Ivy City, tired of being a D.C. “dumping ground”…

By Guest Contributor, on August 20th, 2012

…takes on Gray over bus depot Written by Darryl Fears, cross-posted from the Washington Post

(Jared Soares/ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST ) – Ivy City resident Andria Swanson near the grounds of the closed Alexander Crummell School.

On any scale, Ivy City is a 98-pound weakling among District neighborhoods. It measures only 1.7 square miles near the Maryland border in Northeast and has some of the city’s poorest residents, with an unemployment rate approaching 50 percent.

But that has not stopped the D.C. government from placing a heavy burden on Ivy City’s scrawny shoulders, making it a base of operations for large projects other neighborhoods shun, “a dumping ground,” residents say.

Ivy City is dotted with parking lots for scores of government vehicles — quarter-ton snowplows, salt trucks, parking-enforcement vehicles and school buses that belch exhaust as they rumble through the streets. Recently, when Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) announced a plan to build a bus depot for 65 D.C-to-New York motorcoaches in the heart of Ivy City, residents said “enough” and filed a lawsuit to stop it.

There is a lot at stake in the showdown between one of the city’s smallest neighborhoods and the mayor. Bus travel is a major boon for the city; ridership rose from nearly 2 million in 1999 to nearly 7 million in 2009, according to the District Department of Transportation’s 2011 Motorcoach Action Plan.

[Only a portion of the above article is posted here. For the complete article go to Ivy City, tired of being a D.C. “dumping ground,” takes on Gray over bus depot.]

 

 

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Empower DC takes over Union Station Master Plan Open House

By Guest Contributor, on August 18th, 2012

By Luke, Crossposted from DC’s Independent Media Center.

The multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan for Union Station includes an ugly extra: an “Interim plan” to park idling inter-city buses at Crummell School, in Ivy City. Many residents there already have asthma. On the 15th of August, over half of participants in an “open house” at Union Station about the proposed “master plan” were from Empower DC.

This was not a speaking presentation, but rather a collection of tables with information about the planned project. As usual, they were not soliciting any real public input, just saying “here’s what we have already decided to do” while meeting legal technicalities required of such projects.

Children wore dust masks as a symbol of diesel smoke from idling buses. Empower DC T-shirts were everywhere, as were tough questions about parking “Chinatown” buses in an African-American residential neighborhood.

One of the tough questions was my own: where’s the money, an estimated $7 billion, for the project going to come from. The answer was that they don’t know-nobody is admitting to a funding source for the project. Artwork for the proposal shows office buildings built in the “air rights” over the tracks, but relying on the demand for office space for funding is chancy at best in an uncertain economy. If funding evaporates partway through the project, the proposed 10 year “interim” bus parking at Crummell School could become permanent.

Kids in masks, hopefully they won’t have to wear them for 10 years of “interim” bus parking!

Empower DC marches in, security says no but gives up after being ignored.

Who’s in the (open) house? Empower DC dominates event as not many other DC residents show up.

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