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).