Community Meetings This Week On Plans for Barracks Row Area

According to Barracks Row Main Street, two community meetings will take place this week that focus on 8th Street, SE and the surrounding area.  Tomorrow is the final meeting for the Lower 8th Street Visioning Exercise, which seeks to create a comprehensive vision for this area connecting Barracks Row Main Street with the Capitol Riverfront BID.  On Wednesday, the first community workshop for the Marine Barracks’ Community Integrated Master Plan will take place.  The Barracks are planning to expand and are beginning work to find how they might meet their needs and needs in the community at the same time.

Complete details, from Barracks Row Main Street, are below.  For the full text of the BRMS announcements this week, including details on progress with The Chesapeake Room and Ted’s Bulletin, check here.

From Barracks Row Main Street:

REMINDER: Lower 8th Street Visioning Exercise
Final Community Meetings TOMORROW: Feb. 23, 2010, 8:30 AM & 7 PM
People’s Church, 535 8th Street, SE

The Lower 8th Street SE Visioning Process Advisory Committee has coordinated a vision process with property owners, other community stakeholders, and Barracks Row Main Street along the Lower 8th Street, SE corridor. Sponsored by the Capitol Riverfront BID, this process is an attempt to gain consensus on a vision for the area and to address issues of height, density, mix of uses, parking and access, as well as what should be the character of a redesigned Virginia Avenue Park as an amenity or community benefit for the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood and Capitol Hill. If consensus can be reached on the vision, it could serve as the basis for asking the Office of Planning to develop a small area neighborhood plan that could then be used as justification for any agreed upon zoning or density changes.

This final meeting will attempt to synthesize a community consensus on the vision of Lower 8th Street. For the agenda for the upcoming meeting, and minutes and presentations from past meetings please visit: Lower 8th Blog Site

Community Integrated Master Plan – Marine Barracks Washington
Community Workshop Series

Community Workshop #1: Wednesday February 24, 6 – 8 PM
Van Ness Elementary School Auditorium: 1150 5th Street, SE

The Marine Corps is facilitating a Community Integrated Master Plan to evaluate community-military development partnering options. There are unmet facility needs and security requirements at Marine Barracks Washington (Building 20), and there is potential to meet common community and military needs through this process. Recognizing that the Marine Barracks and the community are linked in past and present, the goal is to use a coordinated planning process to create a win-win in meeting the development needs of the local community and Marine Corps. By every indication, the Marine Barracks facility plans on staying in the immediate area (within a third of a mile) of its current location of Building 20 at 8th & I. A Community Leadership Group, which Barracks Row Main Street along with several other community groups is represented, is providing guidance on the development of the planning process. Community involvement is essential to the success of the Community Integrated Master Plan efforts and public participation in the workshop series is encouraged.

More information on the project can be found at the CIMP Official Website.