A few items:
* On Monday night, Fox5 news ran "
Waste of Space?", detailing the nearly $550,000 a month the city pays in rent for
225 Virginia Avenue (aka the old Post plant), now totalling nearly $15 million in payments since the city leased the building in late 2006. (The piece also discussed
the other buildings that the city leases.) There wasn't really anything new--Phil Mendelson railed against the deal, and Fox5 did note that Mayor Fenty and Phil Mendelson voted to approve the lease when they were council members. The piece ended with the reporter saying that Fenty had said the city is "on the verge of making a change" and that we'd all hear about it soon. Whether this entails the
moving of the Child and Family Services Agency into the building (as WBJ reported recently), or whether the city has found a developer to take over the sublease, we'll just have to wait and see.
* A couple outlets (including
the Post and
MASN) reported last week that a romantic comedy by James L. Brooks (director of Terms of Endearment and executive producer of The Simpsons) starring Owen Wilson (as a Nats relief pitcher), Reese Witherspoon, and Paul Rudd will start filming in June, and will include scenes at
Nationals Park. Now, about the part of the obsessive-compulsive neighborhood blogger....
* On Friday (May 15) at 12:30 pm, I'll be doing
a live chat over at Urban Trekker. So come on over and torment me with some questions, though with the school buses now gone from
Canal Park, I'm not sure anyone has anything to ask me anymore. :-)
* There's probably only about three people who'd really find this of interest, but if you'd like a low-bandwidth version of the JDLand home page to use on your phone/PDA (compared to the behemoth that is the "real" home page), you can now bookmark
m.jdland.com. The interior pages won't be mobile-ized, but at least this way you can get to the blog entries (and comments) without all the other stuff.