Today on CityCast, DC.
What most of the last time you spent an afternoon just hanging in downtown DC?
Not like going to a specific place or running a specific errand.
That's probably because the downtown area just isn't really that livable.
In a new ranking of downtown vitality scores, DC ranks almost last.
But we're working on it.
Tristan Navera from the Washington Biz Journal explains how.
Today is Wednesday, May 3rd.
I'm Brigitte Chag and this is what DC is talking about.
But Tristan, people are trying to make DC more livable.
Is it a DC kind of already livable?
Like in what ways is DC not livable that folks are trying to make it more livable now?
The interesting thing is DC is kind of livable.
Think about the last time you went downtown that was for a reason other than to go to a
restaurant.
A lot of us in the past couple of years haven't really had the chance to go and do that.
There's certainly a decent number of apartments for young single people.
There's just kind of a small number of dorms and that sort of thing.
But it's not really a true neighborhood in the sense of you don't see kids out there
playing, riding their bikes.
You don't even think about that sort of thing for downtown DC and that's kind of the problem
that it's having.
What would realistically make DC particularly downtown more livable for families and different
types of people to actually enjoy?
Well, it's got to be a lot of public space investment.
So downtown DC has about 27 acres of green space.
But how much of that is locked up in kind of federally controlled, very plain parks,
right?
There are a few options as far as where you take kids to go to play.
There are some playgrounds that are kind of locked in private schools.
There are a few, I mean, are you going to take kids to go hang out with the skateboarders,
you know, or are you going to go and try and hang out on, you know, DuPont Circle and
with all the pets and all that sort of thing?
You don't have a lot of great options.
And so the public space is a big part of the conversation.
So I'd love to know like why this is a good idea.
I'm sure some folks listening are like, okay, who cares if downtown DC is super corporate?
I know Bowser's got this five year plan.
Like why is it something that folks should care about?
This is the eventuality that's coming if people aren't coming back to the office, right?
Downtown DC right now, the Central Business District is about 92% office buildings.
Now if you are working remotely, you don't really have that many reasons to go down there
anymore.
If you're like me and you live in Arlington, you know, you have a lot of neighborhood
shops and you once a week you'll go to your office and you know, you have a lot of options
and you just don't end up spending a lot of time in the city center.
So DC officials lately have been thinking as we consider, you know, remote work is here
to stay, well downtown has to be something else.
It could and should be something else.
We have a really great downtown.
We have the Lawn Fawn grid really allows a really cool feeling area.
And if those buildings aren't going to be filled up with offices, why not fill them up
with people and give a real true sense of a vibrancy that no other city in the country
can really have.
Yeah, part of me wonders if some of this is sort of an inability to accept that like
what downtown DC is used for is changing and maybe that's maybe it's going to be that
way for a while.
Maybe they're not going back to the way things were pre-COVID.
Yeah, no, I agree with you, Bridget.
Here's the interesting thing too.
DC has had this goal in the next five years of adding about 15,000 residents to downtown.
Well, downtown is about 25,000 people, you know, around now.
The end goal is going to be within a generation somewhere closer to 87,000 residents downtown,
which is huge.
I mean, we're not just talking, you know, converting a couple of office buildings.
You mean entire city blocks have to become something completely different.
So I think we're starting to have this conversation right now understanding that downtown DC needs
to evolve and it's going to take a long time to get there.
So you mentioned this push to convert some of those office buildings that are not really
in use the same way that they were into housing.
What are some other initiatives that you've seen or heard about from the downtown business
improvement district?
There's been a push for a lot of more creative use of retail space.
So here's a real kind of corporate kind of issue that DC has.
They used to have a lot of restrictions on what's called like light manufacturing, which
we're not talking about like machine shops or whatever, you know, in DuPont where there's
that nice donut shop that you can watch the donuts kind of being made on site and there's
a little production like that.
You actually can't build stores like that in DC in very many places because it's forbidden
by zoning.
Well, if we ease up on some of the zoning, it lets us build more things in some of those
corner shops.
So everything isn't just a Starbucks, you know, imagine a brewery that can brew beer
on site.
You know, a little more food production, imagine a creative space, a shop where you can make
some of those wares right there in downtown DC.
Those kinds of things really go a lot towards making downtown feel like a neighborhood.
And there's a lot of kind of push to rethink certain rules that were instituted, you know,
maybe in the 70s, maybe in the 80s with a certain goal in mind that that doesn't apply
anymore.
Right, so you've mentioned like easing up on some of these zoning restrictions.
Other other things that would take to realistically make DC more livable like to actually have
it be something that could possibly be implemented.
It's definitely being considered how to use green space and how to revive some of the
buildings.
DC's height limit really prevents a lot of building further up from where we are now
in the city center.
But there have been a lot of rules that have kind of been built around rooftops and pent
houses.
You know, we've had a few architects talk about well, some of that space in the mid block
kind of in between these buildings that used to be just kind of used as parking and loading.
You know, maybe we should rethink those things and make them kind of pocket parks.
You just got to have you got to have more places to walk to.
You got to have more places you can take your kids to.
You got to have a lot of those kind of third place environments that make downtown just
feel more comfortable and less like you need to be there in a suit and go to wherever you
need to go to and then stop at Tate on the way and then stop at Tate on the way home.
Yeah, we definitely do not have a lot of real third spaces in the downtown area.
Like everything is pretty much, as you said, geared towards like, oh, you're stopping in
if you happen to still be in the office or, you know, maybe popping into go to dinner
or some engage in some sort of commerce.
There's that really space to just like exist in public and not be buying something or
engaged in some sort of reason why you're there.
Yeah, certain parts of the corners of downtown have started to understand that well.
Of course, you know, DuPont Circle has done a lot better during the pandemic and a lot
fewer of the shops there have closed because it already was very residential.
There's been some thought that Noma has done really well because there's a lot more residences
there, but Noma wasn't really planned thoughtfully in advance and that creates some of the struggles
there.
You know, there's not a huge amount of green space in Noma either.
There are grocery stores and there's plenty of kind of housing options, but say you want
to go and just grab a $10, you know, a quick bite to eat on the way home or do you have
affordable housing issues there.
So thinking through this stuff a little bit more for the rest of downtown potentially
could be a lot more helpful.
So you mentioned making things more pedestrian friendly like a place that you would want
to bring your kids to walk around.
I've seen renderings for a real life version of this like a pedestrian only zone in places
like Chinatown.
What does this look like?
Yeah.
So the downtown bit has really been thinking about Chinatown because it's right in the
middle of all these different cool things.
There are a few different ideas in play for how to revive some of those roads.
I think they'd like to see kind of a road diet where some of the lanes get closed down
in favor of more buses and maybe a more kind of pedestrian friendly experience.
The real thing is a lot of Chinatown is built for walking on sidewalks while a bunch of
cars drive by you.
You can't really hang out there.
There are certain chances to.
The Christmas market is really fun.
It proves that people want to go there.
They just don't have a reason to stick around if they're not buying something.
So if these roads are redesigned so that there is more space for people to spend time outside,
they think that people will just spend a lot more time there.
So I know that they in Chinatown already do that when there's game days, if they shut
down the roads and for the Christmas market.
Do you know if they're suggesting shutting stuff down around the arena or other areas
in the Chinatown area?
It's a combination of everything.
They're really looking at 6th, 7th and 8th streets especially.
There are certain kind of the idea of maybe funneling some traffic towards a few larger
streets and then leaving others to be a little bit more.
Either make it so that there's just only buses can go through this area or maybe certain
time of the day this road is closed to traffic.
Maybe some of these don't need traffic at all.
Maybe we should really look at the way that Silver Spring closed down a central kind of
through fare.
Maybe downtown DC has a few roads like that where you can funnel them away from cars
and towards people.
I know another part of this conversation with making DC more livable is the crime rate.
Crime is seriously up this year and there's this feeling that downtown is less safe than
it used to be just because it's emptier.
So how does that factor into how officials are thinking about moving forward?
This is the top priority that the bid has really looked at in Chinatown specifically
but in the rest of the city.
There has been a lot of conversation about if downtown DC is as safe as it used to be
and we have a conversation about the statistics and we have a conversation about perceptions
and they are sometimes very different things.
I think when you think about the future of downtown DC you have to really think about
it equitably.
You have to really think about it as though seeing homeless people is not a scary thing.
It should not be this thing that is this problem.
It's something that needs to be looked at in a very careful and very empathetic way.
I think as we have these conversations being very careful to understand that is going to
help a lot.
Okay, so let's say that DC commits to all of this.
How long would it actually take to implement?
It will take a while and it's definitely not without controversy.
This is what a lot of the downtown property owners have said.
Trying to take cars away from DC, it's a tough process and the reality is there are
690,000 residents in the District of Columbia and 5.5 million in Maryland and Virginia.
You're going to have a lot of people who experience DC by commuting there one way or another.
People leave out any conversation about how the Metro is doing and just really look at
you can't build up because of the height limit.
You can't build down because we are still in a swamp.
How do you make this city accommodating to people who are coming in from the edges of
town?
That's really what DC needs because those people aren't coming in to work anymore.
You want to have a reason to bring them there.
We end all of our interviews asking our guests if they have a DC life hack to share.
Something that makes life in DC a little bit better.
So Andrew is the best Korean chicken in town.
Go to the happy hour.
All of the prices are way cheaper and it's just fun.
Oh my god, this is a tip made for me specifically.
I love Korean chicken.
This is great.
Tristan, thank you so much for being here.
Always a pleasure.
Hey, thanks again, Bridget.
And before you go, here's lead producer Priyak Atilve with the news.
There was a line out the door and around the corner at MLK Library on Monday, where residents
on the city's public housing waiting list were checking their eligibility.
It was their last chance to check in before the DC housing authority scraps the current
waitlist, which has already been closed for a decade and reopens a new version that they
say will be more effective this summer.
Right now DC AJ's occupancy rate is the poorest of any large public housing authority in the
country.
Also DC has some staggering numbers when it comes to unpaid traffic tickets.
Bad drivers have racked up more than $1.3 billion from unpaid tickets over the past 20 years.
DDoS is installing more traffic cams and working on deals with Maryland and Virginia
in hopes of getting money back from those drivers, but don't count on it.
And lastly, a new memorial dedicated to fallen journalists is going up on the National Mall
at the corner of 3rd Street, Southwest and Independence Ave.
It's been about four years in the making and only got federal authorization last December.
The fallen journalist Memorial Foundation is now soliciting design proposals, but they
already know that they don't want victims' names included.
That's all for today here on CityCast DC.
If you enjoyed the show, why not tell your favorite person who likes to hang out downtown
and subscribe to our Morning newsletter too.
We'll be back tomorrow morning with even more news from around the city.
Talk to you then.
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