* The Post says that 14,000 tickets to the April 17 Mass at Nationals Park will be distributed to 120 Catholic diocese outside of the Archdiocese of Washington, with the Diocese of Arlington getting 6,000 and the Archdiocese of Baltimore getting 2,500. And on Friday, parishes that are part of the Archdiocese of Washington will find out how many tickets they're getting--parish priests will then decide how to distribute tickets within the parish.

At Monday night's ANC 6D meeting, Monument Realty presented its request for the ANC's support in closing a 2,417-square-foot alley that runs between South Capitol and Van streets not far north of N Street. This alley is north of the now-closed BP Amoco and south of what is now a WMATA employee parking lot on land owned by Monument (there used to be a neon yellow bungalow there, until late 2006). Christy Shiker of Holland & Knight told the commissioners that the Amoco property--which faces the ballpark's western parking garage--is too small to develop on its own, but with the alley closed and the lots combined, Monument would build a 130-foot-high residential building with approximately 150 to 200 units plus 14,000 square feet of ground-floor (or perhaps two-story) retail. Monument is not committing at this time to pursuing LEED certification for this building.

In the past few days I've mentioned the start of construction on the first of the temporary surface parking lots at Capper and the transformation of an existing lot at 1100 South Capitol into a monthly lot managed by Colonial Parking. Today I see that the dirt is being dug up at 1000 South Capitol, which had a public space permit approved a few weeks ago for the construction of a parking lot. This property is owned by Lerner Enterprises (yes, the same Lerners that own the Nationals) and they have eventual plans for an office building on the site, but it shouldn't be a surprise that they would give this land over at least temporarily to the Ballpark Parking Cause.

In case you've already grown tired of the ballpark photos I posted on Monday showing the eastern and southern sides of Nationals Park, I've now updated the South Capitol Street images, too. (The northern views will have to wait until the reconstruction of N Street eases.) The main Ballpark Exterior Photo Gallery is now in pretty good shape after a short span of neglect (but as I said the other day, I think I needed the break).

Within the past week, two of the unoccupied buildings in the blocks just north the stadium site were demolished: 1236 South Capitol, that funky neon-yellow bungalow sandwiched between the BP gas station and the Public Storage Building, and 1201 Cushing, a little white ramshackle building behind a wooden fence that you would never have seen unless you ventured down Cushing south of M. (In fact, *I* had never seen it until late last year.) The South Capitol Street site is being cleared so that the WMATA employee parking lot that was just moved a few hundred feet south from next to the Navy Yard Metro Half Street entrance can be relocated again (see my entry about this from back in November). The Cushing lot is the first demolition as the land gets cleared for Monument Realty's Half Street mixed-use project (55 M Street et al). These have now been added to the top of my Demolished Builings Gallery; and if you scroll down the page a good ways, you'll see two additional icons. First, I realized that I needed to include the little building demolished sometime in 2005 that was attached to the west side of Nation; then, while browsing through my photos, I found out that not only had the empty lot on the west side of the Good N Plenty carryout at Half and N contained a rowhouse within the relatively recent past, but that I actually had one photo of it, so it's added to the Gallery now as well. I imagine the Demolished Buildings page is going to get a pretty good workout over the next few weeks. UPDATE: Fixed the bad Demolished Buildings Gallery link. Oops.

In order to start construction ASAP on both the expansion of the Navy Yard Metro entrance at Half and M and mixed-use offerings along Half Street, Monument Realty and WMATA are asking the DC Zoning Commission for an emergency text amendment to the Capitol Gateway Overlay to allow a temporary parking lot for WMATA employees to be built, replacing the one currently atop the Navy Yard station. This new lot would be on South Capitol Street between M and N, on the lot just south of the Public Storage building and just north of the Amoco station (lot 0700 0046 for those of you with parcel maps), and would be accessed from Van Street. The text amendment would restrict the parking lot's life to three years--by that point, Monument's construction along Half Street should completed and WMATA employees would then be able to park in those underground lots. This will come before the Zoning Commission for setdown on Nov. 13; because it is being requested on an emergency basis, the Office of Planning is recommending that the text amendment take effect immediately upon setdown, and is requesting that it be set down for a hearing at the earliest possible date. Good to see that Monument and WMATA are moving fast. UPDATE, 11/16: This text amendment was approved on an emergency basis, which means that it goes into effect immediately and for 120 days, but Monument still has to go to the ZC during that time for a hearing to get permanent approval of the amendment plus approval of the parking lot itself because it lies in a CG Overlay mandatory review area. (See the above entry for more on THAT!)

The parade of alley closings and street closings/realignments this year in Near Southeast continues, as the National Capital Planning Commission has on its September meeting agenda the proposed closing of a public alley in Square 701 (the square bounded by 1st, M, N and Half Streets, SE--see my cruddy tax parcel map for assistance on where the squares are). I figured that this was going to be the alleys in the footprint of the Monument/WMATA properties, since Monument has made clear it's plans to move forward with developing the land along Half Street, but instead I find out that the alley closings being requested are on the east side of the Square, between Cushing Place and 1st Street, where the land is owned by the Cohen and Camalier families, who have said little about their plans for these properties. Does this mean we'll be seeing development coming to 1st Street south of M soon, too? And believe it or not, as I was writing this very entry, I received word that Monument has now filed it's application for alley closings on the west side of Square 701 as well as one small alley on Square 700 (behind the Amoco Station). Note that neither of these applications request closings of Van or Cushing. These applications follow successful alley closing requests already this year for Square 0743N as part of the 100 M and 1100 1st Street projects, the street/alley closings for the new ballpark, and the closed alleys and new streets for Capper/Carrollsburg--plus there are the still-pending requests to realign the streets in Square 737 in preparation for William C. Smith's big mixed-use project at 2nd and H and the Lerners' request to close a small portion of an alley in Square 697 as part of their 1000 South Capitol office project (no bills for these yet appearing in the DC Council legislation database).