Major Changes to City Planning Proposed

The District’s Comprehensive Plan governs the conservation and development of all neighborhoods of
the city, containing both general and some quite specific recommendations. It is based on years of input from
citizens about what they want to protect and what should be changed/developed or redeveloped. According to
law, zoning and development decisions must be consistent with the Plan (or at least not inconsistent with it).

The Mayor recently submitted to the Council a major revision the Framework chapter of the Plan,
proposing some rather drastic changes to it. The Council will hold public hearings on these proposed changes on
March 20th (details below). Here is a link to the 60-page revised Framework chapter showing both the current and
proposed revised language:

https://plandc.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/Comprehensiveplan/direcletter.pdf

Some of the proposed changes are so broad that they arguably nullify many general and specific policies in the
Plan. No mention is made of how these changes would promote the general or specific recommendations
elsewhere in the plan. There are others, too, such as deleting language from the Plan saying that areas such as
ours are primarily residential, and that any zone district could be compatible with any density of development.
Why are such changes, without any stated benefit, uprooting the basis for keeping communities intact? These
proposed changes would seemingly allow major developers and the Zoning Commission to do whatever they
wanted, but where is the benefit to this city?

What do these proposed changes mean for Stronghold?

Stronghold is entirely a neighborhood of small rowhouses, zoned R3, and of moderate residential density. It is also
a “Neighborhood Conservation Area,” as are most residential neighborhoods in the District. But look at a sample of
how the proposed changes would treat such areas as ours (proposed deletions crossed out, proposed new
language in bold):

223.5 The guiding philosophy in the Neighborhood Conservation Areas is to conserve and enhance established
neighborhoods encourage the conservation and enhancement of existing neighborhood character but not to
preclude new development, redevelopment, or alteration.

The language here weakens the ‘guiding philosophy’ of the Plan, substitutes ‘conserve and enhance’ with
‘encourage the conservation and enhancement,’ and curiously inserts ‘…but not to preclude new development,’
seemingly giving the Zoning Commission the authority to approve new development of any scale without any
constraint. What happened to the protections afforded established neighborhoods and why would the city want
to essentially exclude or preclude a fair and local evaluation of the appropriateness (or inappropriateness) of
developments, primarily by ANCs and civic associations?

For more information on this, and there is lots more, please contact Kirby at 202 213-2690 or
nulliparaacnestis@gmail.com.

The D.C. Council will be holding a hearing on these proposed changes to the Comprehensive Plan, bill B22-663
on Tuesday, March 20th at 2pm in room 500 of the Wilson building. To testify, contact Cow@dccouncil.us or call
Sydney Hawthorne at 202 724-7130. Speakers are given four minutes each and should bring 15 copies of oral
testimony. Written testimony may be submitted at the email above for those who will not be testifying in
person.