New homes at the corner of Florida and West Virginia Avenues

This summer, DCRA's Office of the Zoning Administrator issued a preliminary ruling on a plan for new houses to be built on the piece of land at the southwest corner of Florida and West Virginia Avenues in Near Northeast. Today, the plot includes a pine tree and weeds that tend to get very tall before being occasionally trimmed.

That hasn't always been the case. Three rowhouses existed here until late in the last decade. Here's an image from DCRA's website, dated August 22, 2004, after the homes had fallen into disrepair.

You can see where they were located on the block in the aerial image below.

Here's how the 3 lots on the block are currently platted.

The developer plans to combine the 2 easternmost lots. This is how the proposed buildings would be laid out on the resulting lots. I'm not a fan of the fact that these buildings won't directly address Florida Avenue. Hopefully the small, oddly-shaped front yards will not be an afterthought in this design.

It's worth noting that the current zoning for these lots calls for at least one parking space per building. DDOT has already let the developer know that they will not allow any curb cuts on the perimeter of this block, so the developer will have to go before the Board of Zoning Adjustment to get a variance. Only if they receive that variance will DCRA issue building permits.

The variance should be a no-brainer. There is plenty of room for street parking on the surrounding streets, and the lots are a short walk to many bus lines one block south where West Virginia Avenue meets 8th and K Streets.

Here are the (very preliminary) sketches representing the front, rear, and sides of the proposed buildings.

I always thought this would be an interesting candidate for a park, either for people, dogs, or both, but more housing opportunities in a city that sorely needs them is a good thing as well.

Finally, a big thank you to Mark Eckenwiler for pointing me towards these documents!

Two Rivers PCS produces rubbish for the real two rivers

Biking home from the New York Avenue metro station yesterday evening, I noticed that every fence and gate on M Street NE was adorned with a lime-green flyer in a plastic bag. Many of them were already blowing down the sidewalk and into the gutter.

I stopped to pick one up and found it was a notice from Two Rivers Public Charter School to encourage people to apply to enroll their children in the school.

While I'm all for a local school reaching out to the neighborhood, Two Rivers could have been much less ham-fisted about it. They placed these flyers on the gates or doors of EVERY house I saw in Near Northeast and Trinidad on the way home.

Half these flyers (and the plastic bags they're in) are going to end up washing into the sewer. The flyers will disintegrate, but there's a good chance the plastic bags will end up in the Anacostia River, which I'm pretty sure is one of those "Two Rivers" that the school is named after.

Couldn't the school have done a more sophisticated job of outreach? Putting a flyer encouraging people to apply for a local school doesn't do much good if the people in that house are in their 80s, retired, and definitely without school-aged children. I'd have expected better from a school with a pretty stellar reputation.

Near Northeast burrito joint opens tomorrow

A new restaurant is opening at 635 Florida Avenue NE. Chinito's Burritos will have a soft opening from 10 am to 5 pm tomorrow (Wednesday, February 8). Our friend Lori stopped by earlier this afternoon and verified the opening, and said the owner is still figuring out regular hours. Here are a couple pictures of the interior I took on the way home tonight:

Here's hoping the restaurant is successful!

For a little history, here's a snapshot of the building from DCRA:

As you can see, the sign said "Southern Fried Chicken, Fish, Subs & Pizza" was coming soon in the summer of 2004.

By the summer of 2009, when we moved to Trinidad, the restaurant was closed and the owners were looking for a new tenant:

It's also worth noting that the shell next door has been fixed up and turned back into a proper house.