The DC Office of Zoning has posted its agenda for the Sept. 15 meeting, and it includes the stadium text amendment for the Capitol Gateway overlay, as I expected. But they're taking up other Near Southeast items as well, both having to do with Capper/Carrollsburg. I'm not 100% versed in zoning minutiae (I might have made it to the 30% mark by now), so I'll just parrot what the site says, that the Capper/Carrollsburg 2nd Stage Planned Unit Development (PUD) and Modification is on the agenda. I believe that a second-stage PUD means a specific, fully engineered, plan for the site is being submitted for approval. So I hope that's something we can get a look at pretty soon. I would also think that this submittal means that the project may be kicking into a higher gear soon, as also evidenced by 15 building permit requests submitted at the end of August for addresses within the Capper/Carrollsburg boundaries.

There's also an additional agenda item for "Capper/Carrollsburg Venture LLC -- Senior Building," which I believe is a revision of the design of Capper Seniors #2, because the design submitted in 2003 included a blank wall along M Street, which is a zoning no-no in this area. The need for this vote was discussed at the Jan. 12, 2004 meeting, and is probably why the project's building permit application has the zoning section marked "Hold for Correction." (Yes, my head hurts, too.)

Speaking of second-stage PUDs, while wandering around on the web trying to educate myself on this topic, I found this 1999 National Capital Planning Commission document, showing the detailed plans for Florida Rock. However, that was then and this is now, and in December the Zoning Commission will be again taking up Florida Rock's second-stage PUD. So we'll have to wait and see what changes have been brought by six years (and a baseball stadium next door).

I will admit that I have tended to focus on news west of 7th Street, SE, ignoring the small additional sliver of Near Southeast south of the freeway between 7th and the 11th Street Bridge. (Some would argue that the land east of the 11th Street Bridge, including Maritime Plaza, is also part of Near Southeast, but I'm putting my foot down and deeming that Hill East.) But I promise now to add those few blocks to their rightful place on this site (if not on the map at right, at least not yet!). So, with that, a few items:

Speaking of bridges and environmental impact statements, I've only now stumbled across both the South Capitol Street Bridge Study web site and SouthCapitolEIS.com,  two efforts that ran concurrently over the last six months as part of the project to replace the Frederick Douglass Bridge. (I've only been checking the DDOT Public Meetings page on a daily basis for weeks now, sure would have been nice if one of their announcements had ever mentioned these URLs!) Both sites have lots of links and information, and should be required bookmarks for anyone interested in the replacement (and most likely realignment) of the South Capitol Street Bridge. Materials from the summer meetings of these projects are available, as is a mammoth, crash-your-computer PDF showing two of the proposed alternate alignments. I believe these two stages are pretty much over, so I'll try to keep you posted on the next phases.

A couple of items so small I can't actually believe I'm posting them, but here they are anyway: