RED BUTTONS DOMINATE AT DC ZONING COMMISSION

Wearing red buttons that read:  “Oppose the AU Plan” dozens of residents of American University’s surrounding neighborhoods packed the DC Zoning Commission Hearing Room for the third time on July 14th to express their dissatisfaction with AU’s proposed 2011 Ten Year  Campus Expansion Plan.

Zoning Commission Chair Anthony Hood, commenting that everywhere he looked all he saw were folks wearing red buttons, wondered aloud why so many people were so opposed to the Plan.

Cross examining the AU presenters and the Office of Planning recommendations on the plan, representatives from Spring Valley, Wesley Heights, Westover Place and the Tenley Campus Neighbors and Tenley Neighbors Association, as well as ANC3D Chairman Tom Smith all made quite clear that the campus plan proposed by American University would impose severe objectionable impacts on the adjacent communities and should not be approved as filed.

These include a huge increase in the number of students overwhelming existing low-density neighborhoods, growing traffic gridlock with no detailed plans for dealing with it, insufficient parking moving onto neighborhood streets, no long term “Green Space” and noise and air pollution resulting from putting high-density development into the middle of low density areas without sufficient buffer zones.

Tom Smith, Chairman of ANC3D, within which American University is located, elicited during his questioning of the Office of Planning that although AU has claimed to be in conversation with the neighbors for a little over two years about their objections, very little in the plan had changed.  This resulted in the Office of Planning suggesting a facilitator to help the process but this proved unsuccessful.

The hearings will resume in September after an August recess.

AU Neighbors Thank Kwame Brown for Support

Meeting at the Foxhall Community Room Monday night, a coalition of neighborhood groups and associations, united in their opposition to American University’s Campus Expansion plan, voted to extend their thanks to City Council Chair Kwame Brown for his strong support of their position.

They also extended thanks for his April 7th letter to Anthony Hood, Chairman of the DC Zoning Commission, emphasizing the taxpaying residents’ concerns about the many objectionable conditions which would result from the Expansion Plan.  Chairman Brown urged the Zoning Commission to NOT consider the American University Campus plan until the residents had been seriously heard and taken into account in the plan.

Chairman Brown himself paid a visit to Westover Place on March 30, 2011 and met with representatives from Tenleytown Neighbors, Tenley Campus Neighbors, Wesley Heights Civic Association, Tenleytown Historical Society, Foxhall and Westover Place Homeowners Association.  He saw for himself how placing 770 students in several five storey dormitories on AU’s current Nebraska Avenue parking lot, just 40 feet away from the backs of existing homes, would greatly impact the taxpaying residents of those homes.

Arriving at the meeting late due to gridlock on Massachusetts Avenue, Chairman Brown also got to experience firsthand one of the major concerns of the neighbors -- increasing pedestrian and vehicular traffic feeding into Ward Circle, already a choke point to north-south Massachusetts traffic and east-west Nebraska Avenue traffic.  The AU plans for development on both Nebraska and Tenley Circle will effectively encapsulate Nebraska Avenue.  This will make Nebraska the main road through their campus, and virtually a pedestrian walkway during certain times of the day as hundreds of students cross over and back from the proposed dorms and food establishments, including those AU has allowed into commercial space on New Mexico Avenue.

Other objectionable conditions cited by the residents included density, crime, parking and quality of life issues.

Said David Fehrmann of Westover Place, one of those who met with Chairman Brown: “Over the past 18 months we have met with the DC Office of Planning, the Department of Transportation, the local ANC, Ward 3 Representative Mary Cheh, the candidates running for the Council-At-Large seat and with AU.  The urgent concerns of the neighbors have been expressed at multiple joint meetings.  So far AU has turned a deaf ear.  Maybe this will help them to listen and act upon those concerns.”

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.

DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU’RE LIVING NEXT DOOR TO A HIGH CRIME AREA?

According to the District of Columbia Crime Policy Institute (as quoted in American University’s own student newspaper, The Eagle) areas surrounding AU, including it’s Main Campus, are considered a high crime area.  A high crime area is one with 25 or more crimes per year.
 
High crime areas are defined in terms of census blocks.  The two blocks cited in the report include AU’s core campus - bordered by Massachusetts Ave, Nebraska Ave, Rockwood Parkway, Glenbrook Road, Quebec Street and University Avenue - and one including the Berkshire Apartments and bordered by Massachusetts Ave, Nebraska, Van Ness Street, Wisconsin Ave and 39th Street.

And now American University wants to spread that high crime area even further into the community! By expanding it’s Tenley campus, and creating a so-called ”East Campus” of 700 student high rise dormitories and retail establishments on it’s Nebraska Avenue parking lot, they are widening the boundaries of the high crime area that has at it’s core their Main Campus.

By engulfing Nebraska Avenue as the main route through the middle of their envisioned future campus, they are effectively extending the tentacles of high crime into the very heart of our surrounding communities!

Here are some of the statistics published on AU’s own web site in their Annual Public Safety Report and this is just a small sampling:
CRIME                                                     2009            2010      1st qtr. 2011
Forcible Sex Offenses                               3                3                  2
Aggravated Assaults                                  6                 8                  2
Burglaries                                                   40              72                17
Defacing Property                                     n/a             130               39

And this doesn’t include the 514 alcohol and 112 drug violations for the same period.

SO WHAT CAN I DO?

It’s essential to stop AU and it’s attendant crime problems from engulfing all of us.  Write Mayor Vince Gray at 1350 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Suite 316, Washington, DC 20004, or go to dc.gov, click on Ask the Mayor and e-mail him.  Tell him you’re opposed to the AU expansion plan.

Write to Harriet Trigoning, Director of the DC Office of Planning, 1100 4th St. SW, Suite E650, Washington, DC 20024 or call (202)442-7600.  Tell her you’re opposed to the AU expansion plan.

If the Zoning Board approves AU’s expansion plan, we’ll all suffer.  Now is the time to stop it!  Tomorrow may be too late.

For more information on the issue of  AU expansion, and other things you can do to help, visit Neighbors for a Livable Community.  NLC is a coalition of community groups in the Spring Valley, Wesley Heights and Tenleytown areas.