Brookland resident Philip Blair's 02-11-2014 testimony on McMillan before Muriel Bowser's Committee on Economic Development

See this post from the Historic Washington list at Yahoogroups.  The moderator of this list is Mary Rowse, a Chevy Chase, DC resident.

From: aerie@rcn.com
To: HistoricWashington@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2014 08:52:24 -0500
Subject: [HistoricWashington] Testimony on DMPED and McMillan San Filtration Site at McMillan Park

Testimony to the Public Oversight Hearing

on the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development,

by the `(Councilmember Muriel Bowser, Chair)

 

Tuesday, 11 February 2014

 

By Philip Blair, Jr.

 

Lessons Learned at McMillan Park

My name is Philip Blair. This testimony is mine only: I speak for no group.

The great mystical and visionary English poet, William Blake, urged us: 

To see a world in a grain of sand 

And heaven in a wild flower. 

I cannot pretend to Blake's insight, but I am here to tell you that I see my city, which I love, in the fate of the McMillan Sand Filtration Site at McMillan Park.  

                     

The Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) is charged with proposals for the development of this 25-acre site on North Capitol Street. 

   

As my wife and I for more than a decade have worked to preserve this national historic landmark at least partially for public use, we have learned a lot about the operation of the government of the District of Columbia, specifically DMPED and its subordinate agencies: the Office of Planning and the Historic Preservation Review Board. 

               

What we see does not speak well of the character of elected city officials and some appointed public servants, and in our disappointment we have learned certain lessons. 

                 

First, planning for the site has been driven by corporate interests as odds with the interests of the people of this central part of the city, of Ward 5 (of which we are residents), of the city, and even of the nation(McMillan Park is on the national register of historical treasures). The story is this: the greater the degree of exploitation of the site, the greater the corporate profit that can be wrung from once-public resources.That fact drives the current process. 

I do not oppose corporations or profit: but rather corporate expropriation of public wealth, and profit that does not reward initiative and risk-taking but is rather bought and paid for as elections approach, at pennies on the dollar. 

                  

Secondly, DMPED has failed at planning in the case of McMillan Park. In development of the nearby NoMás district, north of Massachusetts Avenue,parks and open green space were "forgotten" in the rush to raise cranes.Retrofitting an unsatisfactory modicum of open public space back into NoMás has proven to be a large expense, in the $50-million range. That is, oddly enough, the rough cost of demolishing (HPRB's word) a historic site that could again, as it has in the past, provide usable park space to the surrounding area. The Comprehensive Plan has acknowledged the necessity of park development in the so-called Central Washington axis between the McMillan site and the Forts Circle at Fort Totten. Neither the letter nor the spirit of the Comprehensive Plan is allowed to be an obstacle to the powers-that-be, however. 

It adds insult to injury to call this "smart growth." 

                        

Thirdly, the Historic Preservation Review Board has allowed itself to belied to, knowingly, by the Vision McMillan Partnership which has claimed,falsely, and knowingly so, that the 25-acre site controlled by the District, part of McMillan Park was never a "park." Aerial photographs of a baseball diamond on the site, newspaper clippings announcing events at the park, and the testimony of our oldest neighbors all contradict this, but the Big Lie is fostered by constant repetition.  

                 

Fourthly, the murky business relationship between the Vision McMillan Partnership and the District government cannot stand the light of public's crutiny. To cite one case, consider the Project Manager who oversees the McMillan Project on behalf of the Deputy Mayor and the Mayor himself. That man came from Trammel Crow. This, you must admit, smells bad, in the best of interpretations. In fact, it is just one count in the kind of cronyism that has permeated the project. 

                                              

This mayor should be ashamed of himself. I had encouraged Mr. Gray to run for mayor and I told him why: my dissatisfaction with the cronyism and corruption of his predecessor. Well, it's dejá vu all over again. (and I take this opportunity to apologize to my friends and neighbors who may have voted for Mr. Gray because of my encouragement to do so, even though I was right about Mayor Fenty.) 

            

A "Surplussing Hearing" is now a legal mandate as part of the process of declaring public property "surplus" and disposable for development. The Surplussing Hearing last spring brought out dozens and dozens and dozens of neighbors and residents of the city to oppose the surplussing of the McMillan site for the Vision McMillan development. They outnumbered persons testifying in favor of surplussing more than ten to one. The Man from Trammel Crow was there and saw this with his own eyes. That meeting [the Surplus Hearing] was not recorded, and to my knowledge, and I have been asking, no public record of that meeting--so inconvenient to the interests of Trammel Crow and its partners--has been produced. This is outrageous. 

 

How can Council permit this perversion of the process you yourselves have created? Why does Council have such a remarkable tolerance for sham and--I use the word thoughtfully--fraud?

              

I know why it happens. Real public engagement is inconvenient and even perilous. Big interests are threatened. The hyaenas and vultures picking over the still living body of the city are discommoded. 

                                                           

But how can you permit it? How can you let the Man from Trammel Crow, with his boss, the Deputy Mayor, at his side, testify to you as a high-ranking agent of the city, as he did to the Public Oversight Roundtable on 12 July--look it up--that public opinion at the surplussing meeting was "mixed"and that they had received a "lot" of letters in favor of the project afterwards. 

            

Under oath, he would have been compelled to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: not maybe almost one of the three. 

                           

Finally, it is bad enough to be marginalized and the targets of an interested campaign of misinformation. Bad enough. But we taxpayers now find out that we are paying for the astro-turfing campaign against us. Itis only occasionally that some humor lightens the situation. We pay for and post our own yellow signs to "Save McMillan Park." The astro-turfers pay for their green signs to "Create McMillan Park" using public money received

                         

through Vision McMillan apparently. However, their signs are so dishonest

(they really should say Destroy History! Destroy Public Open Space!") that

they have backfired. Many people who see the "green "Create McMillan Park"

yard-signs think that we opponents of the VMP plans just have two different

colors of signs we put out.

 

The Council has a festering problem on its hands with DMPED, and has, alas,

shown little leadership or courage in dealing with it.

 

My hopes now lie in the election of a new mayor who, unlike previous

mayors, will be a principled defender of public interests, and the election

of Councilmembers who will support the new Mayor in those efforts.

 

Philip Blair, Jr.

blair-rowan @ starpower.net | 202.526-8821


Posted by Andrea Rosen