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Articles
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| Stadium neighbors confront its impact, expect improvements |
VOICE writes, "BY JULIE WESTFALL and BEN WEINSTEIN
About a half hour before President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch in the Nationals’ bright new baseball stadium, the lights inside the weathered row houses on Carrollsburg Place SW — barely a block from the ballpark — went out.
“Oh, no,” said Nancy Harvin, a seven-year Carrollsburg Place resident. “We can’t have this.”
While many of her neighbors remain adamantly opposed to the stadium, she called herself a skeptic with a wait-and-see attitude.
“We’ll see. It’s a work in progress,” she said. “We’re still in a state of flux about it.”
And when it was her turn to host the weekly Sunday family dinner, Harvin’s neighbors let her borrow two special parking passes that residents who live around the stadium receive, in order to accommodate two family cars.
“There’s 80 games, so I had to make a decision about whether we could keep hosting it here,” she said."
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One of Harvin’s neighbors, Denise Grosshans, has no mixed feelings at all — she and her husband, Todd, couldn’t be happier about living in the shadow of the stadium. They bought their house on Carrollsburg a week before the controversial baseball deal was finalized, gambling that the stadium would be a few skips from their home.
“I just think it’s so great for the neighborhood,” said Grosshans, pointing to a small former D.C. government office building on M Street SW that soon will be developed by private owners. She hopes upscale restaurants and new retail stores will revitalize the neighborhood. Several other new couples have moved to the street since Nationals Park began construction.
Though other areas around the stadium reported the long-feared opening day illegal parking problems, there were still open parking spots on Carrollsburg Place just before the game.
All in all, worries about parking and traffic gridlock during the game proved superfluous. The first weekday game at Nationals Park, on Monday, caused fewer transportation problems than expected despite fans heading to the game overlapping with rush-hour roadway and transit traffic, according to city officials.
“Everything went very well last evening,” D.C. Department of Transportation spokesperson Karyn LeBlanc said of Monday night’s game-time traffic. “We’re very pleased with the results so far,” she said of the agency’s traffic-management plan.
Transportation and transit officials reported similarly upbeat results after the March 30 opening-day game. But nearby residents and other observers predicted that the first weekday, rush-hour game would serve as the real test of the city’s traffic and parking plans.
Cool weather and a less-than-marquee matchup against the Florida Marlins may have helped ease traffic on Southwest and near Southeast streets. The team announced that just over 20,000 spectators attended the game, about half the stadium’s capacity.
By contrast, the opening game two Sundays ago brought a near-capacity crowd, with more Metro riders and more stadium-bound drivers. But those fans did not have to compete with weekday workers riding the Metro or driving home.
“They were both equal tests,” LeBlanc said of the two games. “Right now the plan has worked very well for two different times.”
LeBlanc said the Transportation Department could have adjusted traffic signals on South Capitol and M streets after the game to keep vehicles moving, but that it was not necessary because traffic on those main arteries was comparable to that during normal rush hour.
To keep traffic flowing smoothly, the agency restricted pedestrian crossing points around the stadium, LeBlanc said, adding that fewer crossing points means there are fewer places for cars to stop.
Metro reported less traffic than it was prepared for. Spokesperson Angela Gates said nearly 5,000 fewer fans entered and exited the Navy Yard station on Monday than on March 30.
“The crowds were less than anticipated,” Gates said. “I haven’t heard of any problems that we encountered.”
For the post-game crowds, Metro added 10 trains to the Green Line, five to the Blue and Orange lines and four to the Red Line, Gates said, adding that there were no delays.
The next test for Metro and the Transportation Department was last night’s Nationals game, which started at about the same time as a Washington Wizards game at the Verizon Center and a D.C. United game at RFK Stadium.
The Voice could not gather traffic and transit reports by press time, but Metro officials said they planned to add 25 trains to the system for fans traveling home after the game.
Metro officials planned eight extra trains for the Yellow and Green lines, 11 extra trains for the Orange and Blue lines and six extra trains for the Red Line to help customers travel from Gallery Place-Chinatown, Navy Yard and Stadium-Armory Metro stations. They also planned to ramp up staffing at all of those stations.
LeBlanc said some residents reported problems with signage and enforcement around the stadium. She said “No emergency parking” signs were placed in Residential Parking Permit zones for the opening-day game because of special security measures in place for President George W. Bush’s visit. She said the signs have been removed from the few residential streets where they were placed.
About a dozen residents who attended Tuesday’s Southeast Capitol Hill advisory neighborhood commission meeting complained about aspects of the complicated “Performance Parking” pilot plan passed by the D.C. Council to alleviate stadium-related parking problems. Several said the new rules pose a significant threat to their “way of life” on the Hill.
Residents who live on the 100 block of E Street SE said the strict parking regulations prevent them from hosting dinner parties, book clubs and children’s birthday parties, because guests from outside the area do not have permission to park on their street.
Transportation Department deputy associate director Rick Rybeck said the “dinner party issue” was an unforeseen consequence of the new rules and that the department would consider it when revising its policies.
Several residents told Ward 6 D.C. Council member Tommy Wells’ staff that they were ticketed while legally parked in the ballpark zone. Wells’ chief of staff Charles Allen said about 12 residents got tickets in zones where Ward 6 residents are allowed to park even though their residential passes were displayed.
“That was troubling,” Allen said. “That’s a problem that needed to get fixed fast.” He said his office has worked quickly to nullify the tickets, and that the city knows it needs to retrain parking-enforcement officers to avoid future mistakes.
The Transportation Department has put up incorrect signage in a few areas in the parking pilot zone, including the 700 block of I Street SE, Allen said. On that block, no Ward 6 resident exemption was posted.
WJLA News reported that some legally parked vehicles were ticketed and towed from streets around the stadium Monday night. Allen said he has not heard from any Ward 6 residents whose vehicles were mistakenly towed.
Still, some Carrollsburg Place residents, like Lee Couture, said they will never be happy to live in the shadow of the stadium. He has called Carrollsburg home for four years, and has lived in various other parts of the city since 1989. Couture, like many of his neighbors, is still angry that the city paid for the stadium instead of using the money to boost city services.
Couture, who donned a Boston Red Sox cap on opening day, said he will never enter the stadium unless a concert is playing there.
But, “If they play Boston, I would probably go,” he said.
Voice correspondent Arthur Delaney contributed to this report.
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Posted on Apr 13, 2008 22:36pm.
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