Published: April
18th, 2017
By William G. Schulz*Accompanying images can be viewed in the April 2017 issue pdf
A series of early April filings with the DC Zoning
Commission raises the smell of corruption and levels of bureaucratic muck
now surrounding — perhaps engulfing — the city’s highly controversial plans to
redevelop McMillan Park Reservoir, an historic site which spans the
Bloomingdale and LeDroit Park neighborhoods just to the west of North Capitol
Street and the seven-square block Stronghold
neighborhood across North capitol in Northeast.
Through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Friends of McMillan Park (FOMP) — the
neighborhood organization long opposed to redevelopment of the site as planned
by developers Vision McMillan Partners (VMP) — has produced more documentary
evidence of credible allegations of malfeasance and bribery that the city has
long kept buried.
The filings with the Zoning Commission are part of
so-called “remand hearings” now being held in response to a DC Court of Appeals
decision issued Dec. 28, 2016, that brought VMP’s project to a screeching halt.
As
reported by The InTowner, in a unanimous
decision by a three-judge pa nel the court vacated the commission’s remapping
and Planned Unit Development (PUD) decisions that were a greenlight for
subdividing and redeveloping the 25-acre McMillan site. In fact, Mayor Muriel
Bowser held a groundbreaking ceremony at the site just one day before release
of the court’s decision which effectively shut the project down once again.
One of the newly released documents, a June, 2011 letter
to former Mayor Vincent Gray, from an anonymous ANC 5C commissioner, stated
that the commissioners were “being bombarded and even bullied to take a vote on
the McMillan development plan by MVP, particularly EYA [one of the developer
partners that also includes Trammel Crow and Jared Lynch]. We have been offered
gifts of money, meals and ball game tickets, etc. They have approached us with
offers to help us in ‘anything. . . . This is corruption and it comes at a time
when the city is already under scrutiny. . . .”...
1 comment:
Bravo Intowner! At least there is one sane pro-people, pro good urban planning institution in this miserable corrupt town. How does the sheer mediocrity of the DC govt. (an international embarrassment)spew such arrogance, Nate?
Nice illegal "ugly-fication" program underway for our park, we must get the DC govt. out of McMillan, form a trust and conservancy that isn't corrupt, for our children's recreational greenspace, like a decent city. The Highline in NY consciously kept out the goofy, over worked ideas for that park. How to stop DC govt. the most excessive, over the top, TASTELESS, nouveau brainless people in the world.
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