Lively -- Costly -- Area Envisioned Along Anacostia

District officials want to transform the Anacostia River from the city's major dividing line into one of its primary gathering places by creating parks, neighborhoods and cultural amenities along the river's vastly underutilized banks.

New attractions would be linked to each other and to existing neighborhoods by a 16-mile river walk that has just been started and by a network of new boulevards, parkways and bridges that would replace much of the cumbersome highway sprawl that dominates the area.

D.C. planning director Andrew Altman said the banks of the Anacostia should rival the Potomac waterfront on the other side of town. "It's the same city. It should have the same qualities," he said. "There should not be inequities in the same city."

Such a vision, outlined before a crowd of more than 400 last night at the National Building Museum, would take at least 30 years, and billions of dollars, to achieve. It would depend on the continued success of a partnership launched 18 months ago by D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) with 15 local and federal agencies that have responsibility for various parts of the waterfront.

But the dream has a real base anchored in a dozen deals and projects underway, fueled by the unprecedented federal-local partnership, by Washington's booming residential and office market and by a burgeoning national perception of urban waterfronts as potential jewels.

There is a planned $1 billion cleanup of sewer runoff, with the goal of making the river swimmable by 2030. There are plans to build a new headquarters for the U.S. Department of Transportation, residences, shops and restaurants on the long-vacant, 55-acre Southeast Federal Center.

There is the planned expansion of the Arena Stage in Southwest, as well as a new deal to rebuild the moribund Waterside Mall two blocks away.

"There's a lot of excitement in the public, with members of Congress and city agencies," said Elinor Bacon, chief executive of the National Capital Revitalization Corp., which is heading up efforts in Southwest. "Developers have been coming to me. It's really becoming this mass excitement about what the possibilities of the Anacostia River are."

Details about other possibilities will emerge during the next six months, Altman said, as public workshops continue and discussions commence between a team of high-profile waterfront planners and a new, 150-member citizens advisory committee.

Planners envision town houses, apartments, parks, marinas and boathouses. They also envision a museum and a performing arts facility or other major attraction along the east bank. They would like to see memorials there, especially some that emphasize Washington's rich African American history.

On a recent tour, D.C. transportation director Dan Tangherlini painted a picture of the future: a family taking Metro to the Southwest waterfront, renting bicycles from a new shop and riding the river walk to a museum at the Washington Navy Yard, then to Kingman Island or the National Arboretum in Northeast.

They would take a ferry across to Anacostia Park or Poplar Point for lunch, a museum or a concert, then return via the bicycle lane on a new, small-scale bridge.

"I think what we want to ask now is: What do we want it to look like?" Tangherlini said. "This is an opportunity that comes along once in two or three generations."

Much, he knows, depends on replacing existing roads and bridges -- most built in an era when the main goal was to get suburbanites to downtown jobs.

He and Altman talk of converting Interstate 295 east of the river into a street-level boulevard with pedestrian crossings and scenic vistas, like Boston's Storrow Drive or Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. They want to build new bridges on South Capitol Street and 11th Street that offer easy routes to neighborhoods on both sides of the river as well as to the highways that roar through.

Ferries and water taxis could also connect riverfront attractions. A pedestrian walkway could link the Tidal Basin -- and cherry-blossom tourists -- to the Southwest waterfront.

The projects would be hugely expensive; one planner said a major new bridge alone could cost $100 million. But several bridges and roads are due for major repair work in the next decade, and Tangherlini said he is holding funds for those projects until better infrastructure is designed. The city also will try to generate funding for public works improvements from the private development underway.

Officials are moving slowly and emphasizing a need for public input, hoping to minimize suspicion from neighborhood residents who fear being displaced, overrun by construction or ignored. They have held months of community sessions and will step up the schedule through next spring.

"This is a starting point, not a final plan," Altman said. "We intend to involve all the neighborhoods in getting from this point to a plan that we can present to the mayor."