Downtown Vision and Action Plan

 

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz in Greene Square,
October 2022

The Cedar Rapids City Council approved the 2023 Downtown Vision and Action Plan at their December 5 meeting. The plan contains a number of goals and initiatives intended to build on the success Downtown Cedar Rapids has had since 2008. 

The plan is a joint project of the city, the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance (including the Downtown District), Linn County, and the 2001 Development Group. It has three broad goals (p. 10):

1. Embrace the Cedar River. [Sure! Can't hurt.]
2. Ensure Downtown is activated and vibrant. [This seems to be saying the obvious in a downtown plan, but the details show the authors are serious about achieving a 24-hour downtown.]
3. Improve connectivity within Downtown and to adjacent districts and neighborhoods. [Improved connectivity is critical to whether Downtown continues its positive direction.  Connections broaden opportunities for downtown residents to access things they need and increase the nearby supply of workers and shoppers for Downtown businesses. The better the connections, not only does success expand but so does the area of the city where it is possible not to rely on motor vehicles for everything.]

The Downtown Vision Plan can be read in a number of ways. There's a lot to it, for starters, including strategies for each goal, and multiple initiatives (totaling about 70) and timetables for implementing the strategies. And of course, the proof in the pudding is in the eating, which will happen gradually over the next several years.

Let's imagine two readers, one who comes in with the idea that this vision can be forward-looking, building on what's gone well so far and taking into account future challenges. We'll call this reader Jane Bennet. Then there's Elizabeth Bennet, who expects nothing more from the plan than to reaffirm the city's core as a place for people with money to drive to. (This assumes that both Jane and Elizabeth were able to find the plan online. Surprisingly neither the city nor the Metro Economic Alliance websites are playing it up. I had to follow a lot of crumbs to find it on the city website--it's in the packet for the 12/5 City Council meeting, beginning on p. 281--and I couldn't find it at all on the Metro Economic Alliance site. How big a deal really is this?)

Jane Bennet finds the gold...

Jane is pleased that the vision includes housing initiatives. A key takeaway is "Moving forward, Downtown should continue to evolve into a mixed-use neighborhood" (p. 8 of the plan). A mixed-use downtown is resilient in the face of unknown future market trends and other disruptions, and in the short run provides a variety of activity at all times of the day. A place where significant numbers of people live operates and feels different from a place that specializes in shopping and entertainment, especially in the 18-20 hours a day when they are unlikely to be demanded. 

Pullman Lofts: Apartments in what once was an office building

The market assessment that informed the vision plan notes: 

New multi-family residential construction could nearly double the population of Downtown and the Primary Market Area over the next several years, as residential development projects under construction or planned could yield over 800 new residential units within the next several years.... Housing will continue to be a strong market for Downtown moving forward. In line with national trends, there will likely be additional demand for more downtown housing options at more price points. (7)

More residents would contribute to the Goal #2 strategies of enlivening the storefront economy and improving perceptions of safety (80-84), though the plan doesn't claim these benefits. The specific housing initiatives don't come until strategy #6, but include attracting a diversity of housing types, streamlining office-to-housing building conversions, and looking for housing options within an envisioned manufacturer/maker hub. In particular, city incentives for office building conversions in a focused area are credited with fueling a resurgence in Cleveland's downtown ("America's Best Example" 2023).

Downtown trolley, Little Rock AR

Goal #2 is Jane's favorite, but there is much in Goal #3 that she commends (85-87): the prospect of a circular trolley, an accessibility audit, attention to trails, attention to the dead zones ("underways") under the interstate, and promoting bicycling. We aleady are a couple segments away from having a trails system that would be really functional for cycle commuting from all over the metro. 

Jane is attentive to diversity and inclusion, and notes elements of the "rising tide lifts all boats" variety that could help those on the lower end of the economic ladder: job creation and retention, playground equipment, bicycle trail connections, housing resources and services, and even the riverside parks and special programming if they're free.

...but Elizabeth Bennet is not sold

Elizabeth, like all good urbanists, is all about connections, but she's cautious about granting approval before she sees who we're fixing to connect to. She notes that you would never realize, from the vision plan, that there are residential neighborhoods within half a mile of Downtown--Wellington Heights, Oak Hill Jackson, the Taylor area, and Mound View are not mentioned. The MedQuarter, New Bohemia, Czech Village, and Kingston will be invited to collaborate on programming, promotions and signage--surely useful, but not life-changing.

Elizabeth allows that Jane's identified some good ideas under Goal #2, but would like to see even more focus on housing. Only two of 36 initiatives in this section relate to housing supply, and it isn't blessed by being raised to the level of a strategy. Two more initiatives relate to homelessness; these are part of the "safe and welcoming" strategy. "Safe and welcoming" for whom?

[Homelessness is a surging problem in cities everywhere, or maybe it would be better said to be multiple surging problems (see Corinth 2023, DeParle 2023). The unhoused population is much more than the people you see hanging out in Greene Square. Initiative 2.2.2 proposes effectively ending homelessness with establishment of a Local Oversight Board and staff person to monitor performance on a community-wide basis, ensuring efficient and effective use of resources and continued collaboration with social service providers... This can be read by Jane as serving the unhoused who live among us, after the model of Housing First in Houston (McLean 2022, Kristof and Weinberger 2023), or read by Elizabeth as serving visitors by reducing the appearance of disorder their visible presence creates. We need to do both! And I hope we will. Unfortunately the city's credibility on this issue is not high after last winter's destruction of a homeless encampment south of New Bohemia.]

There's a lot more about parking than housing. Neither Elizabeth nor I are so naive to say that parking is not very important, even critical to the near-term. But there are downsides to prioritizing parking that need to be acknowledged and addressed. It can't be your whole plan, but here it is. Saturday nights in our resurgent Downtown now feature multiple big events along with restaurants and small venues, which leads to good problems, but to resolve these situations the best we seem able to do is better parking.

The bus system provides extensive coverage of the city at the expense of service

Transit isn't even part of the solution. It barely gets mentioned in the vision plan. The downtown circulator (3.1.1.) is a very very good idea, if we can figure out optimal frequency and coverage. We will also try to persuade downtown workers to use transit (3.1.3). This will fail, says Elizabeth, who's seen other such initiatives fail since at least the 1990s. Why will it fail? Because transit in Cedar Rapids is inconvenient and unreliable. It may be the best we can do with this budget and this residential pattern, but very few people will ever choose transit unless the system is redesigned. That should have been part of this vision.

What in the vision plan addresses diversity and inclusion? Poor people and marginalized groups surely can benefit from some of the initiatives,but because of their resources and status they are often not as well positioned to take advantage of them. We could have used some more specific diversity initiatives to include the poor in the vision of Downtown's future. But the dominant relationships are with consumers, and that favors those with market power. 

Coffeehouses like the Early Bird (now Craft'd) are

 part of the social city

In August 2020, as I sat with my mask on amidst the destruction wrought by our derecho, waiting for someone with practical skills to haul way the debris and reconnect the electricity, I compared four versions of the city's future: the social city, the economic city, the healing city, and the creative city. While all four dimensions are important, I expressed then a preference for the primacy of the social city. Communities properly-constructed are inclusive, and thus extend opportunities outward, and the diligent and generous Jane Bennet can find that spirit in this Downtown vision plan. 

But mostly what's here is the economic city. When Elizabeth describes the vision as "a lot like Downtown today, but with more parking and fewer homeless people," it's hard to disagree. The Downtown vision is rooted in the assumption that the important people will always be the ones who are driving here to spend or make money, and that's a problem.

SEE ALSO

"10th Anniversary Post: Downtown," Holy Mountain, 18 November 2023

Arian Horbovetz, "The Big Urban Mistake: Building for Tourism vs. Livability," Strong Towns, 5 December 2017

Marissa Payne, "Cedar Rapids Has a Vision for Downtown," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 5 December 2023, 1A, 8A

Quint Studer, "Want to Make Housing More Affordable? Start by Building Neighborhoods Not Just Buildings," Strong Towns, 12 June 2020 

HT John Herbert for the Studer article!

10th anniversary post: So much for the war on Christmas

City Christmas tree in Greene Square

Ten years ago this month, Holy Mountain, still in its rookie year, examined gentrification, news coverage of climate change, the book Arcadia by Lauren Groff, and the song "Same Love" by Macklemore and Lewis. Amidst all this there was time to question the "war on Christmas" being promoted by cultural conservatives.

What a time warp! When was the last time you thought about this? Maybe in 2016, when Donald Trump said he would make it okay to say "Merry Christmas" again? Now, as he campaigns to return to the White House, as well as to stay one step ahead of the law, he is claiming that as one of his administration's accomplishments. 

If we have Donald Trump to thank for putting all this silliness to rest, then that's one in the credit column for him. More probably, the moral panic over the war on Christmas reached its expiry date, as moral panics will. The "war on Christmas" joined death panels, the Honduran "caravan," the video game Grand Theft Auto, gangsta rap, thugs on PCP, and rock 'n' roll on the scrap heap of moral panic history.

Ten years ago, I found several books for sale describing the liberal menace to this beloved holiday. Today, the war on Christmas books are mostly spoofs (McCown 2021) and romance novels (Campbell 2023).

If only it were that simple! Like the Hydra, when one moral panic dies, two rise to take its place. Today we are treated to regular freakouts about trans girls playing sports, groomer-librarians in schools, refugees bearing fentanyl, vaccine-pushing bureaucrats from the Deep State, and anything or anyone that can be connected to the word "woke."

The point of all these is the same: if the peddlers of this dreck can make us afraid of each other, we won't have the energy to work for a better, more inclusive world. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," wrote Robert Frost, but something there is that does love a wall. Whatever it is, it is not our friend, it is why we cannot have nice things, and we need to stop falling for this baloney.

SEE ALSO: Philip Bump, "Welcome to War on Christmas Season!" Washington Post, 14 November 2023, 

Black Friday Parking 2023: Mount Vernon Road

2317: One of many smokeshops on the road, used to be a bookstore

I've gone a bit off-script for this year's celebration of #BlackFridayParking. Strong Towns has promoted this event since the mid-10s as a way of highlighting the high costs to cities of zoning regulations that mandate large commercial parking lots (Abramson 2023). Past Black Fridays have taken me to the parking lots of big-box stores on our city's outer edge, and to the vast parking lots all too close to our city center.

Amidst all the giddiness and photography, I've come to the conclusion that, in Cedar Rapids anyway, the problem is not the zoning code. Our giant Wal-Marts and Targets have parking lots even bigger than the code requires, because land is cheap here, customers expect it, and the city is designed in such a way that 90+ of people are going to drive to shop anyway. 

In 2017 I walked 16th Avenue SW, a mid-century commercial corridor that is now a model for discarded sprawl. 

Still empty in '23: former K-Mart parking lot, 16th Av SW, November 2017

The problem on 16th is not that even large Black Friday crowds couldn't fill the gigantic parking lots, but that there are no crowds at all. (That year I was accompanied by "the other Dr. Nesmith." I don't know whether the excitement was too much for her, but she hasn't been tempted by #BlackFridayParking since.)

This year I followed a similar impulse to Mt. Vernon Road SE. This historic corridor is getting some love from the city in the form on an action plan. Alas, its internal contradictions mean some of its goals are going to have to give way, probably to faster vehicle traffic.

The Mount Vernon Road action plan covers 10th to 44th Streets.

4035: At the east end of the plan area, acres of parking at the Mt. Vernon Road Hy-Vee

 The executive summary describes the challenge on page 19:

The Mt. Vernon Road corridor includes a wide variety of land uses including a neighborhood hardware store, a large grocery store, several gas/convenience stores, banks and credit unions, professional offices, restaurants, bars, and various specialty, variety, drug, auto parts, auto repair, and discount goods stores. The corridor also includes schools, churches, a residential care center, a fire station, and a cemetery.

2405: Used to be a pharmacy

However, the dominate [sic] land use is single family residential with just a few multi-family residential properties sprinkled throughout the corridor. There are several quick-serve and fast food restaurants but few sit-down style restaurants. There are vacant properties along the corridor and some occupied commercial sites that are dated and/or in need of renovation and maintenance. There are also several retail uses that are typically not considered neighborhood friendly including tobacco shops and liquor stores.

Because that's the kind of commerce wide fast streets get!

2663: Used to be a Greek restaurant

2700: Used to be an Italian restaurant

Unsurprisingly, public input sessions on the action plan revealed desires for small retail shops, redeveloping vacant lots, fewer "less neighborhood friendly uses," more separation between residential and commercial areas, turn lanes, and slower truck traffic. Bike lanes were nixed, as bicycling on this road is unsafe and slows car traffic (p. 19).

Word clouds generated by Mt. Vernon Road corridor public meetings

902 28th St: Cute shop for a walkable area

3605: Another vacant property, whose potential changes on a walkable street

The public's desires are reflected in the plan's goals (p 9): (1) promote new retail development and redevelopment along the corridor; (2) encourage neighborhood scale and neighborhood friendly uses; (3) improve traffic circulation and safety; (4) increase walkability and safety for pedestrians and cyclists. I expect the immediate pressure to improve traffic circulation to render the rest of this admirable list unfeasible. I hope I can explain why.

1841: Neighborhood retail lost to road widening

1901: Neighborhood retail lost to road widening

Neighborhood retail (goals 1 and 2) relies on walkability (goal #4), but that would require Mt. Vernon Road to become smaller and slower (goal #3b but not #3a). The stickler, as the plan's authors admit (p. 11), is that Mount Vernon Road has been developed into an arterial, the collector road for the entire southeast side. The authors claim it has too much traffic already--23000 according to the plan text, 18000 according to the state's average daily traffic counts--for its four lanes, and there are too many driveways for comfort as well. 

3303: Even small parking lots are between the (franchise) shops and the sidewalk

Since it is pretty much the only through street in that part of town, there's no reasonable alternative for truck traffic. 

3025: More franchises by parking lots

So the road will be reconfigured to restrict left turns across traffic at 15th and 19th Streets; it will end in a roundabout at 10th Street; parking lot access will where possible be redirected to side streets; and cyclists will be directed to alternative routes on parallel streets. 

Approaching downtown, new left-turn lane onto 15th Street,
creating more distance between core neighborhoods on either side

Cars and trucks will move more swiftly, past locations that could have supported neighborhood friendly uses. (See Herriges 2019 on how arterials work, and don't work.)

1420: Gargantuan c-store, nominally in Wellington Heights

This is the point where I should be telling you what the city should be doing to fix this. I confess I'm at a loss. What are we trying to build here? It's not a downtown, where we go for density, mix the uses, slow the cars, and ignore the parking-obsessed. It's not the suburbs, either, nor is it quite a highway. It's become an awkward mix of all three, so that anything you do to fix an immediate issue with Mt. Vernon Road--narrow it, widen it, add pedestrian infrastructure--is going to make something else worse. 

3401: Vernon Village used to have a small grocery and a French restaurant,
which then became a bakery/cafe. Now it might be a ghost kitchen?

(I would like to see bus service along the entirety of Mt. Vernon Road, just shooting straight from downtown to maybe Bertram Road and back. Currently, the circuitous Route 2 travels Mt. Vernon Road eastbound from 19th to 42nd, but not westbound. I don't know that it will fix anything detailed above, help the emergence of cute shops, cut down on vehicle speeds, or make walking safer, but it's curious that this has never been done.)

2714: Another auto parts store, next to another vacant building 

So, this year my #BlackFridayParking thoughts have wandered far from the subject of parking. But as we see here, excess parking is more than some unproductive government regulation. It is a product of the problematic way we build towns, and how we get around, just as it makes those problems worse. The result is stroads like this one. The parking lots are just the most obvious symptom, or maybe #2 behind the uninspiring commerce.

2000: Used to be an arts center, before that an elementary school

The public comments that informed the Mt. Vernon Road Action plan are not wrong, just naive. It's natural for us to want more of the things we enjoy, with fewer consequences. Why can't we have smoother traffic flow and plenteous parking, at cute shops, all at a neighborhood scale? Because, beloved readers, in this vale of tears, cars compete with everything else for space, and the easier we make it for cars to move the less likely they are to stop, to shop or for any other reason. 

2711: Big pharmacy with bigger parking lot

Same building, different side

The more room we make for cars in the form of parking lots, the less room there is for anything at a human/neighborhood scale. Anyone who's paid attention as Mt. Vernon Road has gotten wider and faster knows this. That's not politics, it's physics.

26th St: One of several cute dead-end streets off Mt. Vernon Road
Access becomes more difficult as the road gets faster

18th St: From here to downtown, access is limited by a barrier

Strong Towns video, "Are Parking Lots Ruining Your City" (15:40):

SEE ALSO: "Black Friday Parking 2022," 25 November 2022 

Mark Stoffer Hunter, "History Happenings: Changes Coming to Mount Vernon Road and 19th Street SE," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 24 November 2018

Ben Kaplan, "Mount Vernon Road is Dangerous by Design," Corridor Urbanism, 11 June 2021

Rahul Rejeev, "Children, Left Behind by Suburbia, Need Better Community Design," Public Square: A CNU Journal, 13 November 2023

Historical Aerials

3404: One of many vacant stores on Mt. Vernon Road

10th anniversary post: Downtown

Peppercorn at the Bank, 101 3rd Av SW

Ten years ago this month, the Holy Mountain blog was wringing its bloggy hands about the rebuilding of downtown Cedar Rapids. The opening of an upscale restaurant, Popoli, across the river in the 100-year-old former People's Savings Bank building, had me wondering if downtown was reinventing itself as a playground for the rich.

Today, that space is occupied by Peppercorn Food Company, which opens it for events like wedding receptions and corporate lunches. Even their website is elegant! But downtown as a whole has become a delightful mix of upscale and regular, not to mention commercial and office/service and residential--and coffee and alcohol! The public library and art museum face each other across Greene Square, and there are a number of performing arts venues within walking distance of those residences. Converting one-way streets back to two-way has improved, well, just about everything.

In 2013 I included both sides of the river in my definition of downtown. Today the west side has rebranded as Kingston Village, so that "downtown" to most Cedar Rapidians means the area between the river and maybe 6th Street, from A Avenue to 6th Avenue. (That would be a good question to crowd-source! I bet I'd get some disagreement about that.) I think both sides of the river are important components of the city center, however. Both sides have particular handicaps, but I think the west side's are more easily overcome, and I'm bullish on its long-term development. 

This week I engaged in a rather haphazard web search for housing in the city center, and even though some $450,000 condos have gotten a lot of attention, I found plenty that was not high-end.

Apartments at the Ashton Flats, 217 7th Av SW, run $913-1089 a month
(from their website)

The Village Lofts on 3rd Avenue SW start rentals at $1000 a month; the older Roosevelt Hotel starts at $675. There are more reasonably-priced condos as well: 200 3rd Avenue SW and 905 3rd Street SE run in the upper $100,000s, and condos are available in the Ground Transportation Center building for less. What downtown doesn't have, not surprisingly, is many single-family homes, but there are houses for sale on both sides of the river maybe 1.5 miles away. 

Among a shifting array of downtown restaurants, El Dorado, an unpretentious Mexican bar and grill with magnificent food, has become a favorite with my family. Whatever worries we had ten years ago about the elitism of downtown have not come to pass.

Downtown remains a work in progress. I keep expecting the increased residential population to produce some facilities catering to everyday needs, like grocery stores, pharmacies, and hardware stores. That has not yet happened. There's a big Hy-Vee on Wilson Avenue 1.9 miles away, 7 minutes away by car even at rush hour--the Czech Village Sav-A-Lot and the 1st Avenue are even closer--and that may be all anyone feels they need.

A frequent complaint about downtown is the lack of parking. This is because most of Cedar Rapids remains car-dependent, most people downtown at the moment have driven there from somewhere else, and because the acres of surface parking nearby are not accessible (because privately-owned) or not considered nearby enough to suit drivers. There's a tradeoff between parking and quality-of-life that is not readily recognized. But the struggle is real. A few weeks ago we attended a play downtown on a night there was also a symphony concert. I wish we could have taken a bus instead of driving and parking, but alas, on Saturday night there is no bus.

The future of downtown depends on its connections to nearby neighborhoods. The transect is a concept that refers to development that becomes gradually less intense as it gets farther from the city center. Unfortunately, Cedar Rapids' downtown area is separated from neighborhoods on all sides, so the intensity dramatically collapses. This is particularly true on the east side, where the vast MedQuarter neighborhood lies between downtown and Wellington Heights, and is nearly empty except for weekday working hours. The west side must contend with the interstate and the proposed casino development. 

Together, the MedQuarter, I-380, and the casino-to-be surround downtown in such a way to prevent much walkability. But the west side barriers (highway, casino) seem to me more permeable, and I have hopes that they can be overcome.

NOTE: The City Council will consider a new downtown plan at its December 5 meeting. 

SEE ALSO: 

"The Future of Downtown Cedar Rapids," 24 June 2022

"News from Downtowns," 23 June 2017

Halloween in the neighborhood

Halloween 2020: No masks in 2023, but too cold for just a sweatshirt

It's a very cold day for Halloween, likely to hold traffic down. We'll have no snow such as our Minnesota and Chicago correspondents report, but it's expected to be 35 at 6 this evening, with the wind making it feel even colder. Ten years ago I reported 145 visitors, but last year on a pleasant evening we had a mere 46, and this year we are less optimistic. Between the weather, the relatively low "door density" in my streetcar suburban neighborhood, and declining participation on my side of the street, there's not much reason to draw a crowd.

Halloween at its best is the great neighborhood holiday. Christmas gets more decoration, Fourth of July makes more noise, but Trick-or-Treating gets children, and often their parents, out to meet their neighbors. (Or someone's neighbors... we seem to get a fair amount of drive-to Trick-or-Treating every year.) Like Addison del Maestro, we have neighbors, around the corner on Crescent Street, who go way over-the-top with their decoration, including everyone who passes by in their celebration. "I can imagine being a kid," he writes, "and waiting with excitement to see what the next holiday is going to look like. It makes me feel like a kid."

Emma Durand-Wood writes on Strong Towns that maintaining Halloween traditions through the pandemic helped her husband realize it "wasn't really about the candy":

Now he could see that opening one’s doors to any and all strangers who showed up was really the ultimate act of neighborliness and hospitality. What’s the first thing you do when someone comes to your home? You welcome them warmly and offer them something to eat or drink. Around the world, hospitality looks like some variation of that. So, Halloween is like a neighborhood-wide expression of low-stakes, high-yield hospitality.

Halloween done right requires walkable neighborhoods. You can't do Halloween on a dark lonely street, or on a stroad, or in a large lot subdivision, or in a high-rise. Ironically, however, the biggest challenge to traditional Trick-or-Treating is from "trunk-or-treat" gatherings put on by shopping plazas, churches, and other organizations. I would say you can't do Halloween walking from space to space in a parking lot, but apparently you can. It's just a poor substitute for calling on your neighbors.

So where does that leave children and their families who live in places that are genuinely unsafe to Trick-or-Treat? It leaves them in places that are unsatisfactory, not just on October 31, but every day of the year. And maybe this year trunk-or-treat is the best we can do?

But at the same time, for their sake, and for the sake of strong community bonds that we're failing in so many places to develop, we should all put our shoulders to the job of fixing what makes their places unsafe: providing escorts and patrols; slowing the cars, if not closing streets altogether; building and maintaining sidewalks; improving lighting; building housing that has front porches and windows for "eyes on the street."

Halloween done right is a celebration of neighbors and neighborliness, and faith in humanity. It's a tacit recognition of design that facilitates mixing with others. It's a rejection of moral panics about poisoned candy or the people who want to frighten you with dangers all around us.

P.S.--We were pessimistic about the turnout, as it happened! We had 62 before we ran out and turned off the light, so we could have had more. It was our biggest crowd since 2018 (97).

SEE ALSO:

Ryan Allen, "Trick-or-Treat is Worth Saving," Strong Towns, 30 October 2023

Jessica Grose, "Stop Micromanaging Halloween--Let Your Kids Be Free," New York Times, 25 October 2023

Brent Toderian, "Why the 'Trick-or-Treat Test' Still Matters," CityLab, 30 October 2023

10th anniversary post: Still sillypants

In contrast to 2013, Washington's Stanton Park remains open

DISCLAIMER: Also in contrast to 2013, I now have a son who works for a federal contractor. So this has become personal!

Ten years ago, I wrote two posts about the U.S. government shutdown, one about the difficulty of knowing when essential conversations about our common life are open and fair to all, and the other a pictorial reflection about being in Washington during the early days of the shutdown. "Some people," said a mother to her daughter explaining why there was a wee fence around Stanton Park, "are being sillypants."

That little girl must be 12 or 13 now, and presumably maturing in an age-appropriate way. That is less clear for congressional Republicans. This week I returned to Washington during another game of congressional chicken over federal budgeting. (I'm not ambulance chasing--really! Both years I was representing Coe College at the October meeting of Capitol Hill Internship Program advisers.) As it happened, the threat of a shutdown seems to have been averted Saturday, or at least postponed for 45 days, and anyhow my trip this year would have occurred too early for another round of shutdown pictures.

Still, as close as we got to a shutdown, with the demolition derby that our national politics has become, occupied the thoughts of all of us who take government people. To paraphrase Lincoln, ours is a government of people, by people, for people--so it will never get things exactly right, it will always leave some if not everyone unsatisfied, and yet it matters a lot to the quality of our lives together. Government is not meant to be a plaything, or a weapon.

After our meeting, I went up to U Street NW clutching the invaluable Frommer's 24 Great Walks in Washington, D.C. [Wiley, 2009... this is walk #15]. Jazz great Duke Ellington (1899-1974 grew up here, and for decades it was a center of black culture, even after suffering much from the 1968 riots.

"Community Rhythms" mural by Alfred J. Smith, U Street station

13th St NW: Young Duke Ellington lived here

13th and T: Adult Duke Ellington stayed here

 

11th and U: This club hosted the greats of 50s/60s jazz

There are other landmarks here as well, including a memorial to African-Americans who served in the Civil War that lists every known participant. There also was (on this day, anyway) a young man in a Civil War uniform, expounding considerably about the war and the memorial.

10th and U: African-American Civil War Memorial

Names on the memorial

11th and U: Oldest black-owned bank in DC

12th and S: Wax Abraham Lincoln with wicks for lighting

U Street has gentrified a lot in recent years.

Some of the multitude of new construction

While I'm normally rather sanguine about gentrification, which does bring wealth and racial integration to places, it's jarring to see it to such a degree in a neighborhood so closely identified with black history. At least that history is being preserved.

U Street, too, is Washington--a place that embodies America's ongoing efforts to build and rebuild the good life. Washington is more than the cartoonish caricature presented by so many politicians, like former U.S. Representative Rod Blum, who served Iowa for two terns in Congress, and who is probably best remembered for wanting to inflict a recession on Washington. 

Once you get away from the Capitol and into the neighborhoods, though, you find Washington is full of people, a lot of whom work for or with the federal government, and who are trying, as we all are, to do their jobs.

10th and U: This too is Washington

Art for art's sake

 

237 Collective on opening night

Welcome to the neighborhood! The 237 Collective has opened at 111 13th Street SE, near the Coe College campus at the edge of the Wellington Heights neighborhood. Owners Paxton Williams and Abby Long-Williams anticipate the space being used for art exhibits, sales of artwork and handmade clothing, and a "third place" style hangout.

Paxton Williams, whose artistic name is EBISU, kicked things off September 15 with a show called "Momentum."

 

Artist's statement

EBISU combined graffiti-style drawing with found objects. Where on earth was this one found?!

 The crowd on opening night was young and hip, at least when compared to your humble blogger.

Here's what the gallery looks like in daylight, in this more ordinary week. 

View from the front door

Additional artists' works are now displayed. There are thirteen artists in the collective, with two more immediate prospects.

The small (1800 square feet) building dates from 1920, and has been many things over the years, including vacant. It's been vacant a lot.

February 2022

It shares the lot with Cafe Allez, which is anticipated to open early in 2024 in the building occupied 2000-2020 by Brewed Awakenings Coffeehouse. Abby Long-Williams told Little Village that she hoped to spread the young entrepreneurial spirit from trendy neighborhoods like New Bo and Czech Village throughout the city.

Ideally they will be able to draw energy from the cafe, Coe College, and nearby churches and medical facilities. In any case, it's good to have such a creative and aesthetically pleasing venture nearby!

The gallery is open 11-5 Thursday, 11-6 Friday and Saturday, and 11-5 Sunday, with possibly additional hours in time. They plan a Parking Lot Market in October.

Mural on the alley side

SEE ALSO: Malcolm MacDougall, "237 Collective's New Hub for Local Fashion, Vendors and 'Underrepresented Artists' Opens in Cedar Rapids Friday," Little Village, 14 September 2023

Retro restroom, in the basement