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.

DETERMINED NEIGHBORS SAY NO TO AU

Palisades,  April 25, 2011 --Determined residents of Spring Valley, Wesley Heights and Tenleytown filled the Community Meeting Room at Sibley Memorial Hospital to air their opposition to the American University Campus Expansion Plan at a special meeting of ANC3d, called to consider the

ANC’s recommendations to the DC Office of Planning and the Zoning Commission.

In votes on 12 resolutions presented by Chairman Tom Smith, citing the many objectionable conditions presented by the AU Expansion Plan, the nine- member ANC voted in most cases by votes of 8 to 1 or 7 to 2 to repudiate the AU plan and recommend steps the Zoning Commission should take to alleviate the most egregious conditions.

These included traffic gridlock along the Nebraska Avenue corridor, pedestrian safety issues at Ward Circle, access of emergency vehicles, parking issues and inadequate buffer zones between student housing and residential neighborhoods.  The AU plan also calls upon DDOT to remove the Metro bus stops in this area.  The ANC resolutions called for the removal of the AU Nebraska Ave. shuttle bus stops, which are a real traffic halter during rush hours.

Additionally the AU plan seeks to expand its on-campus student population by about 30% and does not include a cap against further expansion in the future.  The ANC would like the 2001 Expansion Cap reinstated and expressed its feeling that the obfuscation about the cap in the plan is simply AU

attempting to vitiate any cap.

Other issues addressed by the resolutions  included  the gobbling up of 528,000 square feet of neighborhood commercial properties without regard  to neighborhood needs and the university’s stated aim to buy up any properties which become available within 1 mile of its core campus.

A further resolution introduced by Commissioner Stuart Ross recommended that the Zoning Commission should require AU to address the issue of pedestrian traffic mitigation strategies, including but not limited to a  tunnel and/or bridge at Ward Circle.  This passed 8-1.

David Fehrmann - Westover Homeowners Assn. representative and one of a coalition of neighbors from Wesley Heights, Spring Valley and Tenleytown - expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the meeting.  “We’re pleased to see our ANC stand up to AU and see to it that our communities  are not just steamrollered into oblivion. We’re not going to give up on this.”

DC  Council At-Large Candidate Patrick Mara was the only candidate present and distributed handouts stating “AU cannot continue to ignore ANCs and communities...[and] must keep the 2001 student and employee cap.”

CONCERNED COMMUNITIES CALL FOR CROWDS TO ATTEND SPECIAL ANC MEETING FOR VOTE ON AU EXPANSION PLAN

A special meeting of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3D has been called by Chairman Tom Smith for Monday, April 25th at 7:00 pm in the Community Room of the new Sibley Hospital Medical Building. Community groups throughout the area – encompassing Tenleytown, Wesley Heights, and Spring Valley – are urging neighbors to turn out in force. The only item on the agenda is a resolution concerning American University’s proposed expansion plan. Neighbors have consistently called for rejection of the plan based on concern that unbridled university expansion will severely impact surrounding neighborhoods.

Taxpaying residents of the areas surrounding AU are expected to pack the meeting room Monday night to register their objections to the AU plan which include increased traffic gridlock along Nebraska Avenue, pedestrian safety issues at Ward Circle (the intersection of Massachusetts and Nebraska Avenues), access of emergency vehicles, parking issues, increased crime and safety issues, and inadequate buffer zones between student housing and residential neighborhoods.

Additionally, the AU plan seeks to expand its student population by about 30%, and does not include a cap against further expansion in the future. Other issues include the gobbling up of commercial properties by the university without regard to neighborhood needs, the unfair tax burden which the university has shifted to the community and the destruction of the quality of life via increased noise, pollution, trash and vandalism.

“We strongly urge the ANC to pass this resolution and repudiate the AU Plan until it is acceptable to the neighborhoods.” said Susan Farrell, President of the Westover Place Homeowners Association, and one of a coalition of neighborhood groups opposing the plan. “We have voiced our concerns and objections at every meeting for the past 19 months, and AU has simply stonewalled us. They refuse to even talk about it. Now they’re trying to steamroll right over the ANC and go on to the Zoning Commission. I hope the ANC won’t let them get away with it.”

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.