For more about this funding, how it will work, and What It All Means, read my notes from the council hearing last month, including the prepared written testimony of a DCHA rep explaining the need for the bill.

Though I'm about to disappear down the college football rabbit hole for the the rest of the day, I couldn't resist getting a few quick photos of the new framing that's going up on the last block of Capitol Quarter's first phase, on the northwest corner of Fourth and I.

I also wandered over to First Street to get "final" photos of Velocity building now that the building has opened, including a shot of the sign now up at Justin's Cafe (not that you can really see the sign, thanks to poor sun positioning. Might have to sneak back over there early in the morning).

Here's the complete batch of before-and-after photos for the shots I posted today.

And now, time to go bite my orange-and-blue nails for a few hours.

There still aren't any details posted online by CSX or the District about exactly how the Virginia Avenue Tunnel project will work (though we do have notes from their various recent public outreach sessions), but at a cost of about $140 million, it's not a small piece of the $842 million "National Gateway" project. In the documents that were part of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board vote on the project back in September, CSX described the Virginia Avenue Tunnel as a "bottleneck that when unlocked improves the freight efficiency and mitigates the expected freight growth in the region."

(Quick background: This infrastructure work would be a combination of underground work on the Second Street blocks around Canal Park, the relocation of the DPW operations at New Jersey and K and demolition of that block, and perhaps the construction of I Street between Second and New Jersey. These projects were originally expected to be funded by the sale of unrated municipal bonds, but the current Economic Difficulties have made those sorts of bonds all but extinct, and additional attempts to secure loans from banks for the money have been fruitless as well. Read this for more details.)

The hearing was pretty straightforward--you can watch it via streaming video, plus I've managed to procure the prepared written testimony of David Cortiella from DCHA if you're more of a reader than a watcher (like me!). The main takeaways:

* The city is intending to sell $32 million in short-term bonds, and will cover the estimated $600,000 a year in costs from funds in an industrial revenue bonds assessment fund held by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. After three years, when presumably the bond market is a bit healthier and Capper's own PILOT fund has begun to receive payments, long-term bonds will be issued. John Ross of the CFO's office called this "a very clever arrangement."

* Because the council originally approved a $55 million bond offering as part of the original Capper PILOT legislation, the cost of these bonds is already reflected in the city's budget.

* DCHA and the CFO are asking that this bill be approved on an emergency basis at the council's December meeting, so that the bonds could be sold during late December or early January, which is apparently a good bond-selling time of year. (Christmas bonds for everyone!)

* Cortiella mentioned that DCHA is also investigating a change in the tax code that may allow the financing of the 189-unit apartment building planned for the old Capper Seniors site at Seventh and L (Square 882) by the third quarter of 2010.

* Money has already begun to flow into the Capper PILOT thanks to the completed houses in Capitol Quarter, and if the phase 1 and 2 townhouses and Square 882 apartments are finished as currently scheduled, approximately $1.2 million will be flowing to the PILOT fund each year by 2012. (It's the PILOT fund that then pays back the bonds.)

Jack Evans--the only councilmember at the hearing--was receptive to the plans and also to moving the bill as emergency legislation, calling it "a good project" and saying it should "definitely move forward." He also made sure to note that, since the new bonds are being backed with proceeds from the Gallery Place TIF, that the city will be "backing Ward 6 projects with Ward 2 money": "We're always helpful when we can be helpful," he said. He also reminisced that, when he first ran for city council in 1991, Near Southeast was in Ward 2, and that he received all of six votes across the entire precinct in the 13-man primary.

The council's December legislative meeting is scheduled for Dec. 15.

* ANC 6D (Southwest and Near Southeast) has posted the agenda for its November meeting, which includes an update on the plans for Canal Park. It's on Monday, Nov. 9, at 7 pm, at St. Augustine's, Sixth and M streets, SW.

* The next night, ANC 6B (Capitol Hill SE and Eighth Street) is having its November meeting, where there will be a presentation by CSX on its planned Virginia Avenue Tunnel construction. (Voice of the Hill recently wrote about the plans, and you can read my posts about them, which include links to some source documents.) ANC 6B's meeting is Nov. 10 at 7 pm at the Old Naval Hospital at 921 Pennsylvania Ave., SE.

* Plus, the Friends of Garfield Park are having their own informational meeting about the CSX plans, on Thursday, Nov. 12, at 7 pm at Capitol Hill Day School (Second and South Carolina, SE).

* The Lower 8th Street Visioning Process folks have posted the minutes, historical background, and main presentation slides from their two October sessions. They've also posted the agenda for their November meetings, scheduled for 8:30 am and 7 pm on November 17 at the People's Church, 535 Eighth St., SE.

* And, if these events aren't enough for you, you can also watch on Nov. 12 the city council's Committee on Finance and Revenue Hearing on the bill that would allow the sale of bonds via the city's CFO office that would pay for a considerable amount of "Phase 3" infrastructure work for Capper/Carrollsburg redevelopment, encompassing some as-yet-undetermined combination of underground work on the Second Street blocks, the relocation of the DPW operations at New Jersey and K and demolition of that block, and the construction of I Street between Second and New Jersey. (This is above and beyond the $9.5 million in federal stimulus funds that the city is receiving to allow Capitol Quarter's second phase of townhouses to go forward.) The council hearing is on the 12th at 10 am, and you can watch on DC cable channel 13 or via the channel's web site. Here's my post about this proposed bill, if you want to know more.

* The BID and the Washington DC Economic Partnership held a "Capitol Riverfront Storefront Summit" on Tuesday morning, which The Hill is Home summarized, with quotes from the owners of Cornercopia and the Subway on Second Street. No splashy announcements of new retailers, though.

* The WBJ's Top Shelf blog pivoted off of the summit to write about Justin's Cafe at Velocity, which the owner now says "hopes to open in about two months from now."

* UrbanTurf asks: How do People Like Living in "Capitol Riverfront"?

* Beyond DC went to the Columbia Heights streetcar meeting on Monday, and posted more details about DDOT's plans. The Ward 7 public meeting is tonight, at 650 Anacostia Ave., NE, from 7 to 8:30 pm.

* The Bullpen is still selling tickets for its big Halloween night bash, from 9 pm to 1 am (with a fully heated tent!). An e-mail says that more than 400 tickets have been sold.

* The American Cancer Society is hosting Making Strides for Breast Cancer, a 5K walk to fund breast cancer research, at Nationals Park on Saturday. Two laps around the stadium, and one inside lap on the First Concourse. (I think I've done that walk a whole bunch of times over the past four years!)

* The council's Committee on Finance and Revenue has scheduled a November 12 hearing on the pending bill that would allow the city sell bonds to pay for phase 3 infrastructure work at Capper. (Though I don't see the hearing notice online yet.) For more about this, read my entry from a few days back.

I played cat-and-mouse with the clouds today and took some photos of the progress in the third block of Capitol Quarter, where the townhouses have sprung up pretty quickly over the past six weeks, meaning that St. Paul's Church at Fourth and I (above) and the private homes along Fifth Street are no longer the lonely outposts they've been since late 2004.

This infrastructure work would be some as-yet-undetermined combination of underground work on the Second Street blocks, the relocation of the DPW operations at New Jersey and K and demolition of that block, and the construction of I Street between Second and New Jersey. These projects were originally expected to be funded by the sale of unrated municipal bonds, but the current Economic Difficulties have made those sorts of bonds all but extinct, and additional attempts to secure loans from banks for the money have been fruitless as well.

Now, a bill is expected to be introduced at Tuesday's city council session amending the 2006 Capper PILOT law to allow for bonds to be issued, guaranteed by the CFO's office (and thereby able to reflect the city's rating on the bond markets), which would be "supported" by real estate tax revenues being collected from various existing TIF projects in the city. If the expected timeline of council approval is met, the bonds--totalling somewhere in the neighborhood of $28 million--could be issued by the end of 2009.

(But don't look out your window on Jan. 1, 2010 expecting to see the trash transfer station's smokestack being smacked by a wrecking ball--they still have to find somewhere for the DPW operations to relocate to, which I'm guessing is more difficult than finding somewhere to move a bunch of schoolbuses, and everyone knows how long that took.)

The proceeds won't all be used for construction, since there are loans to be repaid and other high-finance maneuvers that are well above my level of understanding. But this influx of funding, along with the HUD grant, would give Capper's redevelopment a push forward at a time when few projects are seeing any sort of progress, and would get the money-hungry city closer to being able to start reeling in the property taxes from all these blocks that aren't currently generating any revenue.

UPDATE: Here's the text of the new bill.

In my post on DCHA's application back in June, I explained it this way:

According to this "narrative and schedule" that DCHA included with its application to HUD, the money would finance both public infrastructure and private site improvements needed to begin the construction of the second phase of the Capitol Quarter mixed-income townhouse development (the blocks between Third and Fourth south of I), which will have 163 units, 47 of which are public housing rental units (along with 60 market-rate, 39 workforce-rate, and 17 public housing home ownership units). The narrative indicates that the $55 million Capper PILOT bonds approved by the city council last year that were to fund the new community center and infrastructure improvements not only in the Phase II blocks but also on the north and east sides of Canal Park and over to the DPW site never made it into the bond market; attempts to secure loans from both Fannie Mae and Wachovia also were fruitless.

There's a lot of detail in the narrative that I'm not going to try to summarize (I start to glaze over once I get to Low Income Housing Tax Credits [LIHTC] and anything having to do with "leveraging"):, but it does say that if awarded the HUD CFRC grant money, DCHA would immediately have its engineers complete permit drawings, which can then be put into the city's permitting process (estimated to last 90 days), after which infrastructure work can begin--the schedule at the end of the document estimates a start date of Dec. 1. This work would include repair or replacement underground water, sewer, and "dry utilities" lines, new streets, curbs, and gutters, additional lighting, and public landscaping.

The HUD funds would also be used to pay for the land preparation costs and foundation construction of the 47 public housing units, covering a $1 million gap that occurred in the planned Phase II funding thanks to problems in the LIHTC market.

I stopped by 11th and 12th streets to get caught up on the RFK ramp demolition that's part of the 11th Street Bridges project. The ramps across M have been down for a while now, making M Street along this stretch seem slightly less claustrophobic. The remaining concrete pillars (like the one at left, and the stubs on the south side of M) make for some interesting sculptures.

This isn't the most earth-shattering shot of the day, but I did feel it necessary to finally get a shot of 900 M Street now that Domino's is open.