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The proposed redesign of Justice Park at
14th and Euclid streets. Courtesy of
DC Office of Planning.
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It can be said that justice has been long in coming for a neglected tract of land in Columbia Heights that, for more than 20 years, has sat vacant, collecting trash and generally being a neighborhood eyesore. As debris piled up, the grass grew higher and higher, much like the property value of many of the nearby homes and commercial structures.
The parcel of land, which sits on Euclid Street near the corner of 14th, is about to become the new Justice Park in a land swap recently announced by the District government. A Justice Park already exists across the street, and has for several years. But the park has been fenced shut for quite awhile, because of the drug activity and other acts that run afoul of the law that, according to District government officials, went on inside. The park sits high off the street, walled off from view, and under cover of large trees much of the year. Its 14th Street neighbor is a gas station that many in the community believe to be the source of loitering and drug sales as well.
Recently, the Office of Planning issued a request for bids to develop the land. That is the reason that the park is to be relocated across the street. An upscale condominium, the Villagio, was fairly recently built next door to the soon-to-be-developed land, and other new condos and higher-end rentals have sprung up on the other side of Euclid Street as well as on and off 14th Street. “We’re looking at possibly a 20-unit building of about four or five stories,” said Sean Madigan, spokesperson for the DC Office of Planning. The land size, at 12,325 square feet, is not considered small. Whether or not it will be a condo or a rental is not yet known. Madigan believes that the final structure would be all housing rather than a mix of retail and housing like many new developments in Northwest, especially in Columbia Heights, Shaw, Chinatown and near the Convention Center. Most likely, according to the Office of Planning, there would be a set-aside for some affordable units in whatever housing development is built on the land, although Madigan wasn’t sure what the ratio of affordable to market-rate units would be.
The city has given potential developers until January to get bids in for proposals on the property. According to Madigan, his office will decide on who gets to develop the land by mid-spring, and then it goes to the DC Council for approval. Whatever ends up on the site wouldn’t be completed before the spring or summer of 2011, he forecasted.
So the new Justice Park would almost certainly be built before any development across the street is completed. The $750,000 makeover of the now-vacant tract should be completed sometime in 2010. At the time of completion, said Madigan, there will be about 40 plots made available for community gardens. In addition there will be pathways cut into the park, a plaza and also park benches installed. No word yet on whether the fountain of falling water over rocks will flow across the street to the new park.
Incidentally, the Justice Park that is coming soon is located about two blocks away from another recently renovated park at 14th and Fairmont streets NW. That park, unofficially named Obama Park in honor of the first family, opened earlier this summer. As Columbia Heights grows more populated due to all the new housing that is being built in the trendy and rapidly developing area, the new, high-styled parks are seen by many as an oasis from the gleaming glass structures springing up all around, and also a quiet and restful spot near the often frenzied 14th Street shopping strip that extends from upper Columbia Heights down past U Street all the way to Logan Circle. However, traces of the old may still find their way to the new. Some neighbors have complained that the loitering and public drunkenness evident in the old park at 14th and Fairmont have found its way to Obama Park. No change there, they bemoan. |
