by Marlene Berlin
Is Van Ness “well-served by transit?” That’s the question I am left with after reading the Coalition for Smarter Growth’s recap of parking minimums changes in the Office of Planning zoning rewrite (PDF). In areas “well-served by transit,” the current parking minimums are halved. Most of the Van Ness/Forest Hills area certainly meets the definition: a half-mile from a Metro station, a quarter-mile from a major bus line.
So how could I be asking such a question with buses on Connecticut Avenue and a Metro station at Van Ness. Am I nuts? No.
We are transportation rich going north and south, but transportation poor going east and west. From the east we do not even have good car access, and biking and walking? Just forget it, until we either get a sidewalk and bike lanes on Broad Branch and the same across Military. And then, to the east of us, we have Tenleytown, AU Park, Palisades and Spring Valley. Again, the mass transit connections are poor.
We want to attract good retail at Van Ness. This means also attracting our friends and neighbors from these other neighborhoods. We all know we just don’t walk to our neighborhood eateries, we go and try out others in other neighborhoods. And Crestwood folks made it quite clear to us in our Broad Branch survey that they frequent the eating places at Van Ness, as well as in Chevy Chase, using their cars because they don’t have access to convenient public transportation crossing the park. We have very limited on-street parking since we are surrounded by Rock Creek Park and UDC, and just two public lots (at Giant and behind the Burger King). So parking, whether it be for car-sharing or personal cars, is an important element to retail growth in our area.
So my thought, and I hope I am not pilloried for this, is that we may end up needing more public parking for retail. We want folks to come from east and west to visit our shops. And in looking at the moveDC plans, transportation connections east and west will not change much for the next 25 years. That means more cars. I wonder what the zoning rewrite says about this. If anyone knows, please leave a comment.
Tom Lalley says
I’ve always marveled at the enormity of UDC’s underground lot. I wonder if it could be opened for night and weekend use or serve as a commuter lot.
Expanding parking would make pedestrian safety even more important because people would have to walk from a lot to access stores, etc. And speaking of pedestrians, I believe that many people in walking distance stay away from the neighborhood because so many of the routes are unpleasant. For instance, walking on Van Ness between Reno and Connecticut is soul-sucking. Crossing Reno Rd. can be terrifying. Unsignaled crossings – no lights, just crosswalks – are jokes. Hardly anyone stops. It’s enough of a barrier that my family inflexibly just walks up the hill to Tenleytown.
Douglas Orr says
You raise an interesting issue with East-West connectivity, but I don’t think we should be looking to add parking. We could allow developers to build new buildings and add foot traffic for free to get a base. Cross-park and cross town connections are another issue, but the politics of the cross-town bus routes is nuts!
Our retail spaces are relatively few – the buildings built in the 1970s-90s at Van Ness are not great for passing retail. Other than the Giant, they’re all pretty small spaces in ugly buildings with bad frontage. Not exactly a romantic restaurant scene, and pretty expensive.
Also, the discussion of parking minimums affects only a fraction of buildings. Most developers build more parking than they are required or anticipate, especially for rental buildings where resident turnover is higher and parking rates fluctuate.
That said, in many cases, builders do not redevelop smaller lots because they can’t fit the parking required into the space.