RECORD TURNOUT AT ANC MEETING TO OPPOSE AU EXPANSION PLAN

Over 150 residents of Spring Valley, Wesley Heights, and Tenleytown turned out Wednesday night, April 6th, to express strong opposition, before the ANC3d Commissioners, to the proposed Expansion Plan presented by American University.

Wearing buttons and with signs reading “Stop Traffic Gridlock--oppose the AU plan”  and “Save our Neighborhoods--oppose the AU plan,” residents of the neighborhoods most affected by AU’s overreaching Expansion Plans jammed the meeting room at Sibley Hospital.  They hoped to perhaps see if AU’s final presentation of its Expansion Pan would take into account at least some of their concerns expressed over the last 20 months about the overwhelmingly objectionable conditions AU would create in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Instead, in the words of ANC3d Chairman Tom Smith, every permutation of AU’s Expansion Plan presented “ever more onerous” impacts on the community.

After 20 months of stonewalling the community’s objections, AU simply reiterated - without justification - their position that the Nebraska Avenue parking lot was the only location to build their 770-bed,  highrise-high density dormitory project.

Neighbors for a Liveable Community, a coalition of community groups and associations in the Wesley Heights, Spring Valley and Tenleytown areas, developed an alternative plan showing how AU could accommodate its expansion on its existing campus.  The point was that it didn’t ALL have to be dumped onto the Nebraska Ave parking lot with all of its attendant traffic, density, crime, parking and quality of life issues, but that there could be alternatives and compromises.

AU chose to make this alternative plan into a “Government Shutdown” type issue, stating  the reason they wouldn’t compromise was because the alternative plan showed that the neighbors refused to consider any housing on the Nebraska Ave site.  Instead of offering compromise, they simply chose to pick apart the alternative plan as if it were cast in stone and ignored all of the objectionable consequences of their own Expansion Plans.

In spite of AU’s claims to being “good neighbors,” the University leadership has shown itself to be inflexible and unwilling to put themselves in ordinary citizens’ shoes.

The final ANC3d vote to recommend approval or disapproval of AU’s Expansion Plan to the Zoning Commission will be on April 25th.