* ANC 6D (Southwest and most of Near Southeast) meets Monday night at 7 pm at St. Augustine's Church at Sixth and M streets, SW. (When are they moving to their new meeting space, dangit?) The agenda is posted--no big Near Southeast items, except for perhaps an update from the Nationals, a brief update on Traffic/Parking issues from a member of Tommy Wells's staff, and request for support for a liquor license for the new Patriot II river cruise ship operating out of Diamond Teague Park. One other item that might be of interest is an update on the 14th Street Bridge Environmental Impact Statement, which has been quiet for a while.

* ANC 6B (south side of Capitol Hill and Near Southeast south of the freeway east of Seventh [excluding the Navy Yard]) meets the next night, Tuesday, at 7 pm at its new meeting place, the People's Church at 535 Eighth Street, SE. Here's the agenda, which is chock full of liquor license renewals and home remodeling projects.

* Looking ahead a bit to next week, a reminder that the Anacostia River Business Summit is being held on Tuesday, May 18, starting at 1:30 pm at 20 M St., SE. Admission is $30 per person; the agenda includes a presentation on the Anacostia River Watershed Restoration Plan and panels on "Federal and District Leadership Efforts" and "The Business Impact." There will also be an exhibit hall and a networking reception after the sessions. More info here, and online registration available here.

This morning Mayor Fenty officially opened Diamond Teague Park, cutting the ribbon alongside the parents of the park's namesake, the Earth Conservation Corps volunteer who was murdered in October 2003. The piers at the park, located just across the street from the baseball stadium, have been operating sporadically since last September, and now host both a water taxi service to and from Alexandria for baseball games and a river cruise company that began service earlier this month. Another outfit is hoping to launch a separate water taxi service this summer.

The park includes two piers, a 250-foot commercial pier and a 200-foot pier for non-motorized vessels, like kayaks and canoes, as well as sustainable elements like floating wetlands and shoreline plantings. A portion of the $8 million cost of the park ($800,000) was paid by Florida Rock next door as part of its zoning agreements for its new development, and funding has also come from the USDOT HQ Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes (PILOT) fund. (Someday the area next to Teague on the Florida Rock site will be a large public plaza that will in effect expand the size of the park considerably. And eventually there is supposed to be a floating bridge connecting Teague's boardwalk with the Park at the Yards, though there's no timeline on that.)

Alas, I was unable to be at the event today, so no photos. But here's the press release from the mayor's office. And you can check out my Teague page to see before-and-after photos, like the ones above.

*At 10:45 am, Mayor Fenty and others will be participating in a ribbon-cutting at Diamond Teague Park and Piers. I won't be able to be there, so go see for yourself if you're interested!

* At 6:30 pm is the ANC 6D meeting on the ballpark Traffic Operations and Parking Plan, at Westminster Church at Fourth and I streets, SW.

Now, on another subject.

I admit it--I've become very lazy when it comes to blogging about stories/links/events that might be of interest but that don't really have any *news,* especially as the volume of them has increased along with the interest in Near Southeast. Twitter is the perfect outlet for those sorts of items--it's easy to post them immediately (since I'm all about the speed), and I'm only responsible for 100 or so characters, then the URL, then I'm done. (Or, even better, I get to just retweet stuff from other Twitterers.) Plus it allows me to save my time and energy for more fascinating {ahem} material, like the Marine Barracks site search or the latest CSX Virginia Avenue Tunnel stuff.

But, if you're only reading my posts by RSS feed or e-mail subscription, then you're missing out. How to get this additional material? If you don't have a Twitter account, you can come to the JDLand home page and check out the Twitter box at upper right every so often. Or you can visit my Twitter page on your rounds, or you can "like" JDLand on Facebook and have the Tweets show up in your news feed. Or you can subscribe to my Tweet RSS feed if immediacy isn't of paramount importance.

I've actually posted similar mea culpas to this one before (the last one not even a month ago--oops!), but let's consider this time the official notification of the change in my approach. Of course the blog will always have big news, new photos, and whatnot. But as I try to find ways to keep going after more than seven years, I'm going to stop feeling quite so guilty about using only Twitter for these FYI links, even if it makes the blog itself less of the all-encompassing repository it's been up to now.

Thank you, drive through.

On Saturday, the BID took a couple hundred of the neighborhood's residents (and one interloping blogger--thanks for inviting me!) on a "cherry blossom boat cruise" along the Southeast and Southwest waterfronts. (They ran three chartered trips, and still had a waiting list.) As might be expected, I brought along my camera, and took a few photos. Of course, none of the many people who were actually on the boat rides probably need to see these, but maybe there's one or two others who might still be interested. And maybe someday I can find a trip *up* the Anacostia, instead of just down!

And now I think I'll take a bit of a respite for the next few days. It's been a busy month....

The meeting is at 7 pm at St. Augustine's Church, Sixth and M streets, SW. (This *might* be the last time the ANC meets at this location, with its new space at the Waterfront building at Fourth and M being close to its debut.)

If you're interested in the CSX stuff and can't make the Monday meeting, remember that there's also an update being given the next night at ANC 6B's meeting.

For some additional detail, you can see this report from last Friday by Fox5's Holly Morris on the company (and the BID and the Earth Conservation Corps). No prices are listed anywhere on the site yet, but you can call for reservations and apparently tickets can also be purchased at the dock as well as at Union Station and eventually online.

But there could also be another company on the horizon. American River Taxi is working on plans to offer what it says will be "regular runs" of "eco-friendly" water taxis between Teague, the Gangplank Marina on the Southwest Waterfront, Washington Harbor in Georgetown, and Alexandria, with shuttle connections to the Foggy Bottom and L'Enfant Plaza Metro stations from Georgetown and Southwest. (Their map also shows possible future service to National Harbor, Poplar Point and National Airport.) The company's owner, Shaun Guevarra, says that there are plans to eventually offer discounted service to residents of Southeast and Southwest, along with rechargeable account cards and mobile payment options.

There will be two boats initially, according to the company's web site, and they are being built by Watermarque Marine. The schedules and prices are to be posted soon, Guevarra says, and his company will be in attendance at the Southwest Waterfront this Saturday evening (April 3) as part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival's Prelude to Fireworks.

New ventures don't always have the easiest path to launch, of course, so it will be interesting to see how this pans out, with exactly how many runs per day between the locations, the price, etc. etc. The service is targeted to start in the second quarter of this year.

Will post more as I get it.

* The ANC voted 7-0 on a resolution supporting the city council's proposed marriage equality act.

* They voted 5-2 to support Florida Rock Properties' pending request in front of the Zoning Commission to extend the deadline for the first building permit application at RiverFront two years, to June, 2012, which would push the deadline for the start of first-phase construction to 2013. (Read this entry for more details, and see my project page for specifics on the development itself.) It's expected that this will be taken up at the November 9th ZC public meeting.

David Briggs of Holland and Knight, representing FRP, said that while the developer has worked "assiduously and tenaciously" since last year to find either equity or construction funding, the notion of starting the first-phase office building within the current zoning timeline is "just not viable." FRP does say, though, that they will be continuing to search for funding if they receive the extension. In the meantime, FRP made its required $800,000 payment to the city last fall to help defray the costs of Diamond Teague Park next door; I asked if there were any possibility that perhaps the land on the very east end of the Florida Rock site, which will eventually be a public plaza that abuts Teague Park, might be cleared and opened as public space before the construction begins on the office building--they're "looking at options."

* The commissioners also voted 7-0 to support the zoning special exception request by the operator of the six-unit "Casa degli Angeli" at Third and L, which is currently operating as a month-to-month room rental and which is looking for a zoning change to become a full-fledged bed and breakfast. The Board of Zoning Adjustment hearing is scheduled for Nov. 17.

In an article entitled "GreenSpace may get housed in lonely Southwest D.C." (subscribers only), WBJ tells us: "If negotiations turn into reality, the Washington Nationals' stadium may score an unlikely tenant in one of its empty retail spots by the end of this year: nonprofit purveyors of green affordable housing. If a deal is struck for 16,000 square feet of arched space at Nationals Park, the nonprofit, GreenHome, will branch beyond its original mission of environmentally aligned, price-conscious residential buildings and set up its new GreenSpace concept: a classroom, conference center and vendor showroom for green development." Apparently they are negotiating to have either the city or the Lerners cover their rent in the space.

The main retail spaces at the ballpark are along First Street and Potomac Avenue SouthEAST, right across from the WASA land and Diamond Teague Park.

UPDATE: WBJ has corrected the online version of the article.

There's nothing like the light you get from late afternoon through twilight on a clear crisp day in September, and I was lucky enough to be able to wander around for a few hours and take some photos. They're mostly of Diamond Teague Park, the ballpark, and various views along the Anacostia (including the arrival of the water taxi from Alexandria). Not much rhyme or reason to them, but they are photos I've been meaning to take for a long time, and maybe you might enjoy them, too. (I need a little more time to get them onto my Teague page.)