Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Bloomingdale Historic Designation Coalition update -- from Paul Cerruti

See this 06-27-2016 message to the community from Bloomingdale resident Paul Cerruti:


Paul Cerruti letter to Bloomingdale 2016 06 27 by Scott Roberts



1 comment:

Daniel in brookland said...

Good work Paul, your documentation of McMillan Park is so excellent. Come enjoy the July 4th Pot Luck for Save McMillan Park
Is there some irony that Office of Historic Preservation has been instrumental in the destruction and theft of McMillan but then they advocate for Historic District?
Nomination to the National Register of Historic Places for McMillan Sand Filtration Plant by Office of Planning, Architectural Historian Kim Williams.

http://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/13000022.htm

This document is a thorough history of the Sand Filtration Plant and describes a remarkably intact, fascinating, even charming engineering marvel. A 25 acre public property, green space and historic park that the DC govt. has hid in plain sight for 30 years, in order to steal in corporate "giveaway". The biggest land theft since Manhattan!

http://youtu.be/uXkOgHV7Lhw

This City council testimony by historic restoration artist Daniel Wolkoff tells us about adaptive re-use and urban agriculture in 20 acres "underground" McMillan cisterns the govt. wants to demolish. How we save the "McMillan underground", and the entire surface park for our children and families.

Landscape Architect Mary Pat Rowan exposes the VMP/DC govt. plan to subvert our rights to oppose the "Monstrosity" and petition the govt. with an "astroturf" PR campaign from Baltimore PR firm, Fontaine Company.
Unfortunately DC govt. has dictated to us "the owner", the destruction of the 20 acre "underground" and paving over the site with 50 buildings and 3000 parking spaces. A less corrupt govt. would be offering, the whole city, a great community amenity, as 25 acres of open air green space, genuine historic preservation and adaptive-reuse in creative and imaginative ways.

We can save this and have a coherent historic park, like the privileged areas of upper NW enjoy.
We have to fight for it, wrestle our own land back from a wasteful destructive collusion between DC officials and a conglomerate of developers, everyone is in on this one!
The DC community needs a huge outdoor concert space(see Hyde Park, or Lansdowne, or Sheep Meadow in NY Central Park. Really, why don't we have a large community campus for arts/education and performance (see Glen Echo), why no DC Central Park like NY? Why should we get a "McPark" in front of condos, when we already have only one fifth the proper park land as Upper NW?
The worshipers of profits are telling us to demolish 20 acres of fascinating underground cisterns and over build our public land, with a crass suburban office and condo park that violates the DC Comprehensive Plan and federal covenants which were assigned to the sale from GSA to DC in 1987.
The "walkable neighborhoods" of EYA(http://www.envisionmcmillan.com/), require 31,000 additional auto trips daily, on top of the existing 38,800 autos at present congesting, N. Capitol daily. The developers traffic experts predict will crowd the crass " National Harbor" and massive unnecessary medical office towers in historic Bloomingdale. And the "Monstrosity on Michigan Avenue" will generate 24,000 mass transit users coming from the McMillan Town Center, and will need 600 buses and shuttles a day to use the Brookland-CUA or RI Ave metro rail. Don't let DC govt. corruption build the "Monstrosity on Michigan Avenue". It is our neighborhoods to lose. Join us at McMillan Coalition for Sustainable Agriculture to Save McMillan Park email is amglassart@yahoo.com