Comments for “EMMP Concept A”
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Solar laptop/cell phone charging stations?
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Where is the public art? place sculpture here on axes with 8th street and exit from metro? Something that can be walked around and under so as not to block peds.
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How about putting festoon lighting in the trees here as a starry ceiling? (not wrapping trees, but strung from poles) Would light the space and make it festive at night.
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Could be more intimate seating "rooms along NW side of this path that look across into grove. With benches that form a "u" shape or face each other or curve.
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Love the amount of green space vs. plaza here. Love Sycamore grove. Not worried about leaves falling and maintenance.
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What is on ground plane here? Stone dust compacts and pea gravel may be a mess. There are some resin bound gravel pavements that are porous - check out "Chameleon Ways" used at Steel Stacks in Bethelehem, PA for under trees.
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This place needs something to activate it. Vending carts? Bocce (as mentioned earlier). Perhaps fountain would be better in the Bosque and not interactive (but not necessarily a pool i.e. stone with water flowing over it)? See Office of James Burnett work at Brochstein Pavilion/Rice University.
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Rubberized mats are necessary by law for fall cushioning. However there is artificial turf that could serve as matting. Maybe that would work. The only alternative is maintenance intensive rubber mulch.
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Benches are needed in parks. More is better to give ALL people opportunities to use them, even if some are occupied by "vagrants".
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Bioswale could be possible but would need maintenance. If fencing is used, it should be set back from the curb with plantings/lawn in front to reduce visual impact of fence.
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Raised planter beds are not appropriate here. Do not like to see walls in lieu of greenspace. A raised green space won't be as visible, esp. by people in cars.
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During the live presentation, it was asserted that people have trouble crossing this intersection. I've been here for 15 years and have never seen anyone have a problem with it.
A small island might be appropriate, but it would have to be quite small to allow traffic moving northeast on S. Carolina to have separate "straight:
(D St.) and left-turn lanes. But it isn't really needed. -
This note about rats applies to both concepts. The presentation says several things about where rats won't burrow that are patently contradicted by the rats currently in the plaza and rats in the neighborhood. It says they don't like low ground-cover: in fact they like it quite a bit, and will dig holes in low ground-cover, grass, or mulch. I imagine they might prefer evergreen shrubs, but they will live with deciduous sbrubs or *no* shrubs. Asserting that you can choose plantings that will dissuade rats from living here is deceptive and misleading.
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General comment for both Concepts A and B: There are a lot of creative ideas for the play spaces, but they all require more maintenance than a simple playground. Miniature buildings will look sad and derelict within a few years if they are not kept up. Play houses may become dirty and unappealing without good cleaning and maintenance. Even museums often have their interactive mechanical exhibits sitting broken; the mechanical devices will require regular maintenance to avoid them become static pieces of scrap. Any plan for recreation or play facilities needs to come with a robust financial plan for maintenance, and the facilities need to be scaled in complexity and ambition to what can be reliably financed and maintained. Simpler equipment that works for years will be preferable to fancy ideas that fall into disuse within a few years due to tight budgets.
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If I understood the presentation correctly, for the bioswales to work, the Pennsylvania Ave. roadbed would need to be regraded to make rain runoff flow in toward the bioswales. But your presentation also said that DDOT plans an avenue study later, and said that these design proposals should not include changes to the PA Ave. roadbed. So it's unlikely that the bioswale idea could be implemented.
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In order to protect children splashing in the fountain from traffic in this busy intersection, could you install bollards?
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The taxi-stand should be 24-hour, not just for limited hours as it is now.
A possibly more efficient way of "pooling" space would be to have 3 or 4 spaces in a combined taxi and car-share area. Might make the bottom space dedicated to car-share, the top space dedicated to taxi, and one or two middle spaces that are available to either.
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A *small* water feature as a beauty element for shoppers and commuters might be nice here, but this entire plaza area is NOT a neighborhood recreation park and never will be. There are parks all over the neighborhood with grass, playgrounds, etc. This is first and foremost a transit hub and a pedestrian connection between Barracks Row and Eastern Market. And it's not really that big. A "splash" feature here would be more "in the way" of what people need to do than the splash area down at Yards Park, for instance, which is a place people go to relax, while this is a thoroughfare.
My preference, I think, would be for a modest fountain someplace in the "bosque" area.
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My recollection of most of the "bosque" concepts was that they all created impediments to its use. Some had long continuous stretches of bench seating, which created limited access points. It should be open and inviting. Another concept had the area raised, which makes it less accessible or inaccessible to people in wheelchairs and scooters (or who use a walker), and inconvenient even for people with strollers.
If you want to plant some new trees, great, but leave the sides open and leave the surface and ground-level!
Also, buch of the seating that will be provided should be *inside* the bosque, where it is shaded. If you walk around any of our neighborhood parks you'll see that the benches in the shade are all occupied, while benches in the sun are usually empty. *Some* seating at the outside edge, facing the "promenade" area, would be OK, but in general people are not going to sit out in the sun facing an open, hot, cement or brick plaza.
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Last point on the median: The view of the Capitol as one crosses Pennsylvania Ave. is one of the great things about this neighborhood and location -- the sense of how close one is to the seat of government. Visitors often stop and stare, "Wow, you're that close!" So any median treatment should try to preserve *at least* as good a view of the Capitol from the crosswalks and median sidewalk as we have now.
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A bioswale in this block would probably inundate all the restaurant outdoor seating on the south side with mosquitoes all summer long. Not only an annoyance to people providing a major economic boost to the neighborhood, but a health hazard as well. Seriously, what's wrong with just trees?
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I would oppose any treatment of the median here that prevents crossing in the middle of the block. The block from 6th to 7th is almost twice as long as the block from 7th to 8th. Unless a mid-block crossing is provided here, let people exercise their own judgment about when it is safe to cross.
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Concur with the comment about wider sidewalk on this side of 7th St -- on weekends it can be crowded.
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If there is to be a water feature, I think it should be in the northeast parcel, not here by the busy Metro Station.
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If either the northwest or southeast short extensions of D St are to be removed, I recommend adding an indented right-turn only space for cars that wish to turn on to Pa Ave. A good examplon Capitol Hill is at the corner of Mass Ave & 2nd St NE where a right turn only queuing lane was added about 15 years ago. it works great.