The plaza sits directly between Barracks Row and Eastern Market—and soon enough, some fancy new development on the Hine Junior High School site.

For more than a year, Barracks Row Main Street has been coordinating an effort to re-design the square to fluidly join the two areas on both sides of Pennsylvania Ave.

"The point is to make both 8th Street and Eastern Market—7th street, the shopping area—easier to connect to each other, so that people coming to the restaurants on 8th Street can very easily make it a part of their evening just to stroll up 7th Street," says Sharon Bosworth with Barracks Row Main Street. "Right now, you struggle on one side or the other.You definitely have that great divide."

Sounds innocuous enough, right?

Not to some people:

"SHOCK SHOCK SHOCK News from Barracks Row Main Street," read a neighborhood listserv e-mail regarding an upcoming meeting on the plan.The first line: "UNBELIEVABLY, TOWN SQUARE IS REARING ITS UGLY HEAD AGAIN."

(This particular note appeared on the Eastern Market Metro Community Association EMMCA yahoogroup.)

Here's what the "ugly head" entails, according to Bosworth, who would obviously not describe it that way. For more than a year, architect Amy Weinstein and local landscaping firm Oehme, van Sweden & Associates have been devising new design schemes for the plaza possibly narrowing or re-routing part of Pennsylvania Ave. there to provide more space on one side. The design team presented 12 plans last year and have been working with a task force of neighbors and local business owners to eliminate some proposals and perfect what remains.

On July 1, the team will present these options to the community to decide whether to devise a "true redevelopment proposal" that would eventually need government approval. Depending on how things go at the gathering, the task force will either recommend yea or nay on moving forward to the Barracks Row Main Street board.

"They’re looking for consensus," Bosworth said about the task force—though she couldn't define what consensus meant exactly. A vote? A general happy feeling with smiles and applause and excited chatter from the community?

Thomas Riehle, one of the EMMCA founders, says the community has already reached consensus...several times. Their feelings are unchanging: Don't re-route Penn Ave. Spruce up the triangles. Call it a day.

Riehle lives on D Street S.E., the northern side. He says past proposals have shown Penn. Ave moving north, right beyond his front door. Throughout last summer and fall, the Barracks Row task force kept inviting community members to look at various iterations of this plan.

"There was just overwhelming, unanimous opposition to reconfiguring Penn Ave.," he says.

The meeting will be held at 7 pm on July 1 at St. Peter’s Church Parish Hall, located at 313 2nd St. SE- enter on C Street.

701 Pennsylvania Ave, #PH157 (Penn Quarter)
Two bedrooms; Two bathrooms; 1,035 square feet

List Date: Nov. 7, 2008
Original Listing Price: $799,000
Close Date: April 30, 2009
Final Price: $730,000

Analysis: This building—Market Square East on Pennsylvania Ave.—has been featured prominently on Housing Complex in the past, and I'm not in the mood to reverse the trend today. The property is remarkable for a few reasons: Numerous DC notables have rested their heads here: Esteemed New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Former VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro, columnist Bob Novak. It's one of few condominium buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue, which provided prime inauguration parade views. With these thoughts in mind, I wanted to see how this particular property had appreciated since its last sale. The previous owner bought #PH157 in May 2004 for $610,000. He hoped to get roughly $200,000 more for it some four-plus years later. In the end, he profited $120,000 on the place. Not bad. Not bad at all.

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