Development around Nationals Stadium seems to have reached a tipping point where, after years of moaning about how it hadn't delivered on D.C.'s up-front investment, the press has pronounced the ballpark a success. Post writer Marc Fisher pegged the story to the Nats' winning record, and most recently, the Natural Resources Defense Council's Kaid Benfield declared that "baseball-oriented development seems, at last, to be working."

Talk about 20/20 hindsight!

Of course, the stadium had something to do with the growth of the neighborhood, and certainly seems to be paying back its construction cost in the form of sales taxes. Little else would regularly bring tens of thousands of people in from Virginia to spend money in the District on a regular basis, as Fisher noted. But is it responsible for all those buildings sprouting up around it?

Let's not forget, investment had started in the Capitol Riverfront before the ballpark, including the revitalization of Capper Carrollsburg public housing and several large office buildings, like the Department of Transportation headquarters (check JDLand's excellent project archive for the timeline). It's kicked back into gear recently because financing has freed up and previously-planned projects are coming off the shelf, not because the Nationals are at the top of the league.

As for retail and restaurants: The stadium had been operating for years before Forest City announced tenants for the Boilermaker Shops, which will be pretty much the first non-chain eating options the neighborhood has to offer (the Lerners couldn't even lease a street-level space in their own building). Game-goers will frequent those restaurants from April through October, but they wouldn't have been remotely viable without the year-round presence of officeworkers and new residents at the Foundry Lofts. I'm willing to bet their decisions to buy new condos have a lot more to do with proximity to a Metro stop, the gorgeous new Yards Park, and an incoming grocery store than the presence of a baseball stadium.

The baseball stadium is clearly an economic benefit to the city, especially when the Nats are winning. But crediting the stadium with the creation of a new neighborhood is just too convenient: With D.C. on the rise, for a transit-served area between Capitol Hill and the waterfront, it was only a matter of time. Even A. James Clark, who built the stadium, said as much in 2006.

"Development is going to happen quickly there," he told the Washington Post, "because Washington doesn't have any more land."

Photo by Lydia DePillis

CityCenterDC scores major law firm. [Post]

People in walkable bikeable places walk and bike. [Post]

Was real estate financier cooking the books? [WBJ]

Should we ban ugly houses? [RPUS]

Highway threatens ponies. [Post]

How a construction company worked D.C.'s system. [LL]

These are the people regulating your airports. [WBJ]

Clothing store wants to go restaurant. [Borderstan]

Today on the market: Victorian dream home.

Bisnow is reporting that Seattle-based Amazon.com is sniffing around the Dulles Toll Road for 80,000 square feet of office space, which means they're bringing about 400 employees. They talked to some folks who know why this could be:

Northern VA's biggest asset is its workforce. The TechAmerica Foundation's Matthew Kazmierczak tells us tech firms are attracted to three things: “Talent, other tech companies, and capital, and Northern Virginia has all of them.” In addition to a large cache of federal IT gurus, NoVa also enjoys access to some of the country's finest schools and biggest institutions. That translates to a “pipeline of potential workers and clients.”

Balderdash! Everybody knows the next generation of the tech industry is in D.C., not the snoozy suburbs. Here are ten reasons why you, CEO Jeff Bezos, should take your talents to the District: Read more Dear Jeff Bezos: Don’t Go To Northern Virginia!

Lakritz Adler's Clinton Canady knocked on doors for months, trying to get owners to sell.

If you’ve ever walked down 14th Street NW, you know the Frontiers condominiums at S Street. Set apart from the graceful townhomes that line the surrounding streets, Frontiers is made up of squat rowhouses with featureless brick façades and narrow windows.

The condominiums look like public housing units—and they are, built in 1977 by the National Capital Housing Authority. Residents were placed there by lottery—a lucky draw for those who had lived in more depressed neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River. In the late 1990s, then-tenants were able to buy their units for between $100,000 and $150,000 each.

The neighborhood looks different now. Luxury condos and apartments are under construction from downtown to U Street NW, with a new restaurant opening every month. Frontiers is now one of the last refuges of poorer, mostly black residents who could never have bought in at 2012 prices.

Shirley Jones has lived on the corner of 14th and S streets for two decades. She retired from her job at D.C. General Hospital a few years ago, and now has to raise her voice over the din of drinkers on the patio across the street—but she likes the change.

“Lord, I just set out here, looking at the people all dressed up,” Jones says, smiling into the balmy Saturday evening. “This street be just like a little Georgetown. Very nice.”

Nice enough that the humble Frontiers looks increasingly tempting to developers seeking new construction sites. Since last summer, several have called up the condo association, figuring they could buy people out, knock down their houses, erect new buildings, and make a killing when yuppies moved in.

A year and three offers later, Frontiers isn’t going anywhere. Jones says she would’ve made $750,000 on the last proposal, which she wanted to take. But a few of her neighbors weren’t interested in selling and tanked the deal for everybody.

“What I heard is, most of ’em wanted more money. Nobody’s stupid. Everybody knows it’s an up-and-coming area,” Jones says. The developers seemed nice, she added. “But can you trust ’em? This is what people are afraid of. I think most people are afraid of being taken.”

For most housing projects in fast-gentrifying areas, redevelopment is simply a matter of time. But because of the particular circumstances of Frontiers’ formation, it may never happen at all. Read more Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Yesterday's big budget news, on the Housing Complex front at least, was the restoration of funds for affordable housing. But it came at a cost for another priority: Parks in NoMa, where opportunities for public space are rapidly disappearing (the field where summer movies are screened, for example, is slated to become a new apartment building).

The NoMa Business Improvement District had been banking on the sale of a District-owned property at 35 K Street NE, currently home to multicultural health services and itself badly located for a park, to pay for the use and buildout of space at three sites described in its new public realm master plan: A triangle-shaped reservation at Florida and N Street NE, a linear plaza on L Street between 1st and 2nd Street NE, and what's currently a parking lot elevated above 2nd Street between K and L Street. Now, the BID will just have to hope that new revenue estimates come in high enough to fund several items on the budget waiting list.  Read more Does D.C. Need Its Own Version of Privately Owned Public Space?

Affordable housing wins big. [Post, HousingforAll]

Somehow, Dulles changed America. [DCist]

Cash for ARCH. [CHotR]

Commercial landlords, brace yourselves: Feds shrinking down. [WBJ]

Old Soldiers get a garden. [ParkViewDC]

More floating facades, this time near Navy Yard. [Urbanturf]

Fewer people dying in traffic these days. [TBD]

Today on the market: Fabulous colonial.

First, everything was happening on Reservation 13, the 67-acre piece of land located just south of RFK Stadium on the Anacostia River. Then very little was happening. Finally, nothing: Mayor Vince Gray seemed to have decided as recently as March that the project was a lost cause in this development cycle, unless a Redskins training facility fell out of the sky onto the site.

Now, Gray has decided to move forward with the two most shovel-ready "pads," closest to the surrounding homes and the Stadium-Armory Metro stop. They're hoping that a first phase will catalyze development of the rest of it, and also help finance the $100 million in infrastructure other pieces (right now, there's no funding or plan to move the mega-homeless shelter and other social services currently located there). To do so, they're scrapping the last two developers' offers entirely, and issuing a new request for expressions of interest in the fall.

That means another two or three years at least before ground gets broken, and naturally, folks who've been involved in the process for more than a decade are loath to see their work simply trashed. But Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Victor Hoskins told Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6B tonight that sticking with the current developers would leave the District wide open for lawsuits from teams that weren't picked, potentially causing yet another delay—so tough cookies.

"I know you don't like the answer, but I'm not here for what you like," Hoskins said. "I'm here to get the job done."

Still, the agency promised to abide by the nine-year-old master plan, which calls for residential and retail on the parcels in question. As for the whole Redskins idea: Sounds like we can forget about it. For now at least.

"There is no facility on the table. That was all discussions," Hoskins insisted. "I think people exaggerate the situation, and that exaggeration leads to these speculations. And so, honestly, no, it's not on the table. It was never on the table. That's what I'm saying."

Looks like a last ditch attempt to keep the Community College of D.C.'s first CEO Jonathan Gueverra from leaving out of frustration with the school's continued underfunding and slow progress towards independence from the University of the District of Columbia didn't work: According to Mayor Vince Gray's spokesman Pedro Ribeiro, he's gone for good. "We're disappointed and it's a loss for the District," Ribeiro says.

It's a loss for a couple reasons: One, because Gueverra was generally well-respected, and had started to build a reputation for the school that will be somewhat diminished when he departs. And two, because it's going to be awfully difficult to attract high quality candidates to replace someone who left because of a lack of support. (In the mean time, UDC has yet to name an interim president for after Gueverra leaves in July). Read more With Gueverra On The Way Out, Community College Students Vent Frustration

Housing Production Trust Fund restored, at the expense of NoMa parks. [Post]

Potomac in peril! [Examiner]

Vision McMillan gets a new project manager. [WBJ]

Van Ness Square could be "repositioned." [CityBizList]

More on how to deal with vacant properties. [R.U.SeriousingMe]

Having your cake and eating it too at Reservation 13? [Architect]

But we should still get rid of the Height Act. [Slate]

Why D.C. is buying so many of its own bonds. [Post]

A parking summit? [Post]

Hey, at least we're better for college grads than Philly. [AtlanticCities]

Agreed, the zoning map is the best thing ever. [GeorgetownMetropolitan]

Are homeless people a problem for the revitalization of Franklin Square Park? [Examiner]

Today on the market: Anacostia charmer.

Stack o' ideas.

So, the city is really excited about the tech sector these days. And it's not just the elephantine LivingSocial: Mayor Vince Gray is after the small fry too, hoping they'll eventually add up to something that can counter the District's economic dependence on the federal government. The head count now stands at about 2,000 businesses. It's a logical growth area for D.C., since these webby entrepreneurs tend to like urban areas, and benefit from proximity to each other. (And for Gray, who doesn't exactly have the disruptive, Gov 2.0 reputation of his predecessor Adrian Fenty, aligning with the techies has a definite image upside.)

But here's the big question: How much potential do they actually have? And can D.C. attract the investment capital necessary to keep them from fleeing to New York or the Valley? Startups in general fail more often than they succeed, and sifting through the alphabet soup of made-up names, it's easy to get the impression that a good chunk of them are variations upon Twitter and Facebook that don't add much value to anyone's life.

Are these really the jobs of D.C.'s future? Read more Eight Not-Bad Tech Ideas From a Day of Foster.ly