David Alpert contributed to this article.

Last night, DDOT released renderings of its design for the proposed Spingarn streetcar barn. The proposal is a passable building, but the design is likely to disappoint residents who’d been expecting great architecture.

Streetcar barn design. Image from DDOT.

DDOT originally wanted to locate the maintenance facility for its H Street streetcar under the Hopscotch Bridge, near Union Station. That proved impossible, so DDOT switched its plans to the most practical alternate site: the Spingarn High School campus.

Though the design lacks the ornament and detail of DC’s historic streetcar barns, it is typical of contemporary institutional architecture, which is a step up from the bare bones necessary for industrial buildings.

In fact, this design looks very much like a modern school. If DCPS were building a new education building on the same site, it would probably look pretty similar, at least as seen from Benning Road. Adjacent residents likely won’t feel they are living right next to an industrial facility.

However, it’s not the sort of civic architecture that leaves much of an impression. Many cities’ new car barns aren’t good civic architecture either, but DDOT has been suggesting that this building would be better than merely okay.

The design guidelines call for “the highest aesthetic quality,” and there’s a lot that could be done to improve this building. Some of DC’s new libraries show how civic buildings can indeed be exemplary.

Image from DDOT.

Some changes can improve the design

The primary purpose of the barn will be to park and maintain streetcars, but it will also include a training center, offices, and employee prep areas. One nice touch in the building design is that those non-industrial uses line Benning Road, so that from the sidewalk the upper floors of the building look like a school or office instead of a warehouse. Unfortunately, the ground floor is bare, so the illusion is incomplete.

Design guidelines call for public art to be included, and these renderings don’t appear to have any. Perhaps that first floor wall would be a good location for a mural.

Another disappointing facet is the location of the public entry on the side rather than the front or corner, where most would expect it. The reason appears to be that the interior layout puts offices and a copy room at the street corner, pushing the entry back a few feet onto 26th Street. This seems needlessly confusing, and prioritizes the wrong function.

The Historic Preservation Review Board discussed the project on November 1. Their comments begin at the 2:00:00 mark on the archived video, and focus on whether or not a modern-looking building is appropriate, and whether the plan could be reduced to have less visual impact. They did not take any vote at that meeting, but will do so when they consider the landmark application for Spingarn later this month.

The streetcar project is important, and this car barn is good enough to not delay the project. But while this is pretty good for a building that’s basically a garage, it could be much better. A car barn on the Spingarn campus makes sense, and this one isn’t terrible, but residents asked for an exemplary building, and DDOT said it could deliver.

DDOT also needs to be more open to the public about its planning for the streetcar. These renderings came out at 4:30 pm the evening before a Presidential election. Given the concern neighbors have about the planning process for the car barn, DDOT must make every attempt to be as open as possible.

It’s not necessary to completely start over, but some improvements do seem in order. Likewise, as DDOT starts to plan for future car barns in other neighborhoods, they shouldn’t settle for “just okay.”

 Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.
 
 
 

Gaithersburg’s Barnes and Noble is still open, but for how long?

Large bookstores fill an important niche in our cities. They’re some of the best places for people to hang out, kill time, and meet friends. But with Borders gone and Barnes and Noble stores rapidly disappearing, how will that niche be filled in the future?

To be sure, there are many other types of these “third places” in cities, ranging from coffee houses to public plazas, but bookstore’s particular combination of a climate controlled indoor space, with clean bathrooms, plenty of comfy seats, a pleasant cafe, and an endless supply of reading materials, has proven very popular.

Unfortunately, retail locations large enough for that kind of bookstore are expensive, and it doesn’t help Barnes and Noble’s bottom line if most of its customers are sitting around not buying anything. So as popular as big bookstores are, they’re going out of business.

With a few exceptions, local non-chain bookstores generally aren’t set up to fill this niche either, because they don’t usually have very many places where it’s comfortable to sit for long periods of time. Those easy chairs and wide open spaces in Barnes and Noble make a big difference.

Libraries could be a perfect replacement. After all, the whole point of libraries is to provide a place for people to read for free. Unlike bookstores, it doesn’t matter to libraries if customers only want to hang out.

But libraries will need to evolve to fill this role. The branch libraries in most cities have been losing to bookstores because they don’t have the right amenities. Libraries will need to be bigger, with more of the magazines and coffee table books that people enjoy flipping through in bookstores. Libraries will need cafes, and a more fun, less stodgy character overall.

Some of the new central libraries in big cities are taking on this role, but it won’t help too much to only have 1 big nice library in each metropolitan area. If libraries can do this, it will be the smaller neighborhood branches that make most of the difference. They’re the ones that will have to change the most, and that could reap the most benefit.

The proposed redesign.

The Main Hall at Washington Union Station is undergoing a redesign that will eliminate the Center Cafe, punch holes in the floor for escalators to the lower level food court, and change the room’s furniture layout. The comment period for the redesign proposal ends tomorrow November 15, so now is the time for anyone interested to take a look, and send in comments.

The gold-trimmed Main Hall is a fantastic and beautiful civic space, recent scaffolding aside. It’s one of the best Beaux Arts rooms in America, and is lively with visitors through long hours of the day and night. It’s a space that is working very well already, so any changes need to be carefully considered.

The hall was temporarily ruined by a poorly-conceived redesign in the 1970s. If project architects get too carried away with changes, the same could happen again.

The good news is that the redesign being proposed now is relatively restrained. That wasn’t always the case. The first proposal back in 2010 would have overwhelmed the historic character of the Main Hall with a clashing metal and glass structure in the center of the room. Two years later, the new proposal is a lot better. It makes less significant changes, and leaves the aesthetic focus of the hall where it belongs, on the world-class Beaux Arts features.

The proposed escalators down to the food court are a little troubling, because punching holes in the floor of such a grand space sounds very similar to the 1970s mistake. On the other hand, without the Center Cafe in that space the Main Hall may seem too large, maybe even a little barren. There needs to be something in about that location that breaks up the floor mass. Both the raised cafe and holes for escalators would be too much, but one or the other is just about right.

The escalators will also improve circulation in the station, and add a new reason for visitors to go through the Main Hall.

The 2010 escalator proposal was garish and inappropriate, but this new redesign is subdued enough that the benefits it brings are worth the trade-offs.

Except for the signs. The signs are awful.

The escalator proposal also includes a pair of vertical signs, sticking out from the holes in the Main Hall floor and up in to the middle of the room. This is actually a great idea, because a vertical element fills the huge room volume a bit, and something near the center of the hall adds a focal point. Unfortunately, the design of the signs themselves is all wrong.

Take a look:

Rendering of the proposed redesign, showing large LED signs.

Talk about clashing!

LED signs that look like they came straight from a suburban strip mall aren’t right for one of the most famous Beaux Arts rooms in America. A vertical element that incorporates signs would be good there, but the design needs to be improved.

A better option would be to go with something dignified and ornate, that stands out but also works with the room’s historic character. Something like an iron street lamp with a banner attached would look great, and be far more appropriate for the context.

For more details on the proposed redesign, visit the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation. If you want to comment you can use the form on that site, but be sure to get your thoughts in by Thursday, October 25 November 15.

Update:According to an email from Union Station Redevelopment Corporation representative Lisa Klimko, the comment deadline has been extended to November 15.

 Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.
 
 
 

Good news: The Dupont Circle south escalator is open and working again! 8 long months later, it’s good as new. Yay!

Dupont south.

Bad news: In order to improve safety on the Pennsylvania Avenue cycle track, on Friday DC placed signs reminding drivers not to attempt U-turns through the bike lanes. Unfortunately, the “no U-turns” signs were placed in the bike lanes, blocking them to bicyclists. Oops.

Update: The sign has been moved.

Pennsylvania Avenue oopsie. Photo via @BicycleSPACE on twitter.

The latter duplicates a classing lulzy internet “fail” image, from Dana Point, California:

Original source unknown.

I was at last night’s awesome Nationals game. My upper deck first base side seats offered a great view of CityCenterDC rising.

Click for a larger version, then count the cranes.

If you’re interested, here are more pictures from the game.

Future Crown BRT station.

The long debated Crown Farm development in Gaithersburg officially begins construction today. The massive project will include 3,750 residential units and 320,000 square feet of retail, and is planned around a future station on the Corridor Cities Transitway. Impressively, it is Gaithersburg’s 5th large new urbanist neighborhood, with a 6th nearby in Rockville.

Unfortunately, construction of the transitway is still years away. But even without the transitway Crown Farm (now dubbed simply “Crown”) will be far superior to typical sprawl. And the transitway will eventually get there.

In the mean time, the first phases of the project will begin. The developers are holding off on the high rises that will be right next to the transit station until the transitway is at least closer to reality, but they’re starting phase 1 now. The plan below shows the various phases.

The pink (mixed use) and orange (residential) phases are what is beginning now. The transit station area, which will ultimately be the densest, will be in the purple phase.

For more images of the pink mixed use section, see JBG’s retail web page. Hat tip to Gaithersburg Patch for breaking the news.

Crown development phasing plan.

Update 1:13 pm 10.11.2012: Reader thisisbossi says construction started months ago. Gaithersburg Patch clarifies that today was the ceremonial groundbreaking.

Buses at WMATA’s old Ballston bus yards, which has since been closed and redeveloped.

Here’s a simple fact of bus planning: You can only run as many buses during the day as you can park at night. Want to expand service but your bus parking lot is at capacity? Then sorry, too bad, can’t do it.

This simple issue drives bus operations as much as just about any other planning issue. Not only do you need big parking lots with maintenance garages attached, but they need to be geographically close to the bus routes they serve, because otherwise it costs too much to drive empty buses and drivers changing shifts back and forth from the parking depot to their routes.

In the transit supportive core of the Washington region, where bus ridership is booming and land is getting more and more expensive, the availability of bus parking is very probably the largest constraint on expansion of bus services. Multiple WMATA bus yards have been closed in recent years, claimed by high-density redevelopment near the baseball stadium and in Ballston.

So it’s a pretty big deal that last week WMATA opened a new bus storage yard, its first since 1989. The new Shepherd Parkway Metrobus Division is in Southwest DC and will house up to 250 buses, most of which will serve routes in SW and SE DC.

In the long term, improvements like this are the necessary ground work for the more interesting things that can happen later as a result, such as new bus routes, improved frequencies, and more high-capacity articulated buses. Good work, WMATA.

DDOT’s options for transit lanes or cycle tracks on M Street. Why not both?

Last week DDOT released its initial study of alternatives for M Street SE/SW. The study identifies 3 options for how the street might be redesigned, including options that include dedicated transit lanes and cycle tracks. However, none of DC’s options include both transit lanes and cycle tracks.

In a joint editorial published today at Greater Greater Washington, David Alpert and I discuss why DDOT used this strategy, and how the next round of planning can and should combine aspects of the existing 3 alternatives to form new and better multimodal options.

>> Go to GGW and read the editorial.

(Link fixed.)

Alexandria’s proposed Hoffman Towers. Image by DCS Architects. North Bethesda Market II, soon to be the tallest building in the Maryland suburbs. Image from JBG. Reston’s next tallest building. Image from RTC Partnership.

Within the confines of the District of Columbia, the question of whether to allow tall buildings is a subject of much debate. But in the burgeoning urban centers of Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland, there is no question: more tall buildings are coming.

For many decades Rosslyn has been home to the tallest skyscrapers in the Washington region. The taller of its Twin Towers is 381 feet tall. But soon that building will rank no better than 3rd tallest in Rosslyn alone, with the 384 foot tall 1812 North Moore and the 387 foot tall Central Place in construction or soon to begin.

Even with those new buildings, Rosslyn could soon lose its crown. Buildings as tall as 396 feet could soon be built around the Eisenhower Metro station in Alexandria. They would eclipse Alexandria’s current tallest building, the 338 foot tall Mark Center Hilton.

Tysons Corner is in on the action too. It’s tallest buildings right now are the 254 foot Ritz Carlton and the 253 foot 1850 Towers Crescent. But at 365 feet, a building in the proposed Scotts Run Station development will soon dominate.

In Maryland, North Bethesda Market I topped out last year at 289 feet tall, beating out Gaithersburg’s 275 foot tall Washingtonian Tower and thus becoming Montgomery County’s new tallest skyscraper. Its reign will be short-lived, as a new 300 foot tall ziggurat has already been proposed nearby.

And this week, big news is coming to Reston and Crystal City.

Yesterday Fairfax County approved a 330 foot building in Reston that will become the tallest building in the Reston Town Center cluster.

Meanwhile, the Arlington County Board is scheduled to vote this coming weekend to either approve or deny a 297 foot building in Crystal City that would tower well above all its neighbors. Tall buildings have long been constrained there by restrictions due to Reagan National Airport, but those rules recently changed, so taller buildings are now allowed.

By the standards of large central cities these aren’t particularly tall buildings. Baltimore and Virginia Beach both have buildings over 500 feet tall, and the world’s current record holder is a whopping 2,717 feet. But still, the trend in the DC area is unmistakable; buildings are getting taller, and will most likely continue to do so.

Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.

One thing that always bothers me about bike maps is how complex they are, especially when it comes to the best trails. What would a different kind of bike map look like?

Here’s an example of what bothers me: Compare Google’s highway map for the DC region with its bike map at the same scale. Notice on the highway map how the most important roads pop out, with clearly defined lines that easily show the best driving routes. Then notice how the bike map is a muddled mess of criss-crossing lines and minor trail segments.

At the local scale all those little trail segments can be important. But at the regional scale it’s useless information. At the regional scale I just want to know where the best and longest trails are, in relatively simple geographic terms. I want a highway map for bike trails.

So I threw together a very simple one, showing only the most important of the regional trails. I didn’t put a huge amount of thought into it, nor did I spend a lot of time making the map as pretty as it could be. This is just an exercise.

A more dedicated and useful mapping effort might be to overlay the “bike highways” identified here atop the official regional maps, using a thick line that clearly indicates the importance of these routes. A stronger effort might also establish some objective standards for which trails to include, since arguments could be made that I left some important ones out.

But at the very least, this should help to visualize where the major biking corridors of the region exist.

Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.