December 6, 2006
Morning Roundup: Blitzkrieg on Grinchitude Edition
Good Morning, Washington! Whether you're on the way to an awkward meeting or just learning that Friday is part of the work-week, DCist wishes you a happy Wednesday. That is, unless you're the guy stealing donated gifts. We won't say what we wish on you.
Another Urban Re-Vamp Gains Momentum: The D.C. Council has decided to move ahead with plans to redevelop Captial City Market in Northeast. The 24-acre area currently hosts a myriad of warehouses and markets. The plan, being pushed by the market's largest landowner and Councilman Vincent Orange (D-Ward 5), would include office space, condos and retail shops. Opponents say existing merchants, many of whom are first-generation immigrants, are being pushed aside without having their voices heard.
Crooks Steal Toys From Needy Kids: In case there was any doubt that the War on Christmas is still on, observe the awfulness of stealing presents from underprivileged kids. Spotsylvania Police are looking for an SUV that sped away from a parking lot with donated toys meant for children with parents in prison. The presents were taken from the car of a church worker shopping at Target. In a truly Dickensian twist, witnesses say the car even ran over one of the wrapped gifts as it left the scene.
Briefly Noted: Council of Governments predicts a 27% increase in D.C.'s population... Six guys in cow suits protest downtown Starbucks... University of Maryland students recruited into prostitution ring... Fire drives residents from Penn Quarter apartments...
This Day in DCist: Last year we marked the birth of a smoke-free city. In 2004, we debated the merits of mayo.
Photo by Flickr user aterkel
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Pardon my French, but that's fucking horrible news about the Capital City Market. What an awful idea to take something so functional and valuable and detroy it for overpriced condos, token affordable housing, and a god damn bowling alley.
Definitely reject the values of Vincent Orange.
Ditto on everything Reid said.
The Post isn't even trying to hide its bias about "restoring" this "gritty" "underutilized" market. The area's always packed, it's no less gritty than Dupont on a Sunday morning, and restoring it to what? It's ALWAYS been a market.
And what is the developer fetish with ice rinks and bowling alleys? It seems every proposal for mixed-use development calls for an ice rink or a bowling alley and they never materialize. Now, if it were a duckpin alley, I'd be behind it 100%. But we all know this will end up either a fugly faux loft facade with nothing resembling affordable housing or a massive corporate cube farm with a Quiznos in the lobby. Either way, the Council gets its huge tax revenues and the small business owners get screwed to the floor.
Time to go to Litteri's and stock up on olive oil, sausages, and some decent cheap Italian wines before they fold. Thanks a lot, City Council, for proving yet again you don't give a fat rat's fart about small businesses in DC.
But Vincent Orange did such lovely work at the Brentwood Shopping Center.
Have you not seen the metro accessible acres of parking lots? The man in a visionary!
Seriously the Union Market is a bit run down and rough around the edges but it is a unique vibrant place in DC. The place is jumping on weekends. Def a little sketchy and scary at nights but who would go there at night, unless your "patronizing" the downtown motel.
Lively city markets from Lexington in Baltimore to the Ferry Building in San Francisco or the The Reading Terminal Markets in Philadelphia have combined preservation and redevelopment into showplaces of food culture. They are the toast of their respective towns -- for DC to continue to take something uniquely our own that benefits the community and serves the surrounding city and replace it with another generic new town is absolute the worst legacy of the last 10 years of DC development. And shows just how far behind DC's leaders (of all stripes) are to their counterparts in other locations. Boo on Vincent Orange and this short sighted land grab.
It's a shame. I'd love to see a *little* more retail there - more for the home cook rather than just restaurants. Maybe a few more places to grab a bite. See the Strip District in Pittsburgh, for example. Unfortunately, I have no faith that they could manage that without ruining most of what's so interesting about the area now.
NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!! GOD PLEASE NO MORE CONDOS!! Soon this city will be nothing more than a bland landscape of condos and offices. How Awful!!!
This Capital City Market news is terrible. It's a fantastic place with a ton to offer. If I want the crap they're proposing I'll go to one of the other dozen places in the city that has it. Just because something is different doesn't make it any less valuable.
If Litteri's goes under, I'm gonna go ballistic!
I smell a CHEESE CAKE FACOTRY is comeing!....ohhh yea!
I am not looking foward to another Post Pentagon City clone.
I think this is the first thing I've seen on DCist that everyone agrees on, which tells you how bad of an idea it must be.
Why don't we try filling the hundreds of other condos first before we build hundreds more?
sucks sucks sucks! where else are warehouses actually still used with badass views of the Capitol?
Is there ANYONE who actually lives in DC who wants the Capital City Market to be razed? Anyone? Is there any talk of finding a place for all of the hard-working business owners there to move their shops to or are they just screwed? Does anyone actually think its a good idea to build more condos? Who are these people.
Good call on Reading Terminal Market as what potential there is in an honest to goodness revitalization of an historic market. It's one of the few things I genuinely miss about the Philly.
I wouldn't advocate tearing the whole thing down but maybe some modifications and some redevelopment wouldn't be all bad. Keep the Farmers Market and most of the lower warehouses, but encourage uses that are little bit more retail.
A considerable number of the warehouses are wholesale businesses that don't really serve the immediate neighborhood (although you could argue they do serve the city at large). And some are just shit shack merchants - tourist t-shirts, 'designer' handbag knockoffs, etc.
But some do let you buy individually, and as such they do serve the neighborhood. And the impromptu Hispanic food marts are obviously serving a need, albeit not really so much from the immediate neighborhood.
I don't know how much this one guy owns, and how much is owned by others.
Maybe he could develop some of his into retail spaces, with high-ass condos on top, while leaving some of the warehouses intact, but trying to focus a bit more on retail and things the actual surrounding neighborhoods could use.
And definitely keep the DC Farmers Market portion.
Actually, it'd be sortof what all the fake 'warehouse loft' condos all pretend to be.
What I don't understand is who on earth thinks it's a good idea to keep building all these condos by destroying places that people living in these condos might want to go. When the entire city becomes condos and office towers, no one is going to want to live in it.
"Smithers! Is everybody booing Vincent Orange?"
"Uh, no sir. They're saying, "Boo-urns! Boo-urns!""
The warehouses don't serve the immedate neighborhood, but they do serve the city as a whole. Quite a few Chinese takeouts and bodegas in DC get their supplies there. With that market out of the picture, they'd have to get their bulk rice and eggroll wraps from out of town. There goes that revenue flying out of town into the suburbs again.
I promise we don't need more condos- check it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120100017.html
The best part is in the ninth paragraph:
"At this point, if no other condos were added to the market, it would take another three years to sell them all, and builders are eager to find buyers for the units already available. There are also thousands of units available for resale by their owners."
I think that pretty much speaks for itself.
In any case, can we get some more details on where to send those kids some replacement G.I. Joes, stat? I usually appreciate good irony, but kids whose parents are criminals having their Christmas criminalized breaks what's left of my mouldy little heart.
I think this is the first thing I've seen on DCist that everyone agrees on, which tells you how bad of an idea it must be.
For real tho'!! How often do the chattering classes in the DC Blogosphere agree on anything?
If A Litteri's does not survive this I will go ape shit!
They shouldn't replace it, they should just rehab it and maybe add some retail and commercial space because it is run down and doesn't present itself particularly well. Which means a lot when it comes to things like proving to people who know little about you how useful and unique you are. But I know that if more people knew about this from the small business standpoint, there's no doubt in my mind that it wouldn't have passed as easily as it did. The project itself is impressive, but it's not needed and won't be at all unique and "real", which is something DC, outside G'town and DT, prides itself on. All they need is more commercial and retail space, and let the other run down residential areas around it develop off of this.
I could see many of these merchants moving their businesses out to the Port Towns or maybe Landover/Capitol Heights. There is a considerable amount of foodservice-spec industrial space out there. Those areas do lack the hipster cache of Ivy City/Trinidad, though.
The Post isn't even trying to hide its bias about "restoring" this "gritty" "underutilized" market. The area's always packed, it's no less gritty than Dupont on a Sunday morning, and restoring it to what? It's ALWAYS been a market.
The Post did not call it "underutilized" or use "restored" except in the title, which is too bad because the article was really pretty good.
The fifth paragraph, after laying out the proposal, reads,
The article then went on about how many people work there currently, how they are organizing against the plan, and about the political connections between the owner of much of the land, the Mayor, and Councilmen Orange. The article even said that the move was "unusual" in how it was added to other legislation that was completely different.
Seems that the Post may be persuaded to be against this move too.
You reap what you sow people. The property owners have let the buildings go to seed, and left themselves open to eminent domain abuse. The possibility of eminent domain abuse is there because because the five liberal justices on the SCOTUS gave them a great big green light for it in the blatantly unconstitutional Kelo v. New London decision. You can't elect corrupt Democrats for 50 years to run DC and then expect them to respect property rights. Democrats don't believe in individual property rights. You vote for them, this is what you get. Suck it.
give me 30 cc's of theses guys, stat
http://www.castlecoalition.org
http://www.examiner.com/a-450892~Ethnic_brigade_rescues_the_Florida_Avenue_market.html
Please, the Union Market is not comparable in the least to Reading Terminal or, for god's sake, the Ferry Building in SF. Have you been to the Ferry Building. It's the most upper-crusty market in the world. There's an entire store for caviar and another for ridiculously expensive chocolate. Reading Terminal is a great market but nothing like Union Market which is, for the most part, a real dump. If it can be preserved and upgraded, I'm all for it. But let's not pretend it's some sort of magical marketplace that doesn't need huge improvements.