Last April, the Burleith Citizens Association started soliciting donations for their anti-Campus Plan campaign; five months and $11,000 later, the community group has finally hired zoning and urban planning consultants to help build their case.

“As we move into the fall, activity surrounding the GU campus plan will heat up,” BCA President Lenore Rubino wrote in the Burleith Bell [PDF], a monthly newsletter. “The BCA in conjunction with the Citizens’ Association of Georgetown is working with our consultants to build our case before the zoning commission.”

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In this month’s Burleith Bell, the Burleith Citizens’ Association issued a call to action against Georgetown’s 2010 Campus Plan. Vox commenters agreed that the editorial, written by a group of residents the BCA assembled to research and respond to the 2010 Plan, was far more respectful and constructive than any of the responses to the plan that have come from Georgetown residents.

But Burleith means business too. In the same issue of the Bell, BCA President Lenore Rubino announced “The Burleith Community Fund,” a fund that, like the Citizens Association of Georgetown’s “Save Our Neighborhood” fund, is soliciting donations from neighborhood residents to fight the 2010 Campus Plan.

“Contribute to the Burleith Community Fund to pay for experts to the extent we cannot find them among ourselves to counter the experts the University will certainly have on their side,” the flier for the fund reads. Suggested donations start at $50, and the flier says that donations may be tax deductible if the fund receives 501c3 status.

The flier also asks residents to share the names of people to who may be able to testify about the Campus Plan, and announces a date for a community meeting for more information about Burleith’s response.

The BCA joins the fight against the 2010 Campus Plan

In the fight surrounding Georgetown University’s slowly but surely developing 2010 Campus Plan, there’s been nothing quiet about the Western front. By which I mean, the residents of West Georgetown have made it absolutely clear—through an open letter from community leaders to President John DeGioia, forceful showings at community meetings about the plan, and a monetary campaigns to hire experts that will testify against the Campus Plan, among many, many other things—that they are aggrieved by and intend to fight the 2010 Campus Plan tooth and nail when Georgetown files it with the Zoning Commission.

But Burleith is another story. Save for their tangentially related plans to create a database of noisy and messy student houses to use in discussions with the Metropolitan Police Department and the University, Burleith’s leadership has been a lot quieter than Georgetown’s about the impending Plan. At least, they were.

Headlining in April’s Burleith Bell, the monthly newsletter that the Burleith Citizens Association distributes to every home in the neighborhood, is an editorial letter from a BCA-led group of residents that is crafting the response to the 2010 Plan. It’s entitled “Georgetown University’s Ten-Year Plan is wrong for Burleith.” Calling on the same arguments Georgetown residents have been making about the intrusiveness of the 2010 Plan for months, the Bell officially rallies the troops.

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