Mayor Vince Gray’s 2012 budget proposes a slew of public library projects, including a renovation for the Cleveland Park Neighborhood Library in 2016.
The library is one of three slated for a renovation that would qualify it for LEED Silver certification, a set of environmentally-friendly building standards, the Washington City Paper’s Housing Complex blog reported.
The renovated Cleveland Park library might be part of a mixed-use project or co-location with other property uses, Housing Complex said.
When I walked by here the other day, I was thinking the Cleveland Park library would be perfect for a public-private partnership that could provide both a new, modern, library for residents and additional housing on a commercial strip that is one block away from the metro. This would be even more desirable if a private developer could pay for a new library in exchange for the rights to build above it.
Hopefully the District has learned something from the Tenley library fiasco.
I would agree with the characterization of the Tenley Library saga as a “fiasco,” but for a very different reason. The fiasco was the way the previous city adminstration tried to provide a sweetheart deal to a private developer, and was even willing to take part of the Janney School playground to do it. They even moved Janney School back in the renovation queue, although its renovation orginally had higher budget priority, in order to create pressure to accept a private condo building at the Tenley library/Janney school site. After this transparent ploy blew up — even Mary Cheh ran away as fast as she could — the city still insisted on spending several million dollars more from the shrinking library budget to reinforce the building for some favored future project. In the end, the community has a new library, Janney finally is being renovated and there are still vacant sites in Tenleytown for future development (the Dominos parking lot comes to mind) without giving away taxpayer to a politically-connected developer.
The Cleveland Park library site is even more problematic than Tenleytown for mixed-use, multistory development. It is small, oddly shaped and located in a national historic district. Unlike the Tenley site which is buffered from a single-family residential zone by institional uses, existing homes immediately abut Cleveland Park library site. Parking access to a mixed-use development at that site would also be a problem. DDOT is emphatic about no new curb cuts on major avenues, so all vehicle access would have to be from Macomb or Newark streets, which are narrow and would lose scarce street parking spots. Remember that labeling something as “smart growth” doesn’t always make it so.
If you can’t build a multi-story development on a major arterial with ready metro access and other urban amenities, then where can new residents be located?
That Cleveland Park is a historic district doesn’t prohibit new development. The current structure is 2 stories. A new structure that is 4-5 stories wouldn’t have a significant impact on the adjacent structures.
Bob:
There is already a curb-cut and a small surface parking lot in the rear of the library, off of Macomb. This could be used to access underground parking for a mixed-use library.
William is absolutely correct. There are 5-7 floor buildings across the street on Macomb and both sides of the northbound lane of Connecticut Avenue. The library is one and a half blocks from the metro station. This is exactly where we should be encouraging new residential development.
With the District having such a large budget deficit, we should be doing everything we can to attract new residents to locations directly next to the metro station who will pay new income and property taxes. Additionally, we should leverage this valuable location to get a private developer to pay for a new library.
By encouraging new development along our major corridors such at Connecticut and Wisconsin Avenue, we can also protect single family homes, as development is concentrated here, alleviating pressure to build elsewhere.
The likelihood of the neighborhood allowing a 5 story development on that corner are slim and none. Same goes for underground parking.
As long as we are dreaming, how about this — new 3 story library with no parking (other than 1,2 for staff) with a corner Starbucks or similar to help pay for it.
Tear down and replace 9/10 days empty Uptown with the housing that Ben seems to think is necessary;
Tear down 1/3 of the restaurants in neighborhood. That would still leave about two dozen and plenty of room for $1 million condos.
Keep up the good writing. If you need me, I often do wonder about this blog when I’m not hanging out in southern Scotland.