At Tuesday's council meeting, an
emergency resolution was passed to allow the issuance of bonds that will bring $140 million in proceeds to fund various Anacostia waterfront projects, including the waterfront park at
The Yards and
Diamond Teague Park. The money is coming from a Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes agreement for the
Department of Transportation HQ, land that can't be taxed by the city because it's federal property. The
original PILOT bill laying out the specifics was
passed last October and the city and DOT developer JBG
signed the agreement in February. I'm not 100% sure why there's now this new emergency resolution, although my bleary-eyed morning reading of it sees that perhaps the council was required to officially approve which projects were designated to get the funding. And, in order to issue the bonds before the end of this fiscal year, the council needed to act quickly, hence the emergency legislation.
A tidbit from the resolution: one of the projects listed as needing this funding is "a new ferry pier at the foot of First Street, SE"; this is the
Diamond Teague Park location that's right across the street from the
ballpark. I've been hearing rumors lately that the
Anacostia Waterfront Corporation has the building of this pier on a very fast track, with the intention of getting it ready by Opening Day 2008; there's scuttlebutt is that the permit applications have already been filed with the US Army Corps of Engineers, though I
don't see evidence of that just yet. Perhaps we'll hear more about this at
tomorrow's hearing on the move of the AWC into the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.
