The Pub & The People's liquor license has been applied for

See this tweet from Pub and the People at North Capitol Street NW and R Street NW:

Pub and the People ‏@PubandthePeople  7h

The Pub & The People's liquor license has been applied for!

Spring Crispus Attucks Park meeting -- Wednesday, 03-19-2014

Subject: Save the Date! Spring CADC Meeting Wed, March 19

Hello Friends of Crispus Attucks Park,

Our spring annual meeting is coming soon!  We welcome all in the neighborhood to attend and discuss (and help plan!)                          

--Upcoming events like the Taste of Bloomingdale and Community Day

--Maintenance and upkeep of Crispus Attucks Park

--Fundraising

--Ways YOU can participate in Crispus Attucks Park! 

We'll also elect officers and Board members (discussions are open to all, but only Board members may vote in elections).

What: Spring Annual Meeting of Crispus Attucks Park

When: Wednesday, March 19, 7pm

Where: 69 U St. NW

Please join us!

Will Gomaa

President, CADC (Crispus Attucks Park)

                           

Postmates delivers to Bloomingdale

I stumbled across the 12-22-2013 Washington Post article on Postmates:  

                                                      

''Postmates arrives in the District with a promise to deliver anything in under an hour"

Here is the paragraph that specifically mentions Bloomingdale: 

Postmates primarily serves Washington’s Northwest quadrant, with the exceptions of Capitol Hill, Southwest Waterfront, the National Mall and parts of Bloomingdale. The delivery fee ranges from $5.50 to $15.50 depending on the distance between sites.

  

I Emailed Postmates in San Francisco and asked if they might have specific message to promote its service, since its service area includes Bloomingdale.

See the Email exchange below:        

We've actually been covered by a few of the local papers in the past and love local interest.  In addition, today at 3:00pm ET, we're expanding to Arlington, Friendship Heights and surrounding neighborhoods, so this is a great day to write about Postmates :) 

As a generic blurb, you can use the following:
                       
Postmates is an on-demand delivery service that allows you to have anything in the city delivered to you in under an hour. On an easy-to-use and intuitive mobile app (iPhone and Android), customers browse nearly 10,000 stores and restaurants, selecting from nearly 30,000 products. Request a delivery and watch as its immediately dispatched to a Postmates courier on a bike, scooter or in a car. Armed with company credit cards, Postmates' couriers purchase and deliver items on behalf of a customer. Pay your courier upon delivery in one simple and seamless transaction. 

Postmates was co-founded by Bastian Lehmann, Sean Plaice and Sam Street in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco with additional offices in NYC, Seattle and London. After you've used the service yourself, you'll see why its caught on so quickly.
 
As a DC specific blurb, feel free to use the following:

 Get ANYTHING in DC delivered in under an hour. Skip the crowd at Tagliatella, get doughnuts from GBD, a salad from Sweetgreen, cupcakes from Baked and Wired, groceries from Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, an iPhone charger from the Apple Store or anything else you need! 

meet-and-greet fundraiser in Bloomingdale for Ward 5 council candidate Kenyan McDuffie -- Saturday, 03-08-2014

Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 
Subject: fundraiser for KENYAN MCDUFFIE
From: acwbond@gmail.com
To: 
                                                     

Once again we are elated to open our home and support 

Kenyan McDuffie as he seeks the Ward 5 Councilman seat again!!  Like you, we have been nothing but impressed with his service to our community.  And even though we KNOW he is going to win this campaign, we also know campaigns don't run themselves and they cost A LOT of money. 
                                              

So PLEASE join us on Saturday, MARCH 8th at 3:30 at our home, 22 Quincy Pl NW, and support his campaign with a contribution and get the benefit of hearing him speak about his progress, plans and promise for a stronger, better ward 5.  Not to mention the fellowship of some wonderful Washingtonians.  Please share this invitation with interested friends, colleagues and neighbors.
                                  

Best,

             

Aisha and Jermane Bond

received a DCRA notification form for next-door neighbor's work on party wall, structural addition to party wall, underpinning foundation - how best to respond ?

See this  message from a Bloomingdale household:

The adjoining property to our Bloomingdale row house is going to be renovated and we received a DCRA notification form.  (Here is a sample DCRA notification form .)
                                                           
 Says all scope items are part of the plan (work on party wall, structural addition on party wall, underpinning foundation).  
                  
With all the recent development in Bloomingdale, I assume others have received these for projects next to them and am wondering if others have signed or ignored? What legal implications are there if we don't sign and they cause a problem?  Looking for opinions to help us decide how to respond. 

increase in DC property real estate assessments: LeDroit Park (15.42 percent), Eckington (14.52 percent)

I have  not copied in all of MIchael Neibauer's post below.

Click on the link to read this entire post.
  

Mar 4, 2014, 10:46am EST

Where property assessments are rising fastest: Follow the gentrification

Michael Neibauer

Staff Reporter- Washington Business Journal

                                                                          

Call it gentrification. Call it revitalization. Call it whatever you want. The D.C. neighborhoods that are in the throes of it are seeing real estate assessments soar. The District’s tax office recently released proposed 2015 assessments for taxable property. It’s all-around good news for D.C.’s bottom line, as the residential tax base increased by $7.5 billion year over year, or 8.33 percent, and the commercial base rose by $10.1 billion, or 12.6 percent.

The tax revenue to come as a result of this “significant rebound in property values,” Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey DeWitt said in his February revenue estimate, is “significantly higher” than previous estimates.

Of the District’s 73 neighborhoods, as classified by the Office of Tax Revenue, 13 saw their residential tax base rise by double digits between 2014 and 2015.

And of those 13, most have either recently gentrified, or are in the process of gentrifying — Trinidad (24.08 percent), Petworth (18.27 percent), Brookland (16.69 percent), Columbia Heights (15.64 percent), Chillum (15.29 percent), LeDroit Park (15.42 percent), Eckington (14.52 percent), Woodridge (13.35 percent), Shepherd Park (12.34 percent), Fort Lincoln (12.03 percent), Brightwood (11.96 percent), Mount Pleasant (11.80 percent) and Old City I (10.27 percent).

...   

St. George's Episcopal Church Shrove Tuesday service for this evening cancelled; Ash Wednesday services on Wednesday still on

From: "Kent Marcoux" <kmarcoux@stgeorgesdc.org>
Date: Mar 4, 2014 12:27 AM
Subject: ST GEORGE'S UPDATE: SHROVE TUESDAY EVENT CANCELED
To: "Rev. Kent Marcoux" <kmarcoux@stgeorgesdc.org>

Greetings, all –

“Coldest March night in decades ahead, remaining cold on Tuesday…” ~Washington Post

We have decided to cancel our Shrove Tuesday service and celebration scheduled for tomorrow at 6:30 PM – given the extremely cold weather and icy conditions expected to continue tomorrow.  Thank you to Renee Campbell for her leadership in planning and preparing for the Shrove Tuesday event – and for her wisdom in suggesting it be canceled.  Our first priority is ensuring people are safe and (hopefully) warm during this spate of unusually cold weather.

Please note: St George’s will be open on Ash Wednesday – services times are 7:30 AM, 12:00 PM and 6:30 PM.  And please remember to join us on Thursday at 10:30 AM, when we will celebrate a Requiem Eucharist for Myrtle Grace Harris (gathering begins at 9:30 AM).  

If you have any questions or want to contact me for any reason, please email or call me at 443-315-8124 (cell). Thank you!  Be safe, be warm, be blessed.

Peace,

Fr Kent

Rev. Kent Marcoux

Priest-in-Charge

St George’s Episcopal Church

160 U St, NW

Washington, DC  20001

202-387-6421 (office)

443-315-8124 (cell)

kmarcoux@stgeorgesdc.org

meet-and-greet in Bloomingdale for DC Council candidate John F. Settles II -- Friday, 03-07-2014

See this 03-03-3014 message from Bloomingdale resident Freddi Brown:

  

You are cordially invited to a

Meet & Greet

for

John F. Settles, II

Candidate for DC Council At-Large

Friday, March 7, 2014

6:30 ~ 8:30pm

at our home

121 Adams Street, NW

Washington, DC 20001

Hosted by Terry & Freddi Brown

RSVP to freddibrown0191@gmail.com or send a text to 202/486-0011

Paid for by Committee to Elect John Settles| Jennifer Leonard, Treasurer | A copy of our report is on file with the Director of Campaign Finance.

Bloomingdale resident Zach Sherif featured In Home and Design Magazine

Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2014 09:55:55 -0500

Subject: Bloomingdale's Zach Sherif Featured In Home And Design Magazine

Bloomingdale resident and acclaimed international lighting and interior designer Zach Sherif's new DC showroom "Makan" is featured in the current Spring issue of Home & Design magazine.  Check out the fantastic write-up in the March/April edition - soon to hit the newsstands - through the link below.

http://www.homeanddesign.com/article.asp?article=21599 

Makan is located at 411 New York Avenue NE 20002 - just behind Union Market - and is open Tuesday - Sunday from 11am to 7pm.  Closed Mondays.  Tel: 202.271.3836  www.makandc.com

           

 

nanny referral

See this message from Bloomingdale resident Molly Scott:

Could you please include the note below in the next listserv and post on the Bloomingdale blog? It is from a friend of mine who lived in Capitol Hill.

  

Hello all,

                   

I am posting for our former nanny, Anna Koumba, who worked for us for over 4 years. She is warm, loving and available for immediate full time, legal employment. She is truly incredible and we consider her to be a part of our family. Anna is reliable, caring, social and friendly. She was with us since our oldest was 4 months old and kept both boys actively engaged. She took the kids on playdates, walks and trips to the park among lots of other things. Our two boys absolutely adore her (and so do we!). We were incredibly lucky to have  found her and would love for her to find another family. Please feel free to email/call her directly at adivassa@yahoo.com or 202. 415.8739 if you need more information. Please contact me directly if you have questions. I am happy to tell you about how wonderful she is!

     

Thanks-

                                    

Laura Wilding

lauradwilding@yahoo.com

architect David Jameson and McMillan: "Jameson’s involvement with Envision McMillan is an encouraging prospect"

We visited this Washington City Paper cover story on architect David Jameson briefly when it first came out.

Let's do a dive into this article, since David Jameson is working on the McMillan Sand Filtration site development project.

I have copied in the specific paragraphs that mention McMillan.

You can click on the link to read the entire article.

Modern Love

Architect David Jameson knows D.C.'s buildings don't have to be ugly. Now he's trying to convince the rest of the world, too.

By Kriston Capps • February 14, 2014

...

Another project may go even further. Jameson’s plan for the multifamily-unit building that anchors the development for the McMillan Slow Sand Filtration Plant site may prove that condo mid-rise buildings—the 21st-century answer to the rowhouse—needn’t look like they were assembled by factories and dropped by drones all over the District.

....

None of Jameson’s homes refers architecturally to the others—or to the BlackWhite Residence, or the Tea House, or the Jigsaw Residence, or the Matryoshka Residence (or to the growing roster of the firm’s projects outside the area, flung as far and wide as Southern California and Hanoi). And none of these homes is bound to resemble the McMillan project, whatever name that eventually takes.

         

“The developer wanted someone who would push the envelope,” says Anne Corbett, project director for Envision McMillan.  For the multifamily project, Jameson is collaborating with MV&A, the firm that designed the mixed-use building anchored by a Walmart at 1st and H streets NW.  “There wasn’t an architectural firm with the technical expertise who would push the envelope from a design standpoint.   Obviously, this kind of building is not in David’s normal wheelhouse. Pushing the design envelope certainly is.”
                                                                                                           

While he has yet to release detailed designs, Jameson says that he is collaborating on the façade system with Bill Zahner, the Kansas City, Mo.–based machinist who has worked with Frank Gehry to execute most of that architect’s titanium tapestries.  (That doesn’t mean he plans to drape twisted metal over the apartment building—he’d have more groups than Save McMillan Park after him if he did.)  Jameson will say that the metalwork for the façade, which appear in renderings to be a series of fins, will be a specific callout to the site’s history as a sand-filtration site.
                                                         

“He kind of took apart the DNA of the site,” Corbett says. “I think his process was good for the team as a whole, pushing the other architects to think a little bit differently about how they responded to the site.”  Jameson’s involvement on the McMillan project may not be limited to one building, she notes; phase two calls for another mixed-use building, and while the work hasn’t been contracted yet, she says there’s no reason to think Jameson won’t be involved.
                         

“We got the McMillan project because the process of the work is scalable. For many residential architects, it’s difficult to move from small to big or from inexpensive to expensive,” Jameson says. “But none of those things matter to scaling my work.”
                           

There’s still a staggering number of hurdles for Envision McMillan to overcome before the design becomes a reality.  The project cleared one by winning the approval of the Historic Preservation Review Board in October.  Envision McMillan will come before the Zoning Commission in several public hearings in late April or early May.  Then, with those recommendations appended, the plan goes before the Mayor’s Agent, who is involved because the project requires demolition to adapt the landmark.

...

Nevertheless, Jameson’s involvement with Envision McMillan is an encouraging prospect—especially given that the surge in economic growth in D.C. has been met by such dreary design. Tedious condo buildings have choked 14th Street NW and other corridors in the last five years. Perhaps one new building with some design acumen will encourage developers to reconsider aesthetics as a strategy for creating investment opportunities.
                                                                                                 

There are signs that this is happening elsewhere. David Adjaye, the London star designing the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall, is converting the West Heating Plant into high-end condos for Georgetown, where the famed Mexican firm Ten Arquitectos is designing the West End Library.  What Envision McMillan will test is whether compelling design from D.C. can be brought to bear on projects nowhere near 20037.

vehicle on declared snow emergency route - Rhode Island Avenue NW

Here is an interesting tweet/pic for this snowy morning in Bloomingdale:

Ryan Eades ‏@ryan2499  4m

VA tag SUV trying to talk way out of ticket on Rhode Island Ave in #BloomingdaleDC 7:40a #SnowEmergency @eunyangnbc  pic.twitter.com/VsPMfVTmSj

7:51 AM - 3 Mar 2014 

don't park on the DC snow emergency routes: North Capitol, Florida, Rhode Island, Michigan

First, see this message posted at the MPD-5D list:

To: MPD-5D@yahoogroups.com
From: dierdre.porter@dc.gov
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2014 15:46:51 -0500
Subject: [MPD-5D] Snow Emergency for March 3, 2014

DC DECLARES SNOW EMERGENCY TO GO INTO EFFECT MON., MARCH 3, AT 7 AM
Vehicles parked on snow emergency routes after 7 am Mon., March 3 will be ticketed and towed.

Dierdre Porter

              

Now see this tweet from Washington Post reporter Mike DeBonis:

Mike DeBonis ‏@mikedebonis  33m

Here's a map of snow emergency routes http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/local/snow-routes/ …

                     

SnowIceControl Snow Emergency Routes Map by Benjamin Freed

Notice of Proposed Real Property Assessment for Tax Year 2015

Did Bloomingdale property owners receive their 2015 real estate assessment notices? 

kickoff reception for DC Council At-Large candidate and LeDroit Park resident Marc Morgan -- Wednesday, 03-05-2014

See this 03-02-2014 message:
                   

                                                                              

This image of Marc Morgan is from the Washington Blade.

Marc Morgan at-Large DC Council Candidate Kick Off Reception 2014 03 05 by Scott Roberts

the * original * 1st Street NW sewer tunnel -- a pic from 1888 (courtesy of DC Water)

See this message and pic from Bloomingdame's Bloomingdale History Project blog:

Thursday, February 27, 2014

1888: First Street

Notice anything missing? Houses?

From DC Water's archives (thanks!), a picture of the original sewer line being installed on First Street in 1888.

Muriel Bowser for Mayor campaign flier arrived in yesterday's mail

Yesterday's mail delivery include a tri-fold campaign flier from DC mayoral candidate Muriel Bowser.

 

DPW pushes street cleaning resumption back a week

                     
From: kevin.twine@dc.gov
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 17:04:43 -0500
Subject: [MPD-5D] DPW NEWS! HHW/Shredding/E-Cycling Drop-Off; Snow Deployment Sun; Street Sweeping Pushed Back

DPW Pushes Back Street Sweeping To Mar. 10

Parking enforcement will begin March 10. 

Tickets are $45. 

Motorists advised to obey street sweeping signs.

    

The Department of Public Works today announced its decision to postpone the start of the 2014 residential street sweeping season to Monday, March 10, due to a heavy snow storm predicted for Monday, March 3.  The employees who drive the sweepers are the same employees who drive snow plows and until the streets are clear of snow, the sweepers will be ineffective.

     

“In the District, the start of the street sweeping program is as much a harbinger of spring as jelly beans and crocuses,” said DPW Director William O. Howland, Jr.  “We are disappointed that winter snow is forcing us to delay cleaning those streets that haven’t seen a sweeper since October 31.”

         

Director Howland suggested motorists use this extra week to familiarize themselves with the signs that designate which streets have restricted parking during sweeping hours.  Signs are posted that identify the days of the week and hours of the day when parking restrictions will be enforced so the sweepers can clean the streets effectively.  Parking enforcement of residential sweeping violations will begin Monday, March 10. 

        

“The residential street sweeping program is among our most successful operations to keep DC streets clean,” said Director Howland.  “We have expanded it over the years to accommodate more and more residents willing to move their cars to allow the sweepers access to the curb lane where debris and pollutants collect.”

    

Mr. Howland noted DPW established March 1 through October 31 in 2012 as residential street sweeping season and this information appears on the signs where the program is in effect.  He asked motorists to obey the times parking is restricted.  “A supervisor follows behind the sweeper and may require the block to be swept again, so don’t park until the end of the posted sweeping period,” he said.  Beginning March 10, parked cars also may be towed to allow the sweepers access to the curbside. Generally, parking is prohibited for two hours while sweeping is underway.

  

DPW street sweepers cover about 4,000 lane miles monthly, removing litter and pollutants by brushing them onto a conveyor system, which transports the material into a debris hopper. The sweeper also emits a fine spray of water to help control dust.  In addition to sweeping residential streets during spring, summer and fall, DPW also sweeps commercial streets overnight year-round, and parking restrictions also apply.

        

For more information about street sweeping, go to www.dpw.dc.gov.

special Bloomingdale Civic Assn meeting on McMillan Community Benefits Agreement‏ -- Saturday, 03-08-2014

Hello Neighbors--

                        

The McMillan Advisory Group and ANC 5E have asked the Bloomingdale Civic Association to provide a prioritized list of recommendations of items that should be included in the McMillan Benefit Agreement.  These benefits are viewed as a means for mitigating some of the  negative community impacts resulting from the development of  the McMillan Sand Filtration site, which as presently proposed would involve more than 2 million square feet of commercial, retail and residential development as well as a community center and a 4 - 5 acre park., and bring at least 3500 people into our community on a daily basis. 

                        

ON MARCH 8 (time and place TBD) the Bloomingdale Civi c Association will hold a special meeting solely devoted to developing and prioritizing its recommendations for the Community Benefits Agreement .

       

Attached to this message is a preliminary listing of potential benefits for your consideration.  If you wish to add additional potential benefits, please contact bhollidaypsy@gmail.com by MARCH 4.  The resulting final listing will serve as the primary document for discussion and prioritization at the March 8 Special  Meeting. 

       

We need your input!!

     

Bertha Holliday

BCA 2nd Vice President

Bloomingdale Civic Assn - Guidance for McMillan Benefits Package 2014 03 08 by Scott Roberts