Capitol Hill Town Square project area.

The Capitol Hill Town Square project held a Community Wide Input meeting on the evening of October 1st. The name might be a misnomer since it consisted of nearly two hours of presentation and about a half hour of “input”, but that’s what they called it. The “input” included a strong dose of close-mindedness from some community activists opposed to even studying an option that could move Pennsylvania Avenue.

You can see the presentation here. This was a community-wide meeting that followed an affected community meeting (for those who lived near the square). At that meeting, according to the Hill Rag,

[Barracks Row Main Street’s Tip] Tipton was frank in conceding errors in initial outreach and communication and has since added six residential members to the current Task Force bringing the body’s total to 17 members.

The meeting started with some brief words by Councilmember Tommy Wells and Tipton about the project and the purpose of the meeting. It was similar to what Tipton wrote in the Hill Rag.

Then Sharon Ambrose got up to speak. The former Councilmember has been added to the task force committee as a Member-at-Large. She talked about how improving the Eastern Market Metro Plaza is “not a new idea,” that her office and the local ANC had been involved—removing benches where the homeless slept and planting flowers and trees—for years.

Ambrose mentioned that the square has become more valuable as the neighborhood has become more active and that with the redevelopment of the Hine Junior High School site there is an opportunity for some Blue Sky Planning. She mentioned that the square has been a “what if” for a long time. I suspect Ambrose was brought in as a peace maker. She’s still popular and trusted and those who worry that the voice of Capitol Hill residents will not be heard can take some assurance from the presence of Councilmember Ambrose.

David Perry of Barracks Row Main Street spoke next about the project. The goals are to create an environmentally-sustainable and beautifully-landscaped plaza in the heart of Capitol Hill; to better design the multi-modal transportation hub and make it safer; and to connect the shopping area of Barracks Row on 8th Street south of Pennsylvania Avenue with the Eastern Market area on 7th Street north of Penn. The design team will come up with three concepts and a feedback/design loop with the committee will eventually lead to a preferred alternative. After that they would need to find funding and get approval from WMATA and NCPC before anything could actually be done.

Amy Weinstein, the architect, talked next about the history of the square. It was a really interesting discussion and the most important point is that the reason the square did not end up as a park like Lincoln Park or Stanton Square is that early on a transit line ran down Pennsylvania and turned right on 8th Street, breaking up the square. So the square has been a transportation hub for over 200 years. One sad part was seeing the gorgeous old Wallach School (Slides 11 and 29) that Hine Elementary replaced. A real tragedy when the two buildings are compared. She also mentioned that it was once proposed that the square be renamed after Eleanor Roosevelt, but the law never passed.

There was then a talk of transportation and the road network, how the Metro line prevents tunneling and of future streetcar plans on 8th and Penn. They talked about traffic counts—the amount of traffic passing through on Penn dwarfs all local traffic. Penn is a bike route and may get bike lanes, which they pointed out was good for traffic calming. They also said they were in discussions with DDOT on evacuation routes, and with the fire department about fire truck routes. The Architect of the Capitol has no Capitol-specific evacuation plans that involve Penn.

Marisa Scalera, the landscape architect, talked about the state of the square. It has far fewer trees (~30% tree cover) than other squares and circles (>60%) in the city. The trees that are there are small and sickly. There is a lot of opportunity to remove some hard space and replace it with trees and grass. The hard space that does exist is in the wrong place as demonstrated by “desire lines” on the lawn throughout the plaza. Some ideas she talked about included rain gardens, permeable pavers and a below sidewalk lattice structure that prevents soil compaction and allows roots to grow in without disturbing the sidewalk.

At this point the presentation was opened up to questions. While some questions dealt with the scope and schedule and whether they would consider new bike parking, the bulk of the discussion focused on the objections of a vocal group to plans to “reconnect” the square—rerouting traffic from Penn and 8th around a central square. A few speakers said it didn’t seem that any of their input from the earlier meeting was included in the presentation.

Others suggested that a great deal of the presentation seemed to be skewed towards selling the idea of reconnecting the square. Amy Weinstein said she thought it would be a tragedy to route all of the traffic coming into the city on Penn onto D Street. Despite the project team’s assurances at this meeting and the previous one that no final decisions have been made, there seems to be strong opposition to even studying the reconnection option. As Barbara McIntosh, acting president of the 50-member Eastern Market Metro Community Association said,

Our minds are completely closed to moving roadbeds. The community is united 100% and this is not going to happen.

And here I thought closed-mindedness was a thing of the past, like dueling or driving goggles.

While much of the presentation did focus on other reconnected squares and circles, on how the square wasn’t always so fractured and on how South Carolina Ave once bisected it, I think it was only to sell the idea of studying the reconnection as one of the three options. I think if three proposals are to be studied, one that is radical and disruptive should be included in the mix. Frankly I think I’d like to see what a reconnected square would look like, and there were many people at the meeting who felt the same way. It’s just that those interested in letting the study go forward weren’t as angry or vocal.

It would be a real shame if close-mindedness cost the community a chance to dramatically improve its front door.