Last night, the National Park Service, Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park, District of Columbia officials, and about 100 others gathered to celebrate the completion of Georgetown Waterfront Park. The newly completed park, which took $24 million and a couple decades to complete, includes a pergola and a river stair, which allows people to view the river and regattas from the shoreline. And there’s a giant fountain (which children were already playing in).

The first part of the park was completed in 2008, but debris and tons of concrete, which were once the floor of the Capital Traction Co. powerhouse, had to be trucked off the land before construction could continue in 2010.

The ceremony, emceed by Rock Creek Park superintendent Tara Morrision, featured President of Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park Bob vom Eigen, Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans, and NPS Regional Director National Capital Region Peggy O’Dell as speakers.

“Look at this place,” said CM Evans. “This is a beautiful place for people from all over the city to enjoy.”

Additionally, Sharon Percy Rockefeller, President and CEO of WETA, wife of Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and daughter of former Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois, spoke on her father’s behalf. (Sen. Percy is gravely ill at Sibley Hospital and could not attend the event.) Sen. Percy chaired the Georgetown Waterfront Park Commission in the 1990s, which worked alongside the Citizens Association of Georgetown and the National Park Service. A plaque commemorating his service was unveiled by the water’s edge.

ANC Commissioners Ron Lewis, Bill Starrels and Ed Solomon, as well as Georgetown Men’s Head Crew Coach Tony Johnson were in also attendance.

Starrels commented that the new park was “the crowning jewel to the waterfront.”

For more pictures, check out William Newton’s twitter and Patch’s account.

photo: Nico Dodd

Update: Click here to read the e-mails Vox obtained yesterday in a Freedom of Information Act request.

The D.C. Office of Planning, Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E, and the Georgetown community cooperated on the controversial OP report on Georgetown University’s 2010 Campus Plan, according to e-mails uncovered by student rights organization DC Students Speak and Vox Populi.

The report, released on May 5, most notably recommended that the University accept a legal limit on enrollment and house all undergraduates on-campus.

The e-mails reveal that ANC 2E Chairman Ron Lewis met with OP a total of three times starting in Spring 2010.

On October 19, 2010, Lewis scheduled a phone call with Jennifer Steingasser of the Office of Planning to discuss the possible closing of negotiations between the community and the University on the 2010 Campus Plan.

“The discussions with Georgetown University about their campus plan have been disappointing (to put it mildly) and we’re on the brink of breaking them off,” Lewis wrote. “I’d like a chance to bring you up to date on what’s been going on.”

Community representatives officially ceased talks with the University on October 28, 2010. In subsequent meetings, it appears that Lewis’ input figured prominently in the OP’s final product.

In advance of a February 7, 2011 meeting with OP, Lewis e-mailed Steingasser with talking points containing several elements that made it into the final OP report, including a mandate for Zoning Commission approval of future University purchases in zip code 20007 (i.e. Georgetown and Burleith outside the main gates) and enrollment cap penalties for noncompliance with on-campus housing requirements.

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Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E (Georgetown-Burleith-Hillandale) met for its monthly meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday at Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School.

And threw it out the…

The ANC was not supportive of requests to convert the second story of a 35th Street residence into an apartment. According to Commissioner Ron Lewis, ANC 2E would not consider a resolution to support the request until after the zoning regulation amendments and Campus Plan hearings were wrapped up.

“Students living off campus is a major concern,” Lewis said. “Until those key issues are resolved, we cannot support it.”

The Citizen’s Association of Georgetown and the ANC were particularly concerned that  the residence would not be owner-occupied. The owner of the property could not attend the meeting to respond to these concerns.

Random acts of burglary

Metropolitan Police Department Lt. John Hedgecock reported that violent crime in the Second District is down 50% compared to last year. However, property crime – including burglaries and bicycle thefts – has doubled this year, following a citywide trend.

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Update: The full report of the Office of Planning is now available after the jump.

The District Office of Planning filed its report to the D.C. Zoning Commission today, recommending that Georgetown University house 100 percent of its traditional undergraduate students on-campus by the fall of 2016, according to the Georgetown Dish.

The Office of Planning recommends that the University accomplish this by “incrementally reducing the [traditional undergraduate student] enrollment […] until the TUS enrollment equals the university-provided housing.” The report obtained by the Dish stated concerns about the “adverse impact and objectionable conditions due to the number of students” in Burleith and West Georgetown.

Unsurprisingly, Advisory Neighborhood Commission chair Ron Lewis told the Dish, “This is a strong, thoughtful, well-documented report.”

This outcome seems to support Georgetown Metropolitan writer Topher Matthews’s theory that the University made last-ditch changes to the plan—including the addition of 250 beds on-campus and reducing the total student cap from 16,133 to 15,000—in an attempt to win over the Office of Planning, and by extension, the Zoning Commission.

If so, it didn’t work.

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Monday’s Advisory Neighborhood Committee meeting was short on entertainment, but awfully long on just about everything else.

Topics included how to ease the traffic jams at the intersection of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue, a monthly public safety report, some complaints about the Alcohol Beverage Control Board’s moratorium, and a University’s ten-year plan—but sadly, it wasn’t Georgetown’s 2010 Campus Plan. Let’s get to the wrap:

Ed Solomon: Private Eye

In what we can only imagine was a long-gestating dream, Commissioner Ed Solomon delivered the evening’s public safety report after MPD Lieutenant Jon Hedgecock couldn’t attend the meeting.

“As far as crime in our area, it’s still basically what we reported last month,” Solomon said as he presumably imagined himself chasing down petty crooks and arresting bank robbers. “It’s trending down but there’s been some high-visibility crime in our neighborhood.”

According to Solomon, who we hope dons a mask and fights crime on the streets of Georgetown, MPD plans to move extra police officers from Friday and Saturday nights to “other higher crime nights.”

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Early last year, the D.C. City Council passed a ban on selling single beers in some D.C. neighborhoods, including Georgetown. Faced with major revenue losses, many business owners immediately sought exceptions to the ban from Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. Those who could convince their ANCs that they weren’t selling singles at a price where homeless could buy them—the Logan Circle ANC gave an exception to a Whole Foods to sell pricey microbrews, for example—were by and large successful.

A year later, guess which ANC still isn’t playing ball with one local business?

Yep. Early Friday morning, Georgetown’s ANC met at the offices of the Georgetown Business Improvement District to discuss a request from Dixie Liquor for an exemption to sell high-price craft brews. In a 3-2 vote, the ANC passed a resolution advising the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration not to grant Dixie an exemption, frustrating efforts Dixie began in February 2009.

Back then, in an ANC meeting, Dixie Liquor owner Joy Kurash had argued that Dixie was projected to lose out on $38,000 without the exemption. She also brought samples to emphasize that what she intended to sell was expensive—high-end microbrews that start at $14, culinary liquors, and a Sam Adams “Utopia,” a $180 beer that Sam Adams only brews every other year. The ANC deferred a vote on the exemption.

On Friday, along with Commissioners Ron Lewis, Bill Starrels, and Bill Skelsey, the Citizens Association of Georgetown argued that single-sales of alcohol are directly related to high rates of vagrancy, pointing to the presence of “drifters” in Francis Scott Key Park.

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We’ve been speculating about whether or not the 2010 Campus Plan would be hampered by the kind of neighborhood opposition that beset the 2000 Campus Plan. We can stop wondering now. Georgetown alum and CAG President Jennifer Altemus (COL ’88) has announced that the Citizens’ Association of Georgetown is launching a campaign against the Campus Plan—and it’s not just an advocacy campaign.

“[I]t is clear that we will need support from experts to enhance our efforts in advocating the needs and concerns of the residential community,” Altemus wrote in an e-mail that went out over the Georgetownforum listserv. “To that end, we are asking you to help us fund this important effort.”

She goes on to ask residents to visit the CAG website and donate to the “Save Our Neighborhood” fund, where suggested donations start at $300 and go up to $5,000. Or neighbors can make a (tax-deductible) donation of any amount. In either case, they’ll receive an invitation to the “Save Our Neighborhood” cocktail party at Georgetown restaurant il Canale.

She also announced an April meeting among neighbors to discuss the 2010 Campus Plan specifically from the neighbors’ point of view.

Members of the CAG and the Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have made no secret of how much they dislike Georgetown’s 2010 Campus Plan. Even at a community meeting where Georgetown administrators more or less promised that they were rerouting the GUTS buses according to the ANC’s wishes, ANC Commissioner Ron Lewis openly threatened to impede the plan’s passage if Georgetown did not acquiesce to more neighborhood demands.

“There is a problem,” he said. “And the problem is that people who come to your classes are jamming up our streets by parking. It’s not our role, it’s not our job to figure out the solution—it’s the University’s. But there is the problem. And unless the problem goes away, it’s going to be a problem for the plan.”

I guess those problems start now. Read Altemus’ full letter after the jump.

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This month’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting lacked the kind of heated debate that can often break out on the second floor of the Georgetown Visitation School, but it did feature an appearance from Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans that spiced things up a little.

Evans’ appearance gave the crowd on hand an opportunity to ask some greater-D.C.-related questions, which touched on the District of Columbia’s current budget issues, the city’s response to the massive snowstorm in February, and the possibility of statehood—all in all, more civic-minded questions than the ones residents asked of Evans last year, such as a question about getting those infernal trolley tracks taken out of P Street.

Evans seemed uninterested in pursuing statehood at the moment. Why?

“It’s not in the cards right now. I hate to say this about one of my colleagues, but every time Marion Barry does crazy things it feeds right into Congress’ view that he could be elected mayor again and God forbid if they had control over their affairs what could happen then? I was talking with Northrop Grumman about relocating and his name came up, and that’s a problem,” Evans said.

The meeting also included a brief presentation from Georgetown Energy, a Georgetown student-run not-for-profit organization that is advocating the implementation of rooftop solar technology across the District.

Anthony Conyers (COL ’12), Peter Nulsen (COL ’12) and Jessica Robbins (SFS ’12) accompanied Mike Meaney (SFS ’12), who directly addressed the ANC about Georgetown Energy’s campaign.

He emphasized the financial sense of installing solar panels on roofs, noting that the typical Georgetown home would receive a net profit of $30,000 over a 30-year period by installing solar panels.

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If you don’t recall how neighborhood residents of Georgetown reacted when administrators presented the 2010 Campus Plan back in November, let me remind you of the words of Advisory Neighborhood Commission Chair Ron Lewis when he heard that adding 1,000 parking spaces in the University was part of the plan:

“There is a problem,” he said. “And the problem is that people who come to your classes are jamming up our streets by parking. It’s not our role, it’s not our job to figure out the solution—it’s the University’s. But there is the problem. And unless the problem goes away, it’s going to be a problem for the plan.”

And that was at the meeting where Georgetown said it was definitely rerouting GUTS buses through Canal Street, which the ANC has been demanding for years.

Now, as the end of January nears—at which point Georgetown administrators have said they hope to submit the Plan to the ANC for its first stage of review—neighbors are no less content than they were in November about the proposed 2010 Campus Plan.

Jennifer Altemus (COL ’88), the president of the Citizens Association of Georgetown, sent a dense letter to President John DeGioia last Thursday which she provided to the Voice. The letter enumerates the neighbors’ grievances with the current draft of the Campus Plan.

“We are extremely disappointed with the process thus far. It appears that community input at the GU sponsored meetings has been ignored,” she wrote. “This list is by no means comprehensive but these issues represent the priority concerns of the community that will be raised during the plan review and approval process.”

Read the full letter and a summary, after the jump.

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