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by Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post
Sunday, April 03, 2005
The journey from the aging Frederick Douglass Bridge up South Capitol Street to the U.S. Capitol is a mile-long tour of urban ugliness.
An old oil transfer station and an asphalt plant, hulking storage facilities and boarded-up buildings, fast-food restaurants, gas stations and a tangle of highway ramps all but obscure the few homes and businesses, and a church, that have managed to survive the blight.
These are scenes through which many Southern Maryland workers drive and places their congressman, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), has watched decline during nearly a lifetime of commuting to work in Washington -- an experience that has led him to support renovation now.
For years, federal and local planners have talked of transforming the heavily used stretch of roadway into a Pennsylvania Avenue-style boulevard that would offer a scenic approach to the Capitol. A remade South Capitol Street would provide a place to steer downtown office and residential development, officials said, and allow for creation of open, green spaces to house memorials and museums that cannot find space on the National Mall.
Now, spurred by the city's ambitious Anacostia waterfront redevelopment initiative and the decision to build a major league baseball park just east of South Capitol Street, the long-deferred makeover is beginning to take shape.
The National Capital Planning Commission recently unveiled its vision for a new South Capitol Street corridor, a tree-lined promenade that winds gracefully around a landscaped traffic oval to an expansive waterfront park and an attractive new bridge. By June, the District government expects to complete a detailed plan for redesigning the street and bridge and creating a "stadium district," with housing, offices and retail clustered around the ballpark, and easy pedestrian access to those amenities and others that would be created along the river's edge.
Key components of the transformation -- replacing the bridge, for example, or buying the old Stewart Petroleum oil transfer station and replacing it with a waterfront park centered on a museum or major memorial -- will take years, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars in public money.
But initial street improvements -- such as replacing the concrete Jersey barrier median with crosswalks at N, O and P streets, upgrading lights and widening sidewalks -- will begin this spring or summer, using some of the $30 million in federal funds already allocated to the project.
The federal planning commission and D.C. agencies also will hold a series of public workshops and meetings in coming months to seek public input and explain their plans.
"You can see things just starting to domino," said Jose Galvez, chairman of the South Capitol Street Task Force, a group created by the National Capital Planning Commission to put together the vision document. "Everything will just start to accelerate."
Federal and local officials have already agreed on some basic issues: The width of South Capitol Street would remain about the same, so that existing homes and businesses are not displaced, but new buildings would have to be set back from the street. A double row of trees would be planted on either side of the street.
Unsightly underpasses that now funnel traffic beneath cross streets would be smoothed into surface intersections. Long-term plans call for an underground tunnel to relieve traffic congestion, and for replacing the Southeast-Southwest Freeway -- which obstructs the view of the Capitol -- with a rebuilt Virginia Avenue.
The properties that line South Capitol Street are all privately owned. To the east, where a new stadium for the Washington Nationals baseball team is slated to open in 2008, D.C. officials are negotiating with property owners to buy the land.
But elsewhere in the corridor, officials said, they will wait for private-sector developers to approach property owners and launch projects one by one. The city will propose new zoning regulations later this year that would require such projects to fit within the neighborhood's new image as a lively commercial, residential and entertainment district.
Residents are watching the planning process carefully, eager for improvements to their neighborhood but wary of how the dramatic changes could affect them. Some worry that the new stadium and the other redevelopment will make traffic unbearable. Some wonder whether enough money will ever be found to do all that is planned, or whether property values will increase so much that longtime residents will be priced out.
"If they can fund it, and do it right, I think it's a good thing," said Marge Maceda, who lives and works in the area and heads the Southwest Neighborhood Assembly. "Traffic is going to be a nightmare for awhile. But once it is completed, I think this forgotten little corner of the District is going to be something really special."
Karl Fraser, who with his wife recently moved to South Capitol and O streets SW, also supports the plans. But he worries about his elderly neighbors, most of whom bought their townhouses 34 years ago, when they were built, and now live on modest fixed incomes.
"They are concerned," Fraser said. "Since they were there when it was run-down, it would be nice if they were able to stay there."
But D.C. planners and transportation officials say they are determined to create an area where traffic flows smoothly and the stadium, waterfront and other new amenities are easily accessible to residents and visitors alike. They also have pledged that the makeover of the street itself will not displace any residents, although the stadium project will require city purchase of a few rowhouses just to the east.
Officials are mindful of the mass removal of residents of Southwest in the name of urban renewal more than 40 years ago, and they have vowed that this time will be different.
"We've been very clear that we're not taking any residences," said Kathleen Penney, deputy chief engineer for the D.C. transportation agency. "We're really much more interested in working with the community, and the community benefiting from our work."
The transformation could eventually cost more than $500 million in public funds, D.C. transportation director Dan Tangherlini said, about $200 million of it just for the new bridge.
Hoyer and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) are strong supporters of the project and say they will push hard to get as much federal money for it as possible. Another $50 million in funding has been proposed for the coming fiscal year.
Hoyer has commuted over the bridge for nearly 50 years, ever since he took a job with the Central Intelligence Agency as an 18-year-old, back when that agency was located downtown. Each day, he said, he saw the blight leading to the shining dome, and he grew more and more convinced that something needed to change.
"With the vista of the Capitol rising right in front of you . . . it was a badly missed opportunity," Hoyer said of the lack of development of the corridor until now. He envisions "a gateway boulevard that would be of a character equal to the Capitol which it approached."
Fraser and his wife bought their home last fall, moving across the Anacostia River from a townhouse in Ward 8 in anticipation of what the redevelopment might bring. He and his wife look forward to the day when the industrial sites that now separate them from the Anacostia River will be replaced by parks and walking paths.
"That's something we would love to do: just take a walk to the river," he said. "Sometimes you forget the river's there, until you hear a seagull. We mainly hear the traffic."
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