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Existing Plan

A public comment period is underway for three proposals that could change the Eastern Market Metro plaza into a town square and community park that is the “central point” for Capitol Hill.

Changes at the plaza had been proposed for years, and the land was transferred to the city in 2006. Barracks Row Main Street initiated substantial planning for the project last year.

A 16-member task force made up of Capitol Hill residents and representatives of some neighborhood organizations has been working to provide community feedback to the design team, led by architect Amy Weinstein.

Details on the three design proposals are available at www.capitolhilltownsquare.com. That website is also the place to go to comment on the plans. The public comment period ends in mid-August.

The goals of all three plans are to link Barracks Row and Eastern Market, to provide a community gathering space, and to increase pedestrian and traffic safety in the area. To reach these goals, the alternatives take very different paths.

The “Existing” plan would leave the area largely as it is, although the Metro plaza and a triangle shaped park on the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue SE would be spruced up. The D Street SE “feeder sections” would be removed to change the traffic pattern, and Pennsylvania Avenue would be reduced to two lanes each way between Seventh and Ninth streets SE.

“Triptych” calls for three equal-sized parks – two triangle parks southwest and northeast of a central oval park. Pennsylvania Avenue SE would be reduced to two lanes in the area and routed around the oval park, and the sections of D Street SE between Seventh and Ninth streets SE would remain one-way streets but switch directions.

“Central Park” would have a large rectangle park with Pennsylvania Avenue SE running around it. Eight Street SE would be split up under this plan, although a path linking the north and south sections of the street would be placed through the park for buses and emergency vehicles to use.

The Central Park plan would cause the most changes to the area, with many of the neighboring streets changed to one-ways and the heavy traffic associated with Pennsylvania Avenue moved closer to business and homes than now.

The specific items that would make up each of the parks are still not finalized, but early renderings feature parks with flexible seating to enable the space to be used for gatherings and events. Fountains and other water attractions are also likely, and sculptures to frame the parks are in some of the drawings online.

Close But Unrelated
Any changes to the Eastern Market Metro plaza would be right next to the impending development at the Hine Junior High site, but Weinstein said those two projects will not have much of an effect on the other.

“I think that they are truly independent of each other,” she said.

David Perry of Barracks Row Main Street is a member of the task force. He agreed that the Hine and Eastern Market projects are separate, largely because of the differing timeframes. The city will be picking the developer for Hine in the near future, while the Eastern Market plan is only in the beginning portion of a design stage.

“In a perfect world, maybe the whole thing would be undertaken in one fell swoop, but that’s not the world we live in,” Perry said. “Even if the entire community said, ‘Let’s go in such and such a direction,’ there’s no money to do that.”

‘Recommendation’ for Substantial Traffic Changes
At a July meeting to gather public feedback on the three proposals, many community concerns focused on the traffic changes that would be associated with a Metro plaza renovation. Specifically, many meeting attendees seemed skeptical of design claims that reducing the number of lanes and using techniques to slow down Pennsylvania Avenue traffic wouldn’t be harmful to the neighborhood. The proposals also all include a bike lane on the street.

Louis Slade, who is serving as the traffic advisor for the project planners, said that preliminary research has shown that the area has more traffic capacity than is needed, so reducing the number of lanes and rerouting some streets shouldn’t have a big impact on traffic.

“It’s not an assumption, it’s a recommendation based on our studies,” he said, adding that traffic would be minimally slowed under the plans. “Clearly, it’s going to take more time to drive through the area.”

A question-and-answer document written by Slade was posted on the project’s website following the meeting to answer traffic concerns in greater detail.

Another common concern was the effect rerouting Pennsylvania Avenue would have on neighboring business and homes. Perry said that concern and many other issues will need to be addressed as the planning process moves forward.

Next Steps
In addition to gathering comments from the public, Weinstein’s team has been meeting with the federal and city agencies that would have to sign off on changes to the Metro plaza.

“Nothing would ever get done that didn’t have the support of city and federal agencies,” Weinstein said.

The public and government comments will be boiled down into a report, and the task force will meet in September to discuss the findings and the next step forward.