Local TV Coverage of the Ivy City Bus Depot Lawsuit

By Liane Scott, on November 28th, 2012

The following is the latest television news coverage from the District’s local networks regarding the Bennett Vaughn vs Union Station Redevelopment Corporation lawsuit.

One of the District’s poorest neighborhoods is fighting City Hall’s proposal to the ground around historic Crummell School into a tour bus parking lot.

Judge Judith Macaluso came to see Ivy City with her own eyes. It’s one of the District’s poorest neighborhoods fighting City Hall’s turning the ground around historic Crummell School into a tour bus parking lot.

“They always did what they wanted to do to Ivy City and I hope they put a stop to it,” says Brenda Ingram-Best. The city already parks hundreds of school buses here, plus other city vehicles. Residents complain they’ll now have fumes from tour buses. “I have siblings who have respiratory problems,” says Stephen Scarborough. “I’m totally against the idea.” “My daughter is asthmatic. Literally yesterday she had dark circles under her eyes,” says Peta Gay Lewis.

Judge Macaluso would not answer questions. “It’s not a press conference,” she says. “This is just a viewing so I can understand the content in the courtroom.”

Activists have taken up the cause. “They went ahead and started construction,” says Parisa Norouzi. What if the city loses in court? “Let’s see what happens,” says Mayor Gray. “It’s pending at this stage. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to comment on it until this has been settled.”

Judge Macaluso will hear the case again in her courtroom Thursday.

 

A DC Superior Court judge left the bench to take a tour of Ivy City as residents near the historic Crummell School are fighting the bus depot lot being built.

A D.C. Superior Court judge visited the northeast D.C. neighborhood where residents are fighting the building of a bus depot near the an historic school.

The Alexander Crummell School near Okie and Kendall streets, built in 1911 and abandoned in 1980, is on the register of historic places, but its expansive yard off New York Avenue is being paved over for the District to use as a tour bus parking lot beginning in March.

Neighbors — some who went to the school — want a job center and community place for the mostly poor and struggling Ivy City neighborhood. They’ve gone to court to block the parking project.

“We were to get the building ready for the neighborhood,” said 82-year-old Remetter Freeman, who graduated from the school in 1941 and helped get it on the historic register. “We wanted to put in job training, lots of things. For the kids, a library.”

“There’s a lot of people around here that are sick and have respiratory problems,” former student Jeannette Carter said. “Then there’re the little kids. They don’t have nowhere to play but in the street. And when I was going to school, we used to have fun right there in the evenings and stuff, all kinds of programs and things we had to do.”

D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Macaluso took a walking tour of the area to see what neighbors are complaining about. The suit in part alleges the city failed to follow city laws and the heavy bus exhaust is unsafe.

“The city government hasn’t done anything by way of surveys, assessing the problem in the community,” lawyer Johnny Barnes said. “People have lived here forever, and they’ve just been dumping on them because they’re low income and they haven’t voted in the past.”

Neighbors and activists say there’s already too much industrial use in a neighborhood where about 1,200 people struggle to live every day.

 

DC Judge Oversees Temporary Bus Depot Lawsuit Visits Ivy City

WASHINGTON -A D.C. Superior Court judge left her courtroom on Monday to get a good look at an issue that has many D.C. residents upset.

Judge Judith Macaluso toured the Ivy City section of Northeast D.C. It involves a case concerning a temporary bus depot that is being built in Ivy City. Members of the community have filed a lawsuit asking Judge Macaluso put a stop to it.

Residents believe the pollution created by the buses parked in the bus lot will cause health problems for those living nearby.

The temporary lot will store as many as 65 buses, which are typically used to travel the New York-D.C. route. The lot will be used until bus storage is created once Union Station undergoes a multi-billion dollar renovation.

When the temporary lot is . . . → Read More: Local TV Coverage of the Ivy City Bus Depot Lawsuit

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The New Development Wars:

By Guest Contributor, on November 14th, 2012

As wave of projects begin to sprout, so do disputes

Cross-posted from the Washington Post Written by Jonathan O’Connell

New apartments and shops are spreading into neighborhoods across the Washington region, with developers looking to capi­tal­ize on a better-than-average economy and a massive influx of young adults.

Apartment hunters have wider options, more residents have grocery stores in their neighborhoods and, with dozens of new restaurants and bars, Washington has begun to change its reputation as a gray-suit government town.

Many residents are celebrating the changes. But others aren’t.

And as this new wave of development rises, a chasm between its champions and its skeptics is beginning to show.

In Northeast D.C., Ivy City residents have sued to try to prevent Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) from relocating a bus depot for dozens of private buses into their neighborhood to make way for upgrades at Union Station.

In Washington Highlands, one of the poorest parts of the District, public housing residents sued the D.C. Housing Authority out of concern that they would be permanently displaced from their homes when their units at Highland Dwellings were refurbished.

It isn’t just the low income or disenfranchised who are fighting back. In Wheaton, residents turned away a mixed-use proposal pushed by Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D). Residents in Reston have formed an advocacy group, Rescue Reston, and say they have gathered 650 signatures opposing the possible redevelopment of Reston National Golf Course.

There have always been battles between residents and the developers, planners and city officials proposing alterations to neighborhoods. But with the economy gaining steam and apartment construction booming, disputes that faded during the recession are beginning to boil again.

“I think in many ways it’s the same, but now we have many more examples of how these communities are getting screwed over,” said Parisa Norouzi, director of the community organizing group Empower D.C.

‘No trust’

Empower D.C. battled former mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s attempts to close excess schools and lease the buildings to developers, projects that Norouzi said were driven by “gentrification or private profit.” She says those battles have better prepared residents and organizers for disputes such as the bus relocation, which Empower D.C. and residents are fighting in D.C. Superior Court. “At this point, there is really no trust in the process,” she said.

A hearing on the case is expected Tuesday. A Gray spokesman declined to comment.

In other instances, the opponents to zoning changes or development are the well-heeled. Neighborhoods in wealthier parts of Northwest D.C. are raising concerns about parking shortages under proposed changes to the District’s zoning code, while in Reston the concern is a lack of green space should the golf course’s owner try to build a project to capi­tal­ize on the construction of two Silver Line Metro stations nearby.

Some Wheaton residents rejected plans to create a mixed-use downtown project because it might resemble the redevelopment of Silver Spring — a success to some but not others. “We know how many small businesses struggled and went out of business in Silver Spring,” Bob Schilke, owner of the Little Bitts Shop of cake supplies, told the Montgomery County Council in February.

Sometimes even the terms used to describe development have have taken on widely different meanings. The D.C. Housing Authority became the envy of other cities in winning seven grants under the federal HOPE VI program, which enabled the District to overhaul blighted public housing projects into mixed-income neighborhoods.

The agency’s renovation of Highland Dwellings, east of Bolling Air Force Base, isn’t a HOPE VI program and no market rate units are even being built. But spokeswoman Dena Michaelson said the agency could have done a better job making that clear to avoid the lawsuit it faced (and since settled).

 

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Ivy City to Mayor Gray: ‘Let us breathe’

By Guest Contributor, on November 10th, 2012

Cross-posted from The District Chronicles

A hearing was scheduled last week, likely to be rescheduled due to Hurricane Sandy, in the case of Vaughn Bennett et al vs. Mayor Vincent Gray and the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation, DC’s most significant environmental justice case in recent years.

In a David and Goliath story, the tiny Ivy City community, a low-income African-American neighborhood settled originally just after emancipation, has filed suit against the Mayor and USRC to halt plans to divert hundreds of polluting charter buses into their community for the next 10 years while Union Station undergoes a billion dollar redevelopment.

When residents learned that the Mayor, in the midst of attending ribbon-cuttings and congratulating new homeowners, had authorized the Alexander Crummell School be turned into yet another parking lot for diesel-spewing buses, their outrage turned to action and attorney Johnny Barnes was retained and lawsuit filed to halt the construction. Built in 1911, the school, now in neglected shape, is a national landmark added to the historic registry 10 years ago.

“We will do whatever it takes to stop this parking lot,” said third generation resident Andria Swanson, a plaintiff in the case and President of the Ivy City Civic Association. “We demand that the city stop treating Ivy City as its dumping ground, because we deserve better.”

The Ivy City case has city-wide implications as it will set precedent in areas of law relating to the requirement that Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs) receive special notice and their views be considered with “great weight.”

The suit also hinges on the city’s failure to conduct an environmental impact study for the development of the bus lot, which the Mayor claims is not a “major action.”

Despite not receiving notice, the ANC voted 8 to 0 against the planned bus depot, once they discovered the plan. Other ANCs across the District have joined the opposition by passing resolutions against the bus depot.

Long treated as the city’s “dumping ground,” residents of Ivy City are already heavily impacted by respiratory illnesses exacerbated by heavy truck traffic along New York Avenue and the resulting air pollution. Generations of Ivy City residents have advocated improvements to their neglected neighborhood, and thought better days were coming when the city began investing in new affordable homes and revitalization planning. Yet early this year, the Mayor did an abrupt turn-around, authorizing the purchase of over six acres in the community to consolidate the parking of Department of Public Works’ fleet, on top of several acres of school bus parking already sited in the community.

For decades, the community has sought, and the DC government has promised, the restoration of Crummell School to provide services such as recreation, education and job training programs. Non-profit developers Manna Inc, Mi Casa and DC Habitat bought into the city’s stated goal of revitalizing Ivy City and broke ground on 58 new homes, now nearing completion. New homeowners and existing residents now face potential immediate risk to their health should the Mayor’s proposed charter bus lot move forward. The community is also burdened by overflow parking from Love nightclub, a youth detention center, homeless shelter, a new medical marijuana cultivation site and liquor distillery.

Just last year through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, the DC Department of Housing and Community Development participated in a study that showed 36% of Ivy City and Trinidad residents lacked a high school diploma or equivalent, and 11% are unemployed. The Crummell School is situated in the heart of the community similar to a town hall, and is the last remaining place available to provide the services and gathering space the community seeks.

“Sitting a polluting charter bus lot across the street from residences is an injustice that the Mayor would never consider visiting upon a higher-income or more politically powerful community,” said Parisa Norouzi, Executive Director of Empower DC, a group working to enhance the organizing efforts of residents.

“By definition this is a case of Environmental Injustice,” Norouzi said. “The Mayor should be ashamed of himself.”

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