If anyone attends the press conference fill us in on the details.  I just received this in an email:  “At 2pm today in the 3500 block of Georgia Ave., Councilmember Graham
will be holding a press conference to announce that Central Union
Mission IS NOT coming to Georgia Avenue. They are staying downtown. I
do not know the details but this is good news!”

UPDATED: Email from Council member Jim Graham: 

“Good news!!!  Central Union Mission is not moving to Georgia Avenue in Ward One.  It is moving downtown. 

We have re-defined the project to include real progress for lower Georgia Avenue.  Instead of a 170-bed men’s shelter on the 3500 block of Georgia Avenue, there will now be mixed-income housing.

This is a solid victory for grassroots activism.  I worked with the neighborhood, who came together to send a very effective message that a homeless shelter was not the kind of improvement we wanted.

I joined Mayor Fenty this afternoon for a press conference to announce that the Mission had signed an agreement to move to 65 Mass. Ave.

Congratulations to everyone involved, especially the Georgia Avenue residents, local ANC, Georgia Avenue Redevelopment Defense Squad and the Pleasant Plains Civic Association!  And a special thanks to Mayor Fenty and his fine team.”


I’m glad to see that the donkey is winning the race…I’m sorry to see he will only win a piece of chicken. And isn’t a bit odd for a chicken to be offering a piece of cooked chicken as a reward?


It is my pleasure to present Volume Two ( here is Vol. One if you missed it.) of Intangible Tales by local blogger Intangible Arts. Intangible Arts’ assignment for Vol. Two was to demystify Georgia Avenue. Enjoy the journey.

Georgia Avenue has become DC’s new test lab for balanced development. It’s an ambitious task, and I’m not sure it’s ever been done right.

Tricky! How to balance the new money vs. the long-time residents that are the backbone of the neighborhood, in one strip of development? Other neighborhoods have tried this and failed miserably (creating national retail hell-holes with no local flavor), and that is why we watch our little street with great interest.

I heard from one new resident that Georgia Avenue can be a damned scary place. Maybe that’s true, but a little familiarity can go a long way. When we bought our place, we didn’t have anyone to point out the neighborhood gems, and so we’ve tried to find ’em ourselves. As a result, the strip isn’t nearly as damned-scary as some might think.

And that’s the real point here: A brief tour of my home stretch of Georgia Avenue, southward from the Petworth Metro to the top of Howard University. Due to space, it’s a short list. Story continues after the jump. (more…)