“Hate Gridlock” Message Loud and Clear at Ward Circle

Some 75 determined neighbors walked around Ward Circle at the intersections of Massachusetts and Nebraska Avenues during morning rush hour, horns blared and the issue of traffic gridlock caused by American University’s planned expansion took center stage.

American University’s traffic study, submitted to the Office of Zoning in conjunction with its 2011 Proposed Campus Expansion Plan claims that expansion would have little or no impact on traffic at the Circle and along Nebraska Ave.  Judging by the honking of the motorists, this was not the case today.

Wearing buttons reading “Stop the AU Plan”  and with signs opposing the expansion sprouting from the circle, the coalition of groups from the neighborhoods surrounding AU wanted to demonstrate first hand that the AU Expansion Plan will indeed increase gridlock.  

Some of the neighbors held signs that read “Honk if You Hate Gridlock.” They urged rejection of the  AU Expansion Plan because of the severe traffic problems and potential pedestrian safety issues involved.

“If the  Zoning Commission allows AU’s Expansion Plan to go through it could potentially back up traffic from Connecticut Ave. to Canal Road on a daily basis” said Mary Ellen Fehrmann, a leader of the coalition.  “Add in the double whammy of the Department of Homeland Security increasing its workforce by about 1800 and you have traffic gridlock nightmare.”

Ward Circle is one of the busiest crossroads in the city and, according to the Rockcreek West II Livability Study, has the highest accident rate in the city.  The neighbors worry that this will get worse.

AU’s plan to build dormitories for some 600 students on the Nebraska Ave parking lot will add multiple pedestrian crossings at Ward Circle and Nebraska Ave., including many mid-block.  Their solution is to ask DDOT to install another traffic light midblock, which in turn, will back up more vehicles trying to get to the intersection.

Massachusetts Avenue carries almost 21,000 cars every weekday and Nebraska carries 24,500 not counting heavy pedestrian and bicycle traffic in the intersection.  Emergency vehicles already have a hard time getting through, according to many who live in the area.  This worries Tony Cafoncelli, a retired physician who lives at Westover Place.  “If the traffic situation worsens, it could endanger the lives of residents and students alike,” he says.  Other concerns he has are the increased air pollution, air toxins, greenhouse gasses and noise pollution deriving from worsening gridlock.  “All of these affect not only the quality of life for people in the area, but the quality of health as well,” says Cafoncelli.

More  information:

Neighborhood Organizations:

        www.stopAU.org

        www.nlcnorthwestdc.org

American University Campus Plan:

Home page:  http://www.american.edu/finance/fas/Campus-Plan.cfm       

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.”

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.

Universities' Growth Requires City Scrutiny