DDOT’s Van Ness streetscape improvement project is kicking off with a June 30 virtual meeting

A conceptual drawing of a greener 4250 Connecticut Avenue, from a 2011 report from the DC Office of Planning.

Connecticut Avenue in Van Ness could be greener – in every sense of the word. A key phase of the process to make that happen is kicking off June 30th with a virtual public meeting.

DDOT is the host, and the agency tasked with designing a Van Ness streetscape that is both more attractive and provides environmental benefits, such as capturing more of the stormwater runoff that pollutes and erodes the Soapstone Valley and Rock Creek. According to the meeting announcement, the project will also propose multimodal transportation improvements for Van Ness Street between Connecticut Avenue and Reno Road.

The 90-minute kickoff meeting begins on Wednesday, June 30th at 6:30 p.m. at rebrand.ly/VanNessCommercialCorridor, and if you can’t make it, the presentation materials will be posted on the project’s website within 48 hours of the meeting. It’s the first of three public meetings for this phase of the project. The second meeting will be a charrette, and the designers will use community feedback to inform their concept plan.

You may have participated in similar meetings in the past. As we reported recently, this project has been more than a decade in the making, and will require more DC government funding to continue beyond this early design phase’s March 2022 end date.