Save McMillan Action Coalition: "City’s Over-Development of McMillan Park Challenged in Court"

First, see these accompanying tweets:

Jeffrey Anderson ‏@jeffreyanders19  · 1h1 hour ago 
.@dc4reality @ScottRobertsDC @Shawington @TheInTowner After the deal comes apart, media outlets who looked the other way will be discredited

Jeffrey Anderson ‏@jeffreyanders19  · 2h2 hours ago 

.@dc4reality @ScottRobertsDC @Shawington @TheInTowner Remember: Phil Mendelson publicly opposed the project yet voted for it -- repeatedly.

Jeffrey Anderson ‏@jeffreyanders19  · 2h2 hours ago 

.@dc4reality @ScottRobertsDC @Shawington @TheInTowner I'm still amazed @MayorBowser and 12 members of the @councilofdc ignored DC Auditor.

Jeffrey Anderson ‏@jeffreyanders19  · 2h2 hours ago 

.@dc4reality @ScottRobertsDC @Shawington @TheInTowner The McMillan deal eventually will collapse under its own debasement. You heard it here.

And here is the press release.

Click on the link to read the entire press release.

Is compliance with the DC Comprehensive Plan really enforceable?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact: Amal Mimish, Save McMillan Action Coalition, 202-706-9408, savemcmillan@activist.one
               

City’s Over-Development of McMillan Park Challenged in Court

Plain Language of Development Rules at Question

Washington, D.C. — The battle over the McMillan development project is now in the DC Court of Appeals, DC’s highest judicial body. In a bold move, McMillan Park supporters have recently asked the Court to take summary action to overturn the DC Zoning Commission’s approval of the District’s proposed mixed use development.   Park supporters say the Commission’s decision, on its face, violates the District’s Comprehensive Plan, the basic land-use law for the city.
Specifically, Friends of McMillan Park (FOMP) contends that granting the developer and the city’s request for a “high-density” zone to allow a “115-foot-tall Health Care Facility/Medical Office complex” and over 2 million square feet of development is “inconsistent” with the Comprehensive Plan’s plain language designating the McMillan property for “moderate density” development.  Moderate density is characterized as single-family homes, row houses, and some low and mid-rise apartments.
The developers, Vision McMillan Partners (VMP) argue, via their lawyers, Holland & Knight (in this case, paid for by DC taxpayers), that the Comprehensive Plan is “generally not binding” and that, moreover, the door is open to any zoning district the Commission might use because the Plan says that “other districts may apply” in addition to moderate ones.  The Deputy Mayor’s Office of Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) agrees with this interpretation and supports the proposed density.
FOMP, however, points out that DC law sates emphatically and unequivocally that zoning “shall not be inconsistent with the comprehensive plan for the national capital” and that “other districts” means districts that are “similar to those specifically” mentioned, i.e., only those consistent with the Comprehensive Plan’s moderate density language.

“It is unconscionable for the Commission to have approved high-rise, dense commercial development for McMillan Park,” said Jim Schulman a local Architect and advocate for adaptive reuse.  “If allowed, this development will insert intensive and prosaic K Street-scale development into a low-rise, reviving residential neighborhood with inadequate transportation infrastructure. This could be DC’s Central Park or High Line, a major municipal amenity and tourism destination. If allowed to stand, the zoning decision effectively renders the Comprehensive Plan moot.”

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