The NorThwesT CurreNT
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Vol. XLIX, No. 16
Serving Chevy Chase, Colonial Village, Shepherd Park, Brightwood, Crestwood, Petworth & 16th Street Heights
TRUMPETING fREEDOM
Guapo’s to move from longtime site ■ Tenleytown: Restaurant to
relocate a few blocks south By MARK LIEBERMAN Current Staff Writer
Guapo’s has been serving Mexican food to Tenleytown residents, American University students and visitors to the neighborhood for 26 years. But by the end of this year, it will relocate to a new location, though just a few blocks away. The restaurant’s staff began informing regular customers a month ago that Guapo’s, now at 4515 Wisconsin Ave. NW, will soon be located at 4200 Wisconsin Ave. NW, in the spot near Van Ness Street formerly occupied by
a Ruby Tuesday’s location and, more recently, by the now-defunct Fire Lake Grill. The location’s manager David Moran told The Current that his team started looking for a newer building space last November. “We just needed to do little changes because we’ve been here forever,” Moran said. “We just want to give it a try.” Moran said the existing building needs some refurbishment and his staff prefers to start fresh. Business has been steady over the years, he said, so it didn’t factor into the decision. Guapo’s general manager Ismael Rosa told The Current that the existing building’s three floors are costly, especially since the
Brian Kapur/Current file photo
Community members say they’ll miss Guapo’s when it relocates nearby to 4200 Wisconsin Ave.
restaurant often isn’t filled to capacity on weekdays. He said his relationship with the building owners is solid and that lease negotiations did not factor into the See Guapo’s/Page 10
Library loses planned space in basement By MARK LIEBERMAN Current Staff Writer
Brian Kapur/The Current
The District’s annual Emancipation Day parade proceeded along Pennsylvania Avenue on Saturday. The event included a band from Duke Ellington School of the Arts among the many musicians and dancers from D.C. schools. The parade also featured children’s characters, balloon floats, auto clubs, community groups and advocates of D.C. statehood.
Designs for the Cleveland Park Library project have been altered to stay within budget, but some residents and community leaders still want to see the original proposal restored. In formulating the latest designs for the $18.6 million project, the D.C. Public Library system determined that the planned assembly space in the new library’s basement would put the project more than $1.1 million over budget, according to spokesperson George Williams. Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3C (Cleveland Park, Massachusetts Avenue Heights, Woodley Park) unanimously passed a resolution Monday urging the D.C. Council to add the remaining funds necessary to complete the project as
previously proposed. Excavation for the basement space would have required coordination with Metro due to the nearby Red Line tunnel; additional interior construction; and expansion of building infrastructure, such as heating and air conditioning, according to Williams. The new design removes the basement assembly space and corresponding bathroom. It also combines two planned first-floor rooms into a single meeting room that can accommodate more than 300 people. Williams said this room will be the largest space of its kind in a D.C. neighborhood branch library, and more than double the size of comparable rooms in the Shaw and Benning branches. “We are confident that that budget is sufficient to create a library that will be well-loved and wellSee Library/Page 5
Tenley ANC challenges Office of Planning on GDS project By CUNEYT DIL
Current Correspondent
When Georgetown Day School filed with zoning authorities last November for approval of a massive mixed-use redevelopment project on the former Martens car dealership site, school officials waited for city planning agencies to back their plans. The project team expected the Office of Planning to lend its support to a zoning amendment that would have allowed the school to build two mixed-use buildings, each roughly 80 feet tall, on the triangular lot of land where 42nd Street NW meets Wisconsin Avenue. In seven initial meetings the school held with the agency, plan-
ning officials did not indicate any objections to the density, according to Phil Feola, who serves as the school’s zoning counsel for the project. But then in March, the Planning Office opposed the project’s height and density, and Georgetown Day promptly scaled back its plans with lower building heights and other changes. The decision confounded members of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3E (Tenleytown, Friendship Heights) and the project’s neighborhood backers, who last week derided the Office of Planning’s decision as opaque. Discussions between the planning agency and developers were held in private, and the agency has released no formal statement
explaining its decision. At last week’s meeting, ANC 3E voted to request that the Planning Office present a fuller picture on why it objected to the project’s scale. Throughout the planning process, the development — which will help fund Georgetown Day School’s effort to bring its lower grades to the site of the Tenleytown Safeway — has sparked intense division in the community. Neighborhood opinion has been mixed on the preferred heights for the new buildings, and many residents have also raised concerns about traffic associated with the larger campus. The current proposal, released in late March in response to the Office of Planning See GDS/Page 10
Brian Kapur/Current file photo
Georgetown Day School plans to redevelop the Martens dealership site on Wisconsin Avenue NW into a mixed-use building.
SPORTS
SPRING REAL ESTATE GUIDE
SHERWOOD
INDEX
Still hopeful
Northwest modernity
Downtown crowds
Calendar/30 Classifieds/37 District Digest/2 Exhibits/31 In Your Neighborhood/6 Opinion/8
Sidwell’s baseball team battles to finish the season strong and vie for the MAC crown / Page 11
Bold architecture defies District’s staid stereotype in various local neighborhoods / Page RE1
The District’s lack of traffic management could throttle its appeal in the long run / Page 8
Police Report/4 Real Estate/Pullout School Dispatches/29 Service Directory/35 Sports/11 Week Ahead/3
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