This Saturday saw two celebrations of historic buildings.
One was the Old Naval Hospital on Pennsylvania Avenue SE, gut renovated to the most exacting historic standards, financed through a pastiche of tax credits, local and federal and funds, and private donations. It took long enough, but is now all set to become a pulsing community hub.
Every once in a while, big companies and politicians have to help each other out, which Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. knows as well as anybody. Thomas and Walmart, of course, go way back—he's been a supporter since getting elected. And what's the point of corporate boosterism if you don't get some favors in return?
Back in [...]
The budget rundowns continue! This time with housing stuff and economic development stuff.
Councilmember Michael Brown's Housing and Workforce Development committee was the target of lobbying from affordable housing advocates over the yanking of $18 million from the Housing Production Trust Fund, and other issues. The report, which passed unanimously today, does the following things:
Recommends the [...]
Time for another Walmart roundup! Things have been relatively quiet on the Walmart front, but here are a few news items you might have missed in the last few weeks. (For a more global perspective, Walmart Watch has their own roundup from around the country).
- A FRIEND OF YVETTE'S IS A FRIEND OF [...]
It's been a rough ride for the Latin American Youth Center in its bid to build housing for at-risk youth–along with a branch of the YouthBuild charter school–at the now-empty J.F. Cook School on P Street just off North Capitol. After getting support from the Fenty Administration and funding from both public and private sources, [...]
Last Thursday, the New York City Council held a hearing on Walmart's attempt to enter the market (it had to be rescheduled from December because a bigger room was needed). Walmart itself declined to show up, leaving a parade of anti-Walmart speeches to go largely unanswered. Council Chair Christine Quinn, an outspoken critic of the [...]
Count another one who thinks Walmart won't be all bad: Office of Planning Director Harriet Tregoning. At a D.C. Building Industry Association event at the National Press Club last night, she pointed out that the city still has food deserts, and that the super-retailer was going into several of them with smaller-format stores that will [...]
Just after 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 18, Bill Mitchell was walking home from the New York Avenue-Florida Avenue-Gallaudet University Metrorail station. He hopped over busy Florida Avenue to a little triangle of land where a woman had been approached by a man on a mountain bike. According to the woman, the man on the [...]
In a climactic vote just now in the Wilson Building, the City Council passed Councilmember Tommy Wells' proposal to require that homeless shelters turn away people who can't demonstrate District residency during the coldest part of the year. By my count of the 30-day Congressional review period, the bill will go into effect on March [...]
As if Walmart weren't enough, Arboretum residents might have another superstore to look forward to at Bladensburg Road and New York Avenue NE.
Developer Rick Walker and Walmart community affairs director Keith Morris said that a Lowe’s hardware store could possibly share the large triangular space reserved for one of the four Walmarts slated come to [...]
