More Downtown DC Revival

The latest gush coming out of USDOT public info is news of a ‘partnership agreement’ between FHWA and DC Dept Public Works. US Sec Transp Rodney Slater proclaims in the press announcement: “President Clinton and I are committed to being good neighbors to the District of Columbia.” Partnership agreement, good neighbors, gawd, this sounds like some big new deal for the benighted District.

Read on and you find that all we have here is a one-off $960k grant to DC to tear out a pedestrian plaza in the 900 block of G StNW in front of the Martin Luther King Library in downtown Washington DC to let traffic back. All this partnership hype ‘n blather is about a federal grant for a DC curb ‘n gutter job.

Oh but USDOT wants everyone to know that we are “removing a barrier to a thriving downtown.” It’s all the rage among the trendy planners and pols now to tear out 1970s and 1980s pedestrian plazas and let the cars through again. If you thought these guys were all for walkable communities and traffic calming, furgeddit. Don’t expect any consistency or coherence from this crowd. Car traffic brings life, they say with great certainty, like born-again members of the Road Gang. Urban revival will follow, these big mouths predict.

As the WASH POST (10/26/99 B3) inconveniently notes the USDOT’s hype for removing the pedestrian plaza in G Street NW is almost word for word what they said in 1977 when the road was closed (repeat: closed) to cars and the present ped plaza was installed. The Hubert H Humphrey Plaza, they officially named it, and complete with stone paving, fancy lights, plaques, raised planter beds, sculptures and fountains, it cost some $3m to build. The HHH Plaza is what USDOT now deems a ‘barrier’ to a thriving downtown and a great achievement and act of good neighborliness to remove.

The HHH Plaza was inaugurated in the era of another southern charmer, not Billy, but Jimmy. The POST reporter points out that in 1977 they wrote a brochure for the HHH ped plaza saying “It will bring new life into downtown... make (it) more attractive to shoppers, increasing retail sales...”

So it don’t matter whatcha do: build it, or knock it down, fountains or pavement, no-cars or cars-back, ped plaza or roadway, it’s all going to bring thaat goud life back. Probably the same hack as in 1977, just recycling the blather.