickering.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- L2 loosening up a little bit?
- First Rose Park farmers market today. Stop by from 4:00 to 7:00 at 26th and O St.
- Some cycle tracks may eventually appear on the east end of M St. in Georgetown.
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
ANC Round Up: Holy Crepe Edition
Peach Crepes by sonicwalker.
The ANC met for its May session last night. Heavy on liquor discussions and mercifully short on residential permit issues, the meeting was a lively one. But are you even reading this or are just thinking about how much you’d love some peach crepes right now?
About Those Crepes
Sometimes words said just cannot be unsaid. Exhibit A: Last month the proprietors of the new Crepe Amour restaurant on M St. described their restaurant as a “grab and go”-type restaurant while asking to get approval to remain open 24-7. There are probably few phrases that they would be worse off using than “grab and go” if they ever hope to get approval as an all-night dining option. For that reason, the owners were back this month desperately explaining all the ways in which they are neither grab nor go.
The commissioners weren’t buying it. They believe that if Crepe Amour is permitted to go to 24-7 operation, they will become Philly Pizza redux. While GM can sympathize with the fact that that part of Georgetown might be sensing a bit of deja vu all over again, he believes that there are fundamental differences. Most importantly, Crepe Amour is on M St. not a side street like Potomac. This is a key difference. The reason that Philly Pizza was such a problem was that it attracted drunk and loud revelers off of M St. who then congregated outside of the restaurant, which happened to also be the outside of a bunch of homes. The commissioners kept harping on the idea that Crepe Amour would “attract” only drunks. But so what? If a drunk student is going to walk back to the campus or their off-campus home through the lower West Village, they are going to do so regardless of whether they stop by for a crepe on M St. beforehand. Maybe 24 hour service is unacceptable for other reasons, but GM thinks the ANC is making an illogical comparison to Philly Pizza in this instance. Continue reading
Filed under ANC
The Morning Metropolitan
Photo by M.V. Jantzen.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- G.U. student group keeps up funding for GUTS buses.
- Some more on the liquor license moratorium (look for a longer discussion from the ANC meeting round up later today).
- Griffin Market’s Laura Bonino gave up her moonlighting gig at Comet.
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
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