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Virginia Avenue Park Plans.
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Community groups and business organizations have been planning for months to add new features to the Virginia Avenue Park, but a pending tunnel project in the area could put those plans on the back burner.
The park, located just south of the Southeast Freeway at the intersection of Virginia Avenue and Ninth Street SE, currently has a community garden space occupying its west side; the rest of the park is largely vacant right now.
Community garden participants have considered expanding their space, since aspiring gardeners currently have to be waitlisted for several years before they can secure a garden plot.
“It’s like a Garden of Eden with a bunch of junk around it,” said Christy Przystawik, whose husband Tom helped to start the garden.
Several groups have been developing plans for other parts of the park, including a children’s activity area in the center and an enclosed dog park in the northeast corner by the freeway. The children’s area recommendations have suggested a water play area, playground and children’s garden.
Capitol Canines, the group leading the dog park efforts, has already secured early approval from Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6B, and 450 people have signed a petition in support of the proposal. Sara Loveland, a representative for the group, said early discussions with others interested in the park have gone well. “I think all the stakeholders have been enthusiastic about this,” she said.
The Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District (BID), ANC 6B Commissioner Kirsten Oldenburg and area developers have also advocated an improved park to help bridge the Capitol Riverfront and Capitol Hill neighborhoods.
“If this is completed, it’s going to be a huge benefit for people on Capitol Hill,” Oldenburg said.
A CSX Complication
While there is no shortage of groups interested in using the park, railroad company CSX’s proposed “National Gateway” project has put a damper on the planning. If approved, the rail infrastructure improvement project would raise and replace the roof of the Virginia Avenue train tunnel to allow double-stacked trains to use the track. The tunnel runs under the park and Virginia Avenue.
CSX officials have previously said the upgrades would take several years to complete and that an open trench will likely have to be dug above the tunnel to allow for work to be done. If that is the case, a large trench would be dug through the park within a few years.
Michael Stevens, executive director of the BID, said that spending money now to fix up the park seems like a bad idea.
“I certainly wouldn’t recommend the expenditure of large chunks of funds if it’s going to be torn up in two or three years,” he said, adding that some small “interim steps” could be taken to upgrade the park before the tunnel project begins.
Oldenburg agreed that the park changes will likely have to wait.
Reimbursement for ‘Pain’
Stevens estimated that CSX’s project would result in about one-third of the park being dug up, in addition to the shutting down of sections of road near the park. Although he said the tunnel project will cause “a lot of pain” in the neighborhood, Stevens said it could lead to a better park down the road.
To pay back the community for the trouble inflicted by the construction, Stevens said he has asked CSX officials to fund improvements to the park and surrounding roads when they are done with the tunnel. CSX officials were not available to comment on the suggestion, but representatives told ANC 6B in November that they were working with organizations in charge of the effected parks to search for ways to improve the land when they’re done.
Wait for It
The BID is involved in planning for the park as part of the Lower Eighth Street SE Visioning Process, a series of community meetings intended to determine how the area just south of the freeway should be developed.
“This area never really was planned … and it’s languished and it’s just not all it can be,” Stevens said.
Although some of the groups working to improve the park were disappointed that the upgrades will have to wait a few years, Stevens said that a three or four year delay is just a “blip” in the history of the city’s development.
“I’m not disappointed,” he said. “I’d rather get it right than rush into something and get it wrong.”
Delaying the project also gives planers more time to find a funding source for the project. Area developers have covered the costs of hiring EDAW, a California-based architecture and environment design consultant, to map out potential changes to the park, but no other funding is in place yet.
Loveland said that the District Department of Park and Recreation has told Capitol Canines that money to build a new dog park would not be available until 2013 at the earliest.
“We are building a brand new community here of some size and consequence, and I want to get it right,” Stevens said of the park and the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood.
“At the end of the day, it’s a linear progression, and [the park] will happen when it is supposed to happen.” |
