Forgive BeyondDC for jerking our knee, but if DC Mayor-elect Adrian Fenty’s latest scheme to provide parking at the new Nationals ballpark is any indication, his administration is going to be an unmitigated disaster for District urbanism. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s come up before. Fenty’s not learning, and that’s not a good sign.

The latest plan, which Fenty says has the support of at least 8 council members, would construct two free-standing parking garages on the block immediately north of the ballpark. The garages would not be constructed in a manner that would allow them to be added onto with mixed-use development later, and it’s unclear whether they would be designed for even the most paltry of ground-floor retail.

S. Scott Morrison, an attorney for developer Herbert Miller, who had hoped to build garages wrapped with condos, retail and office uses and who is now suing the city for $40 million, hit the mark precisely saying “as soon as the garages are built, we won’t ever see retail or residential development, which was the whole point of locating the stadium at that site in the first place.”

With this plan Fenty is throwing the baby out with the bath water. He is proving himself either ignorant or apathetic about issues relating to urbanism, and is showing his cards as a bigger corporate pushover than Mayor Williams, who at least fought as hard as he could for a good product. If we’re going to get a stadium surrounded by parking, we should have just built the thing at RFK for far less cost or hassle.