Serving Foggy Bottom & the West End
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Vol. IX, No. 50
The Foggy BoTTom CurrenT
Debate closes on zoning rewrite case
NAMASTE
■ Development: Final vote
on regulations set for January By BRADY HOLT Current Staff Writer
The comprehensive rewrite of the District’s land-use laws is drawing to a close, with the Zoning Commission now declining to take further public comment and anticipating only technical corrections to
proposed wording. In a 5-0 vote on Monday, the commission took “preliminary final action” on the zoning rewrite, a thousand-page attempt to make the code reflect modern planning principles in a consistent, coherent way while also protecting existing D.C. neighborhoods. The update of the city’s 1958 regulations has emerged from some eight years of discussion with community members, the development
community, the D.C. Office of Planning and other stakeholders. Aspects of the new zoning code were hotly debated by residents and zoning commissioners alike, including reduced minimum parking requirements in parts of the city, an expanded area defined as downtown, and newly allowed commercial and multifamily uses in some residential neighborhoods. Some community leaders have See Zoning/Page 4
Commission backs GU plan for Franklin By KELSEY KNORP Current Correspondent
Brian Kapur/The Current
The second annual National Kids Yoga Conference for yoga instructors took place at George Washington University’s Marvin Center on Friday through Sunday. The event kicked off Friday evening with a yoga demonstration by Gurmukh Khalsa at the Melrose Georgetown Hotel in the West End.
A plan to convert the historic Franklin School downtown into a satellite arts building for Georgetown University earned unanimous support from the Logan Circle advisory neighborhood commission last week, in a recommendation to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. The proposal by Georgetown and development firm Thoron Capital was one of four presented last Thursday at a special meeting of the commission. Two other competitors floated ideas for turning the building into a hotel, while the third pitched an incubator-type co-working space. The neighborhood commissioners ultimately agreed that the Georgetown plan seemed most sustainable, but they said a proposal by Friedman Collaboration for the Arts (one of the two plans incorporating a hotel use) would be a viable second preference. They recom-
Brian Kapur/The Current
The Logan Circle neighborhood commission studied four concepts for the site at 13th and K streets NW.
mended the development office request best and final offers from both redevelopment teams, as well as community benefit agreements, before making its decision. All four teams are vying to redevelop the Franklin See Franklin/Page 16
CityDance Dream gets audience with first lady
State Department plans for Potomac Hill site advancing
By MARK LIEBERMAN
■ Foggy Bottom: Agency
Current Staff Writer
CityDance’s Dream program began in 2004 as a small operation that allowed a handful of underprivileged Ward 8 students to pursue dance as a pastime. A decade later, the dance collective’s philanthropic effort has grown exponentially, drawing attention citywide. Yesterday it also earned CityDance’s program the prestigious National Arts and Youth Humanities Youth Program Award, alongside 11 other organizations. CityDance Dream director Kelli Quinn and longtime student Valeria Cruz, a senior at Phelps ACE High School in Northeast, accepted the award from a grinning Michelle Obama at an event in the East Room of the White House Tuesday afternoon. Before the awards were presented, Obama said the
NEWS
weighing three alternatives
Mark Lieberman/The Current
Michelle Obama presented the award to CityDance Dream’s Kelli Quinn, right, and student Valeria Cruz. recipients, including the Dream program, represented the pinnacle of humanities programs for young people. “Arts education is not a luxury. It’s a necessity,” the first lady said. “It’s really the air these kids breathe. It’s how we get kids excited about going to the school in the morning. It’s how we get kids prepared for their future.” Quinn first encountered CityDance in the mid-2000s, See Arts/Page 17
EVENTS
By MARK LIEBERMAN Current Staff Writer
The historic Potomac Hill campus in Foggy Bottom, nestled between the Kennedy Center to the west and the Harry S. Truman Building to the east, will undergo a significant transformation over the next several years as part of a State Department development initiative. Officials from the agency and the U.S. General Services Administra-
SHERWOOD
Advocates sound off on Pepco-Exelon merger at forum
Exhibit to celebrate U.S. printmaker’s extensive career
Questions remain for Mayor Bowser even after FreshPAC
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tion presented the latest draft of a comprehensive plan for the property to the National Capital Planning Commission on Nov. 5. Presenters laid out three alternatives for the project. All three would leave the campus at approximately the same basic size: a usable square footage somewhere between 371,000 and 376,000, and a gross square footage between 587,000 and 603,000. And all three will accommodate the same number of staffers: 2,000, with approximately 400 parking spaces available on site. The options differ largely in more See Potomac Hill/Page 16
INDEX Calendar/19 Classifieds/25 District Digest/5 Exhibits/19 Foggy Bottom News/13 In Your Neighborhood/8
Opinion/10 Police Report/6 Real Estate/15 School Dispatches/12 Service Directory/23 Week Ahead/3
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