Here are notes (MS Word) from Wednesday’s meeting about the Wisconsin Ave Giant. “The group of people that came out seemed rather evenly divided between those who wanted Giant to stop delaying and just build the new store and those who wanted to have Giant do things that they simply will not do,” such as make a smaller store or build even more parking than the development could possibly need, so everyone nearby can park too.

The notes continue:

The opponents are resourceful and creative. Who would have foreseen that they could convince anyone on the Historic Board that the ‘late commercial moderne style’ was more than mundane and thus the current Giant building was ‘historic’?’

This ties in to the multiple motivations of those who support historic preservation, from those who truly want to maintain a good neighborhood to those who want to use it as a tool against any development. I still lean toward thinking we should landmark the HUD building, which most people hate but is legitimately “significant”. But just because we can use flowery architectural terminology to talk about any random building doesn’t make it a landmark.

In one of the comments I suggested using a two-pronged set of criteria. The first is our current rule, the architectural historicity of a building. The second should be the contribution of the building to a positive sense of place. The HUD building might score high on historicity but low on the public realm, while a typical row house might be moderate on the first but high on the second. This Giant scores poorly on both, worst of all on its detrimental contribution to the neighborhood.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.