This was an article written for a Reporting class assignment. We were assigned to attend a community meeting and cover it.
By NATALIE KIRKPATRICK
WASHINGTON, DC -- All seven candidates for at-large member of the City Council found themselves crowded around a table at the Cleveland Park Public Library on Saturday facing a crowd of concerned residents and fielding questions regarding the commercial future of Connecticut Avenue.
The pre-election candidate’s forum, hosted by the Cleveland Park Citizens Association and the Woodley Park Community Association, allowed for discussion of an issue called “commercial overlay” which restricts retail use on the Connecticut Avenue commercial district between Macomb and Porter Streets.
Sally MacDonald, a resident and current secretary of the Federation of Citizens Association, said that the issue was brought to light a few years ago the definition of a restaurant was changed to somewhere that serves food.
“But food can be peanuts,” MacDonald said. “It would be easier not to have a chef, not to buy food, not to have waiters, and not to have clean tables. If you can just put a bowl of peanuts on the bar… but have a restaurant license, an easier one to get, with just peanuts on the bar and maybe a pole dancer, that would be fine.”
MacDonald said that once all of the communities were alerted “they reacted like mad to stop it.”
“No two neighborhoods are alike and we are a city of neighborhoods,” said George Idelson, president of the Woodley Park Community Association, praising the “vibrant restaurant community” the population shares. “The idea of the overlay is that it will give us a healthy balance, a healthy fix of retail.”
“You look up and down and see all the restaurants and maybe we have too many restaurants, that’s another discussion, but at least they’re serving food on tablecloths, and they’re not restaurants with a bowl of peanuts on the bar and a pole dancer,” MacDonald said.
Dee Hunter, an independent candidate for at-large member of the city Council and AU Alumni said that as a representative in ward one, he will have the opportunity to vote on this issue.
“We will uphold the elimination of our overlay,” Hunter said. “I have lived in that neighborhood for 25 years. I’ve seen the impact this has on development in the community.”
According to Idelson, the zoning code allows up to 25 % of space between Macomb and Porter streets to be devoted to restaurants and bars. The struggle between maintaining a neighborhood identity with mom and pop stores and allow for commercial flow remains an issue.
Nancy MacWood, a candidate for the Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in ward three said, “One of the reasons that neighborhoods like overlays is because it allows them to impose their interests and needs in the underlying zoning without imposing any changes on some other neighborhoods.”
The opinions on the overlay lie at the extremes.
“Absolutely I would support overlays,” Candidate Michael Brown, a third generation Washingtonian running as an independent said. “It gives the community a chance to participate in decisions that are made.”
MacDonald said that there are four areas struggling with overlay; Connecticut Avenue West of Cleveland park, Connecticut Avenue East of Cleveland Park, Connecticut Avenue in Woodley Park and on 8th Street on Capitol Hill.
Idelson said, “We do want an honest, transparent, forcible and enforced overlay and while the concept is very simple the execution isn’t always very simple.”
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