This looks pretty nice to me.

Ryan Avent had the same reaction I did to the new No Drilling at McMillan blog. Its intro reads,

This site is dedicated to saving 25 acres of green space in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, DC. While people who say they care about the environment are outraged about drilling in the northern tundra of Alaska, there seems to be little concern for turning 25 acres of green space in the nation’s capital into concrete and asphalt. Once it is developed it will be lost forever.

Protecting the environment is much more complex than a simple “development bad, open space good” mantra. Enabling more people to live in the city lets more people choose a sustainable lifestyle. It allows people to live a 20-minute bus ride from work instead of a 60-minute drive. It also lowers pressure to develop distant farms and forests in western Maryland and central Virginia.

Avent adds,

The GOP wants to drill in Alaska to unearth oil, needed to fuel automobiles, needed to maintain a drivable way of life, because there are insufficient quantities of dense, walkable, urban developments in this country, such as that proposed for the McMillan site. Sigh.

Ironically, 64% of responders of the little poll in the sidebar of the site voted for development, even though that option is worded in a slanted way. The option reads, “Allow pre-selected private corporations to maximize their profits by maximizing square footage and turning as much of this green space into concrete and asphalt as possible.” Of course, he could have written, “Enable more people to live in DC by integrating open space, housing, and retail into a current dead zone in the middle of our neighborhoods, ensuring more customers for our neighborhood businesses.” But that’s not how the blog’s author, Paul Kirk, sees it.

Kirk has some specific complaints, some of which may be valid. The plan only includes one through street across the site, which does create a bit of a superblock feel. Could the public plazas abut roads instead of creating completely separate areas that might end up deserted and dangerous at night? On the other hand, more streets would actually pave more of the site, while these pedestrian allées increase the open, green space. According to Tania Jackson of Jair Lynch, the development group, they designed many of the residences to face this open space to create “eyes on the street” at all hours. Plus, improving transit to this area is a good idea. But “More Transit Amid the Drilling At McMillan” is not the name of the blog.

Kirk also raises hysteria over including affordable housing:

Residential buildings that are four stories high? Just how many low-income units are intended for this project? … It’s about time other neighborhoods, like Georgetown and upper Northwest shoulder some of the burden of supplying housing for people that don’t have jobs. There are already enough people walking around all day and night with nothing better to do than loiter, rob, steal, deal drugs, assault and murder us. It is not my opinion that low-income housing is a magnet for these people, it is a well-documented fact of life in the city.

Actually, no. New affordable housing we create in DC goes to people like police officers, teachers, and the many other people with good, important, but not high-paying jobs. There are many senior citizens in the area who want to stay in their neighborhood but can’t afford much of the housing as Bloomingdale’s prices have risen.

The McMillan team and the city haven’t finalized the percentages of affordable housing and the income eligibility levels. They should at least exceed the the new inclusionary zoning rules, which set aside only 12-15% of units for low and moderate income units. Most of those (half for low rise buildings and all for high rise buildings) can go to households making up to 80% of Area Median Income (around $80,000 for a family of four), with the rest reserved for households at 50% AMI (around $50,000).

And yes, all parts of the city should do their part for housing affordability. That’s why a citywide inclusionary zoning policy is important, and why we should have mixed-income housing in every project on public land anywhere in the city.

At the beginning of December, I bought a Christmas tree at the Ross Elementary School in Dupont. The parent volunteering there lives in Bloomingdale, where he and his family bought their house around ten years ago. Today, he said, they wouldn’t be able to afford a townhouse in Bloomingdale. Adding housing opportunities for more families like his will make Bloomingdale safer and better, not more dangerous. And it’s a far better use of a giant empty field that right now serves as little more than an interesting visual curiosity to people speeding through the area on Michigan Avenue.