Gt 07 19 2017

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The GeorGeTown CurrenT

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

City advances interim police parking plan

PREHISTORIC PAINTING

Dumbarton Oaks closes gardens for pipe project ■ Georgetown: Museum,

house still open amid work

By ANDRIA MOORE Current Correspondent

The District is moving forward with plans to reserve up to 181 parking spaces for police officers on streets surrounding the 2nd District headquarters, to accommodate patrol cars and personal vehicles displaced by the construction of a parking garage there. At a community meeting last Thursday, the D.C. Department of General Services announced the specific locations where public parking will be temporarily eliminated, likely between October 2017 and May 2018. The police station property, located at 3320 Idaho Ave. NW, is also the future home of a short-term family shelter; the parking garage plan is intended to recover spaces lost to the shelter and also to alleviate existing parking pressures. The General Services Department, which handles the city’s construction projects, has been coordinating the interim parking plan with Metropolitan Police Department officials and neighborhood representatives — seeking an approach that could best satisfy all parties’ parking needs. The current plans, presented by project manager Agyei Hargrove, spell out various locations where parking would be reserved for the police, including some residential streets. The areas with restrictions would be Wisconsin between Lowell and Rodman streets NW, with 86 spaces on the west side and 52 on the east; Idaho Avenue outside the police station, with 13 spaces on the east side and seven on the west; and the east side of 39th south of Macomb Street, with 15 spaces. Most of those spaces would be reserved at all times for the police, though sections of the Wisconsin Avenue parking lanes would be available at certain hours either for rush-hour traffic or public parking. Meanwhile, 65 off-street priSee Parking/Page 2

Vol. XXVI, No. 50

Serving Burleith, Foxhall, Georgetown, Georgetown Reservoir & Glover Park

By ALEXA PERLMUTTER Current Correspondent

Brian Kapur/The Current

The group Archaeology in the Community hosted its sixth annual Day of Archaeology Festival on Saturday. The event at Dumbarton House featured lectures on the science and art of archaeology, a mock excavation, hands-on artifact displays, crafts, music, face painting and more.

The formal gardens of Dumbarton Oaks — acquired by Harvard University in 1940 — are currently undergoing stormwater remediation efforts and will be closed until March 15, 2018. The museum and main house on the site will remain open throughout the renovations, and the adjacent Dumbarton Oaks Park owned by the National Park Service is also unaffected. The entirety of Dumbarton Oaks, located in north Georgetown east of Wisconsin Avenue, was originally owned by Robert and Mildred Bliss, who financed the gardens. In 1940, the Bliss family gave the formal gardens and research collection to Harvard University, while the lower 27 acres of wild gardens went to the National Park Service. The original irrigation and water management pipes that still run through the Harvard-owned gardens are made of terra cotta.

Photo courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks

The historic gardens are closed until March for irrigation work in advance of their 100th birthday.

Coming up on the 100th birthday of the gardens, which were designed originally by trailblazing architect Beatrix Farrand, the mile-long stretch of pipes need to be revamped, according to Dumbarton Oaks communications manager Erica Bogese. The pipes have been crumbling and cracking for years, limiting the amount of water that can reach certain areas of the garden. To properly hydrate the estate, Bogese said, gardeners have to pull hoses around the property; there is no proper sprinkler system. The replacement pipes will See Gardens/Page 3

Georgetown seeks new nonprofit to complement BID ■ Business: Main Streets group would

likely focus on helping small businesses By BRADY HOLT Current Staff Writer

As many Georgetown merchants face steadily increasing competition from other D.C. retail hotspots as well as e-commerce, the neighborhood’s small-business community hopes to create a nonprofit organization to help address the situation. The goal is a Main Streets group, a model that’s been recently pursued in Tenleytown and Van Ness and has existed for years in Dupont Circle and elsewhere in the District. Such groups solicit donations and city grants to “revitalize communities by retaining and recruiting businesses, improving commercial properties and streetscapes, and attracting con-

Susann Shin/Current file photo

The Georgetown Business Improvement District already sponsors events such as the French Market, among other local efforts.

sumers,” according to the Department of Small and Local Business Development, which oversees the program. Interested community members are working to develop an application to the agency, which has a D.C. Council allocation in place to fund a

Georgetown Main Streets group if a satisfactory organization presents itself. Typically such an organization has a paid executive director who works with businesses on their issues, secures funding, develops marketing efforts and coordinates volunteers. The concept in Georgetown remains in its early stages with few details pinned down, according to Ed Solomon, a member of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E (Georgetown, Burleith) who is also active in the local business community. Georgetown already has a business improvement district, or BID — an organization that receives money from the neighborhood’s commercial tax assessments and spends it on beautification, events, marketing and lobbying. Although some of D.C.’s 12 existing Main Streets groups overlap geographically with a BID, they more often exist in locations where commercial property owners opposed the addiSee Main Streets/Page 5

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Silver coming late next month to Cathedral Commons complex after resolving disputes / Page 13

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