Serving Foggy Bottom & the West End Vol. IX, No. 47
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
The Foggy Bottom Current
Zoning panel rules against Carlyle hotel
High school exam yields low, but expected, scores
discerning palate
■ Education: PARCC finds
By BRADY HOLT
weak English, geometry skills
Current Staff Writer
A Dupont Circle hotel was improperly granted permits that allowed it to increase commercial activity in its residential neighborhood, the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment ruled yesterday. The board upheld an appeal by a group of neighbors of The Carlyle, 1731 New Hampshire Ave. NW, who had delved into zoning minutiae and old floorplans. The decision means that the commercial space from recent renovations — potentially including The Riggsby, a new restaurant — is in violation of zoning regulations, according to board chair Marnique Heath. The effects of yesterday’s decision aren’t immediately clear. The board will develop a written order in the future spelling out its conclusions. But the hotel’s options would likely be to apply for zoning relief in light of the board’s legal interpretation, or — as a hotel representative told The Current — to appeal the decision in court. At issue is a regulation governing hotel operations in residential areas, which caps their “commercial adjunct” space — areas dedicated to restaurants, bars, meeting rooms or outside businesses — at the level that existed in 1980. The rule is designed to balance needs of existing hotels with a desire to preserve neighborhoods’ peacefulness and residential character. In the case of The Carlyle, formerly called the Carlyle Suites Hotel, there is no conclusive documentation that spells out the uses of various spaces in 1980, leaving the zoning board to sort through competing interpretations. The hotel’s owners and the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs say the agency approved the permits properly. Zoning administrator Matt LeGrant reviewed evidence from the owners that a large area of the basement in 1980 was an office unrelated to the See Carlyle/Page 22
EXHIBITS
Hirshhorn to open two shows featuring surrealist artists — Page 15
By MARK LIEBERMAN Current Staff Writer
Brian Kapur/The Current
The Adams Morgan Farmers Market and the Adams Morgan Partnership Business Improvement District teamed up for the inaugural Adams Morgan Apple Festival on Saturday. The event featured an apple pie contest, which was judged by local personalities including NBC4’s Eun Yang, who had her son help her with the strenuous tasting.
The scores for last school year’s first iteration of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) exams have arrived, and D.C. officials say the overall numbers aren’t encouraging. Citywide, slightly more than a quarter of the 3,000-plus high school students who took the exams this past spring are considered proficient and college-ready in English, and only 10 percent of test takers earned the same distinction in math, according to new data provided by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. The new standardized test replaces the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System for high school grades, evaluating students’ math performance after they take geometry and English upon completion of English II. A student with a score of at least 4 out of 5 is considered “proficient” and “college-ready.” “I think generally these results
Brian Kapur/Current file photo
School Without Walls posted the city’s best performance on the new high school PARCC exams.
are about what I would have expected when considering the far more rigorous bar that PARCC holds our students to, and also when looking at the data from other students,” D.C. state superintendent of education Hanseul Kang told reporters Monday. “While these results are not easy to see, and certainly we have a lot of work to do, they are roughly what I expected.” School Without Walls, a magnet school, was by far the best-performing D.C. high school, with 97 percent of English test-takers and 76 percent of geometry test-takers scoring proficient. Benjamin Banneker Academic See Scores/Page 5
Foggy Bottom ANC seeks safety fixes near Metro station By MARK LIEBERMAN Current Staff Writer
Four sexual assaults, including one on Oct. 21, have occurred this year in the plaza surrounding the Foggy Bottom Metro station and adjacent to George Washington University. Eve Zhurbinskiy hopes her first resolution as a newly seated advisory neighborhood commissioner will prevent that number from growing larger. Zhurbinskiy — a sophomore at the university — is calling for her school, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and George Washington University Hospital to increase lighting and other protections around the plaza in order to discourage more crimes from taking place. The commission unanimously passed the resolution at last Wednesday’s meeting. “It’s very dark. It’s kind of secluded from the street,” Zhurbinskiy said of the area in an inter-
NEWS
Friday ceremony to fete Georgetown’s Exorcist steps — Page 3
Brian Kapur/The Current
Community members say the plaza outside the Foggy Bottom Metro station is too dark.
view. “If something were to happen, a lot of these perpetrators would use the plaza for cover.” Even before this year, a gang rape was reported in the alley in November 2014, as well as several more sexual assaults. Zhurbinskiy had a meeting with representa-
SHERWOOD
Marine Corps runs marathon expo out of District next year — Page 6
tives from her school a couple weeks ago, but she said “they were pretty noncommittal.” Commission chair Patrick Kennedy, an alumnus of the university, echoed the concern at last week’s commission meeting. “I think that that plaza has long been a nexus of public safety complaints in the neighborhood,” he said. Several neighbors at the meeting asked about the possibility of adding a stronger security camera presence. Zhurbinskiy agreed, noting that most of the cameras in the vicinity are pointed in the direction of the hospital. Foggy Bottom Association president Marina Streznewski has a personal reason to believe the security cameras need improvement. In January, she was coming out of the hospital when a man accosted her and touched her inappropriately. He was charged with simple assault, she said. But the legal procedure was hampered by the See Plaza/Page 22
INDEX Calendar/14 Classifieds/21 District Digest/2 Exhibits/15 Foggy Bottom News/9 In Your Neighborhood/12
Opinion/6 Police Report/4 Real Estate/11 School Dispatches/8 Service Directory/19 Week Ahead/3
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