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Near Southeast DC Past News Items: Nationals Park
See JDLand's Nationals Park Project Page
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25 M
Yards/Parcel I
Chiller Site Condos
Yards/Parcel A
1333 M St.
More Capper Apts.
Yards/DC Water site
New Marine Barracks
Nat'l Community Church
Factory 202/Yards
SC1100
Completed
Thompson Hotel ('20)
West Half ('19)
Novel South Capitol ('19)
Yards/Guild Apts. ('19)
Capper/The Harlow ('19)
New DC Water HQ ('19)
Yards/Bower Condos ('19)
Virginia Ave. Tunnel ('19)
99 M ('18)
Agora ('18)
1221 Van ('18)
District Winery ('17)
Insignia on M ('17)
F1rst/Residence Inn ('17)
One Hill South ('17)
Homewood Suites ('16)
ORE 82 ('16)
The Bixby ('16)
Dock 79 ('16)
Community Center ('16)
The Brig ('16)
Park Chelsea ('16)
Yards/Arris ('16)
Hampton Inn ('15)
Southeast Blvd. ('15)
11th St. Bridges ('15)
Parc Riverside ('14)
Twelve12/Yards ('14)
Lumber Shed ('13)
Boilermaker Shops ('13)
Camden South Cap. ('13)
Canal Park ('12)
Capitol Quarter ('12)
225 Virginia/200 I ('12)
Foundry Lofts ('12)
1015 Half Street ('10)
Yards Park ('10)
Velocity Condos ('09)
Teague Park ('09)
909 New Jersey Ave. ('09)
55 M ('09)
100 M ('08)
Onyx ('08)
70/100 I ('08)
Nationals Park ('08)
Seniors Bldg Demo ('07)
400 M ('07)
Douglass Bridge Fix ('07)
US DOT HQ ('07)
20 M ('07)
Capper Seniors 1 ('06)
Capitol Hill Tower ('06)
Courtyard/Marriott ('06)
Marine Barracks ('04)
 
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Ballpark Expected to be Ready for Opening Day
The Washington Times reports on what's left to be done at the ballpark: "There are 66 days left until the Nationals open the new ballpark with an exhibition game against the Baltimore Orioles on March 29. Opening Day follows the next evening, with a nationally televised game against the Atlanta Braves.
But much work still remains to be done, particularly on the portions of the stadium not immediately visible to passers-by on South Capitol Street. [... ] In theory, baseball could be played at the new ballpark now. The field is in place, nearly all the seats have been installed, and team clubhouses and the press box are nearing completion. Heavy work remains, however, on the concession and food-service areas, offices, control rooms and team store."
Some things might not be ready by Opening Day, though: "Mr. Haas and Mr. O'Dell acknowledged that some work on the stadium will continue even after the season begins. A video board the Nationals requested be installed in center field may not be ready, and some areas will lack final coats of paint and finishes. Sculptures and other artwork will be midseason additions." But, the last word from Stan: " 'I promise you that with two weeks left, in the middle of March, people are going to look at [the ballpark] and say, 'I don't see how it's going to be done,' ' Nationals President Stan Kasten said. 'But it will be done.' "
And, repeating this from last night, Wednesday's Post has a piece about how the architects of the ballpark have worked to bring the stadium from paper to reality.
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2006 Satellite Photo Showing Ballpark Construction
With thanks to a diligent web searcher who taught me to check maps.live.com from now on, we've got the first satellite images I've seen of Nationals Park under construction. They look to be from Fall 2006, maybe early October, as best as I can tell from the ballpark progress as well as the cleared lots at 100 M/Onyx and 70/100 I. Capitol Hill Tower and Capper Seniors #1 are finished, DOT is getting there, and 20 M and 400 M are progressing.
Buried deep here at JDLand is my From Above page, comparing Near Southeast satellite photos from 1988, 2002, 2004, and 2005, and I've now added this new 2006 shot. And I also took the new one and highlighted what's already changed from when it was taken, only 16 months ago.
And speaking of the ballpark, Wednesday's Post has a piece about the ballpark's design as it speeds toward completion.
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Performance Parking Plan Town Hall #1
I've just gotten back from the first of the two town halls on Tommy Wells's Performance Parking plan to address on-street parking near the stadium, and it seemed to go pretty well. (I did not see any pitchforks or vats of boiling oil.) I'm not going to summarize the plan again, so please read the new FAQ on Tommy's web site as well as the bill itself and my post on it back in December to get up to speed. The audience comments were mainly to take issue with portions of the proposal (or to pose questions that indicated they had not digested much of the information Tommy and his staffer Neha Bhatt had just spent 30 minutes presenting), but no one rose to say the entire plan was bad.
As the meeting's scheduled ending time drew near, the topic was finally brought up of how on-street parking will be handled on Opening Day and until Tommy's pilot can be enacted. It appears that DDOT is going to be able to cobble together an initial version of the eventual plan; here are my notes on how they expect it to work, keeping in mind that this was not an official presentation of the plans and that the map displayed was hard to read (so don't take any of my boundaries or descriptions as gospel):
* New multispace meter kiosks will be installed to control and price parking on streets from Second Street, SE, over across South Capitol to Second Street, SW, north of M (I, K, and L streets), including New Jersey Avenue, and on the two frontage streets next to the freeway (I Street and Virginia Avenue). These will be "ballpark-area retail streets" as described in the plan, where on gamedays the meters will allow parking for four hours, but at a rate of $4 or $5 an hour. (There will also be "retail street" multispace meters installed on Pennsylvania Avenue, at Eastern Market, and along Eighth Street, but I'm concentrating here on Near Southeast boundaries.)
* New multispace meters will be installed on M Street SE/SW, First Street SE, and Potomac Avenue south of the ballpark, but no gametime parking will be allowed on those streets. These will allow parking for two hours at all other times.
* On pretty much any other street in Near Southeast I didn't mention above, and on most Southwest streets other than Buzzards Point and at the waterfront, the "residential" profile will be implemented, but because there won't be enough multispace meters yet, these streets will be controlled by signage and by supposedly very aggressive enforcement by DPW (which was met with a fair amount of derisive laughter). On these residential streets, Zone 6 stickered vehicles can park without restriction on either side of the street. However, non-Zone 6 vehicles must only park on one side of the street (marked with signs until the meters arrive), and can only park for two hours. Fines are expected to be raised to perhaps the $50 level for parking longer than two hours, and it's possible that non-Zone 6 vehicles parked on the residential-only side of the street will get towed. Eventually, when the meters arrive, parking will cost some nominal amount on these streets.
The questions that still are being worked on include how parking will be handled for guests of residents, and how church parking will be handled. Apparently some in the city government are wanting to not have any sort of enforcement on Sundays, but that did not go over well with the crowd and Tommy seemed to indicate a preference for extending the parking plan to Sundays and working with the churches on extra guest passes. There was also concern that the plan in its current state does not include Maine Avenue and Water Street, which could be inundated with stadium-goers if the parking there isn't regulated. Also not yet determined is when to extend the residential parking hours to in the evening, since some streets only have parking restrictions now until 6:30 pm--should it be extended to 8 pm, or 10 pm, both of which would thwart stadium-goers from trying to use those spaces?
I'm sure there will be more written about this in the coming days by other media outlets, but at least the first real news of how curbside parking will be handled on Opening Day has seeped out. Wednesday's Town Hall, at Brent Elementary School at 301 North Carolina Ave., SE, will probably focus less on stadium-area parking and more on Pennsylvania Avenue/Eastern Market/Eighth Street.
Maps and specifics will be coming from Tommy's office within a few weeks, after boundaries have been decided on.
There's also continuing concern about how Pope Day will work on April 17, since it's a weekday/workday and most parking lots will be filled with commuters. I have come up with a brilliant solution that I'm attempting to float at all levels of the DC government, so please pass it on: In DC, April 16 is now a city government holiday known as Emancipation Day. My simple solution is to move Emancipation Day one day forward, to April 17, to at least get non-essential city workers off the streets and out of the subway on that day while we're overrun with Benedict fans.
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Land Costs Push Ballpark Over Budget
Well, at least the "on-time" portion of the mantra still holds. From the Examiner: "The costs of acquiring land needed to build the Washington Nationals ballpark have exceeded original estimates by $50 million, busting the publicly financed stadium's $631 million budget with more increases yet to come, documents show. Thanks almost entirely to land acquisition, the tab for the stadium is now pegged at $674 million, an increase of $43.2 million over the original budget, according to a Jan. 16 report provided to the D.C. Council by the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission." Except that: "Land acquisition was not included in the stadium's $611 million price cap, meaning the sports commission can bridge the budget gap with excess revenues from the ballpark fund -- composed mainly of stadium sales taxes and a 1 percent tax on D.C. businesses. It also means that while the project is technically over budget, it has not breached the statutory cap."
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Nats' Parking 'Situation Room'; Town Halls Reminder
Tuesday's Post has a feature on the work the Nationals are doing to try to get the parking and transportation for the new ballpark figured out: "Team executives, D.C. police representatives, officials from the city planning and transportation departments and Metro, and D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission staff members meet regularly in the situation room, working out the details of moving 41,000 fans in and out of the ballpark -- from identifying parking lots to figuring out where traffic officers will be." Not really anything new in it, but brings together items of note mentioned recently various other media reports (and blog entries) of late.
But this is a good place to sneak in yet another reminder about the two town halls on Tommy Wells's Performance Parking bill, with the first being Tuesday (Jan. 22) from 6:30 to 8 pm at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 400 I St. SW. It then gets repeated on Capitol Hill on Wednesday at Brent Elementary School (Third and North Carolina, SE).
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Looking Back, Looking Forward: State of the Hood '08
If you have come recently to the tale of Near Southeast, or you're looking for a summary of what's happened in the past 12 months and what's coming in the next 12 months (hint: peanuts, crackerjack, gridlock), take a gander at my 2008 State of the Hood. With overviews as well as thumbnail sketches of the projects under construction and on the boards for 2008, you can get the big picture of what's happening in the neighborhood that's sometimes hard to grasp from the daily deluge of minutaie. From the SOTH intro:
"If you want some raw numbers on the changes the neighborhood has seen in the past 12 months, you can look at this table, or just digest this: a neighborhood that had 500 new-construction apartment/condo units and 1.2 million square feet of Class A office space 12 months ago is expected in the next 24 months to be home to 3.3 million square feet of office space, 3000-plus new apartment/condo/affordable housing units and 400 hotel rooms, not to mention a big shiny new baseball stadium."
I also took the opportunity to run some pretty scary JDLand stats as part of my 2007 year in review: "I posted 662 blog entries totalling over 135,000 words (averaging out to 1.8 posts/350 words a day, every day, and filling 191 pages if pasted into Microsoft Word). I also added more than 3,100 photos documenting the neighborhood's demolition and construction (and took thousands more beyond those). All this productivity on my end does not appear to have been for naught, judging by the estimated 1.3 million hits on JDLand's Near Southeast pages in 2007." I'm guessing 2008--at least the first four months or so--will probably match that pace. Fasten your seat belts....
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New Frozen Tundra Photos; Archive Tweaks
I braved the chilly temps and gusty winds on Sunday morning for what turned out to be an abbreviated venture to get some updated photos. (I didn't post them yesterday because I thought I might go out this afternoon to get more, but it's a holiday, it's still cold, I'm pretty warm and cozy here on the sofa, and, and, and....) You'll see some shots of the demolition along First Street on the Willco site (which is about 50 percent completed), as well as a few updated shots of the ballpark, some of which show that the steps are now being poured on the grand staircase. There's also a smattering of shots of 55 M, 100 M, 70/100 I, and the at-ground-level Velocity construction, and some other vantage points that I got before high-tailing back indoors.
You can see the complete batch of photos, remembering to click on the icon if you want to see all archived photos of a certain view.
This is a good time to mention that I recently made a few changes to the Photo Archive. First, you'll now see links that allow you to toggle between seeing all photos of an angle and just the oldest and newest, which comes in handy as the number of photos continue to escalate. And, because the archive is getting pretty big, I've changed the default for when you choose to look at all angles of an intersection to show just the oldest and newest of each angle--you can then choose to see all photos for a specific angle.
 

Performance Parking Plan FAQ; Town Halls
In advance of this week's two town hall meetings on Tommy Wells's new plan to handle curbside parking in areas around the stadium, his web site now has a page with an FAQ and other detailed information about the proposal. Also, Wells's office has refuted the flyer I received late last week that said the Tuesday town hall will be about stadium-related parking and transportation issues other than just this proposal. The town halls are on Tuesday at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 400 I St. SW, and Wednesday at Brent Elementary School, 301 North Carolina Ave. SE. Both meetings will run from 6:30 to 8 pm. The Committee on Public Works and the Environment has scheduled its hearing on this bill for Jan. 30 at 6 pm.
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Poplar Point Parking Possibilities in the News
Back on Friday, WTOP posted "Soccer Stadium at Poplar Point Could Help Nats Parking," which will warm the heart of commenters and others who are starting to agitate for the idea of using Poplar Point for parking, and perhaps even building a pedestrian bridge across the Anacostia between there and the ballpark. City Council chair Vincent Gray is quoted as floating the idea: "You could park over at Poplar Point, come across a pedestrian bridge, or otherwise be transported the short distance to the baseball stadium." Of course, it would need to be a really *high* pedestrian bridge, to allow for naval traffic along the river (remember, the Douglass Bridge is a drawbridge). There's already a newly revamped pedestrian walkway on the Douglass Bridge that now makes it a lot less nail-biting to walk over, but it's a pretty long walk.
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Jan. 22 Meeting Now a Town Hall on Stadium Parking
The Jan. 22 community meeting originally announced as focusing on Tommy Wells's new Performance Parking proposal is now being touted as a "Southwest Town Hall on Baseball Parking" according to this flier that's arrived in my inbox: "Find out how street parking in Southwest will change in the next eight weeks! Plans presented. Questions answered."
More: "Councilmember Tommy Wells will hold a Southwest Town Hall meeting to discuss Baseball Parking Plans that will be implemented in our neighborhood this season. He will also discuss his plan for Curbside Performance Parking that he believes will help protect residential neighborhoods from traffic and parking at the new stadium and help small business maintain access and availability for their customers. There will be a brief presentation of the parking plan to explain how it will work, followed by an open Question & Answer session with community residents."
So, I guess this will be the unveiling of how the city is going to handle parking near the stadium until Tommy's plan gets enacted? This should be fun. The meeting is from 6:30 to 8 pm at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 400 I St., SW. There's also a meeting for Capitol Hill residents the next night (Jan. 23) at Brent Elementary School at Third and North Carolina, SE.
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