After a little more than two years of off-and-on demolition work spanning all or part of 10 city blocks, the last of the Capper/Carrollsburg residential buildings between 2nd and 5th streets came down today. It was on the north side of K Street between 2nd and 3rd, on a block that eventually will be home to a six-story mixed-income apartment building. I've updated my Demolished Buildings page to include these last Capper buildings, and within the next day or so I'll update the Capper photo page with new shots of the empty landscape--being able to see the DOT building from 3rd Street north of the freeway was a strange site today.

I'm pleased to announce the posting of my 2007 State of the Hood, a detailed narrative of the changes we've seen in Near Southeast in 2006, plus what's on the boards for 2007. If you're somewhat new to tracking Near Southeast, this is a good primer on where the neighborhood currently stands; if you've been following my site closely, you'll probably already know most of what's there, but it never hurts to repackage my overabundance of information in yet another format.

A nice pick-me-up on this dreary Monday morning--the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation has unveiled a redesigned web site, and it's certainly more pleasing to the eye. There's a page listing all of their projects, including pages on the South Capitol Waterfront & Ballpark District and Washington Canal Park in Near Southeast as well as the Southwest Waterfront, Poplar Point, Hill East, Kingman Island, and others. One new item from the South Capitol page, that the 40,000-sq-ft public plaza we've started hearing about planned for the foot of First Street at the waterfront will include a new ferry pier. Lots of people interested in the ballpark and Near Southeast in general have been wondering whether ferry/water taxi options would be incorporated, and I had always seen general discussions that they would, but this is the first specific description I've seen for a planned location of such a pier. Yay! (But I'm guessing we won't be seeing it by Opening Day 2008.) For more information (what little I have) on the First Street Plaza, see my Florida Rock page (whose developers have pledged $3.7 million toward the plaza's design and implementation costs, for what is expected to be a $15 million project); my Canal Park page has info and photos on that project as well.