With the Capitol Quarter workforce housing lottery mere hours away, I've been told that 172 interested parties have been certified and will be entered in the drawing Saturday morning at 9 am. There were a few last-minute changes made by DCHA in the rules governoring the workforce program because of the huge response (though, again, I hope if you're in the lottery you're registered with the EYA web site and not depending on me to tell you this a mere 11 hours beforehand!)--quoting from an EYA e-mail, "the three-bedroom Elliott model may not be reserved by purchasers with a household size of less than two"; and "the Price Control Period will be enforced with a soft second-trust rather than a restrictive covenant. In addition, the Price Control period has been modified to encourage initial occupants to remain in the workforce homes for the first three years after initial settlement." If this makes no sense, read the Workforce Housing Guidelines for more details. I'll be there at 9 am to view the festivities (unless I oversleep, which with my lazy bones is always possible), so wave and say hi. And remember, there will be about 70 more workforce homes available for purchase as more of Capitol Quarter comes on line, so there will be more opportunities in the coming months for qualified buyers to purchase one of these moderate-income-level homes. UPDATE: As you can see from the photo above, it was just like the lottery shows on TV--ping pong balls in a barrel with numbers on them. Fifty numbers were picked, and 20 of those people (going down through the list in the order they were picked) will sign reservation contracts. Four of the top 20 already appeared to not be staying around to sign reservations, so folks lower down the list who thought they didn't have a chance might still see a glimmer of hope....

Washington City Paper surveys the state of the strip club business in DC, and describes the difficulties that nightclubs formerly of Near Southeast--Wet/Edge, Club 55, and the O Street gay nightclubs owned by Robert Siegel--have had trying to relocate elsewhere in the city. One big item that needs better explanation in the story--the Nexus Gold Club isn't just "contemplating" leaving Near Southeast, the land it sits on is soon going to become JPI's 909 New Jersey Avenue residential tower, and the scuttlebutt continues to be that Nexus will be closing by the end of the year.

The big news of the day yesterday for DC was the Senate's passing of HR3699, which will transfer a number of federally controlled properties to DC, including Poplar Point and Reservation 13 (which are both large parts of the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative). The Post article mentions that this also includes some small properties along Potomac Avenue by the baseball stadium. There's also one other Near Southeast parcel (that I know of) in the land transfer bill, and that's Reservation 17A, a small bit of land along New Jersey Avenue north of the DPW trash transfer station at I Street, which now helps clear the way for the reopening of I Street between 2nd and New Jersey, a plan currently awaiting city council approval.