Corrupt Politicians Bring McMillan Development
Daniel Wolkoff, amglassart@yahoo.com
Kim Williams, staffer in the Office of Planning, Historic Preservation Office, wrote this great nomination for McMillan Park to The National Register of Historic Places, http://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/13000022.htm. One can quickly understand from the description of the park, a memorial to Senator McMillan, The Sand Filtration Plant, and it’s history, that McMillan is a resource of national significance. Any city in the country would gather the resources to restore and preserve it and return this wonderful park to public enjoyment. This is just plain common sense. I have been disappointed that the city council has not educated the people in DC or even itself very well, while determining the future of this incredible site, just as awesome as originally designed and landscaped by the founder of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.
Tragically, the DC government’s chosen developer’s plan will demolish most of the historic structures, over crowd, and super urbanize the site with a poorly coordinated and uninspiring plan for fifty buildings and streets. The ten planning and design firms in VMP (Vision McMillan Partners) are predictably failing, as the reworking of any great design is always a mistake, substantially diminishing the original intent and elegance. It’s presumptuous, even ridiculous, to pretend that overbuilding the work of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., with condos, medical offices and a grocery store, can have some graciousness.
The design team’s response to community demands for more "park" has resulted in a supposed 50 percent park space, really a big lawn. VMP grudgingly carved the lawn out of their site plan, but it has nothing to do with the historic engineering treasure and shows how little understanding these current architects possess. Our Historic Preservation Review Board criticized their disconnected, discordant, and inappropriate designs throughout HPRB hearings. Parks are not created by percentages of land remaining unpaved, they are cultural, historic, or reflect the natural geography, streams, valleys, hills, etc. In the privileged upper NW section of DC, parks are community gardens, stream valleys and glens, and Civil War Fortifications, while we in central DC are confronted by the city government with an unhealthy deficit of natural areas, mature trees, and real parks. We don’t want destructive compromises that are are not comparable to McMillan, when specifically hiking and biking trails, woods, and water features are desperately missing. Senator McMillan planned an "emerald necklace" of parks, and green-space over one hundred years ago and we have every right to see all of these recreational areas fulfilled, so that our families enjoy the benefits.
McMillan, a spectacular, historic "great place," is a perfect arts/performance/cultural Glen Echo type community campus and just one element in the System of Parks needed from NOMA to Woodridge, and Michigan Park. McMillan belongs to the people, not the mayor or city council. Gray was elected by campaign fraud, flat out electoral fraud, and Mayor Gray confronts us with wrestling our own resources back from arrogant, crass, DC officials abusing their power. A very small number of DC politicians are guilty of blocking public access and fencing it off, in utter contempt of the residents for twenty-seven years. There is nothing in this record of miserable, arrogant disservice that recommends any DC official to run this development. Right now, as I write this, Mayor Gray, under federal prosecutor’s investigation, is declaring that "McMillan is no longer needed for any public use" as required by law, as part of his process to "surplus" this billion dollar 25-acre park, and literally give away the land and a $319 million taxpayer subsidy to the VMP. Ten developers, architects, and planning companies, all set to feed on this pig trough for years to come, at our expense. The barbed wire fence, and canceling site tours organized by the neighborhood ANC shows the mayor’s and his economic planning deputy’s hypocrisy, as if every kid, teenager, family, parent with babies, senior citizen, wouldn’t be enjoying McMillan Park and its views, breezes, strolling, jogging, picnicking, urban farming, arts, music, movies, festivals, classes, our place to exercise and "build community"
This is not an either or proposition, Full services like the City Market can cleverly occupy the existing huge, twenty acres of under-surface, fifteen-foot-high galleries, in adaptive reuse as the entire surface park is restored, planted green, and active for all, residents and visitors alike. This is not a delusion, and could have been helping to build our community for twenty-seven years. It is specifically the theft of multimillions in recreational value to the community, lost for twenty-seven years, that should be added to the crimes of the corrupt DC officials who brought you this failed "redevelopment" scheme. All along, we have demanded an open process of education, analysis, and proper public discussion of all options for McMillan and a system of parks, for DC voters to decide. It’s called self determination, Mr. Mayor.
We must demand our representatives on the city council, who openly profess, not even knowing very much about McMillan, to reject the "surplussing" of our park land. This "redevelopment" has had so many versions, and agencies, and at present ten failing design partners as to be such an overworked flop. And frighteningly, it is even the work of corrupt DC officials imprisoned, indicted, convicted, and awaiting sentencing, for bribery, fraud, theft, and this plan is being run by a mayor under federal investigation for massive electoral fraud. WAMU reporter Patrick Madden and Julie Patel are right now in the middle of an expose of the "symbiotic" relationship between the DC government and the developers, a relationship distorting our city’s brilliant L’Enfant and McMillan Senate Parks Committee urban plan. A very tiny number of DC "elected" and appointed officials who are hell bent on removing wholesale our mature tree canopy, filling up every last sq. ft. with curb-to-curb, mega-urbanization, right as devastating flooding of this very section of DC is destroying our homes. Endless massive construction is a delusion, and the most damaging thing there is to the environment, as if the resources of the planet are endless and there is no imperative to restore, reuse, and adapt existing structures, to conserve our planet. Mayor Gray has produced a "Sustainable DC" plan aiming for DC to be the "greenest city" in the country by 2032. But continuing right up to 2032, exploiting every remaining open space, denuding the city of the most valuable tree cover, paving over endless more land, and overloading a failing antiquated infrastructure is not the path to this farcical goal. The priority to keep the construction trade piping along at full speed is not the way to the "green city" when these same construction industries should be renovating, restoring, and helping dc residents, especially seniors, improve their deteriorating houses and training the young and underemployed for good careers, not lining up to a pig festival of consumption, and pride in how many cranes mark the skyline, a view soon to be blocked by even more irresponsible zoning. This is the time, right now, right here in the center of our city, to put this wasteful over-consumption under sensible control, and make this incredible opportunity for a healthier quality of life to happen at McMillan. It is twenty-seven years late.
I don't know how DC is supposed to be one of the greenest cities if they keep paving and building over every available piece of land. A potted tree on every corner perhaps?
ReplyDelete