"Baseball to Seek Arbitration Over D.C. Stadium" is in Wednesday's Post. I'm tired of all of this--you can go read it and tell me what it says ;-). UPDATE, 6 pm: And MLB has done, the deed, filing today for mediation. Here's the MLB.com story. UPDATE, 11:23 pm:  Earlier Post link has gone bad, so I've removed it and added it to the official Thursday story, "Baseball Files for Arbitration on DC Stadium." Since I'm still doing my best to ignore all the back-and-forth and the posturing, I'll just post this quote: "Mayoral aides said the Williams administration may announce changes in the lease agreement by the end of this week and will resubmit it to the council within two weeks."

The Washington Blade's "D.C. law may block O Street clubs from moving" discusses the current state of affairs for the gay nightclubs in Near Southeast, from the ones in the footprint of the new baseball stadium (like Ziegfield's, Secrets, Follies, Heat, and others) to the ones along K Street (Wet, Edge, plus all-orientation Nation). The ones within the stadium footprint say that a law on the books intended to help them may actually prevent them from moving outside of their current area. Meanwhile, Wet and Edge at Half and K have been told they must vacate this year in order to make way for Ron Cohen's mixed-use project on that block. As for the fate of Nation, I've heard nothing about the existing plans moving forward for a 10-story office building on that site--the building permit was filed more than a year ago, although Potomac Investment Properties indicated at the time that they just wanted to be ready for when the time was right to begin building. However, construction materials and fences have been spotted around the Nation building, and their published events calendar is pretty sparse (plus their concert line hasn't been updated since early November) leading folks to wonder if something is indeed afoot. (If someone wants to whisper about any of this to me, I'll listen!)

(originally posted Dec. 2) It's been just short of a year since Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd won the design competition for Washington Canal Park, and basically nothing has happened with the plans since then. But for its Dec. 8 board meeting, the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation has prepared a draft resolution that agrees to award GGN a $979,500 contract for design and planning services. Let's hope that the park appears in 2006, as originally scheduled. UPDATE: I have now heard that the AWC board did authorize the AWC to enter into a contract with GGNL. But of course now the contract has to be worked out.

I'm not sure many readers have ever had the strength to scroll all the way to the bottom of my Near Southeast home page, so many of you might have missed the goofy little "slide shows" I had there showing the construction progress at Capitol Hill Tower and DOT HQ. But since the home page has gotten unbearably huge, I decided to now just show a random one each time you load the home page, but I've also created a  Construction Slide Shows page to give them their own space. A random one comes up each time you load the page, then you can click on the links to choose another. And I've also added a new one, for Capper Seniors #1. Meanwhile, in other site news, if you've visited in the past week or so you've probably noticed the slight design change, with navigation links and ads now running down the right-hand side of the page, instead of taking up precious real estate in the main portion of the pages. And perhaps now having the list of Near Southeast pages visible (instead of in dropdown boxes) will make roaming the site easier. Or scarier, if you're alarmed by exactly how much is here. UPDATE: And I added a Blog Archive list of links, allowing you to go back through my posts month-by-month, if you are ever so inclined.

The Post's Op-Ed page today includes "Why the Stadium Deal Isn't Done," written by Major League Baseball president Bob Dupuy. I'm guessing some people might be unhappy about it, especially when reading paragraphs like "The District, for all its many pluses, is not an easy city with which to do business. City leaders frequently quibble with baseball about its commitments, and they often quarrel with each other. There are so many interested parties in the D.C. government that it seems on some days that no one is in control and on other days that everyone wants to be in control." Oh, and MLB wanted the Banneker Overlook site south of L'Enfant Plaza. Because that would have been so much easier to secure and build on, and wouldn't have had a smidge of citizen opposition.