GWU Expansion Raises Objections
By Elissa Silverman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 20, 2006
With professional legal counsel and a political consulting firm now on its payroll, the Foggy Bottom Association has added some well-paid firepower to its epic development battles with neighbor George Washington University.
The enhancements were evident this week, as the group staged a news conference Tuesday morning declaring its intentions to fight the university on a new 20-year campus plan recently submitted to the District government for consideration. Joy Howell, president of the Foggy Bottom Association, announced that her group will likely head to U.S. District Court by the end of the week to request an injunction to prevent the city's zoning commission from holding hearings on the plan.
The association, which represents residents of the neighborhood surrounding the campus, makes three arguments. First, the group said the District should not move forward on a new campus plan when the university is still governed through 2009 by its current plan. Furthermore, the association argued, the university is in violation of the current plan because of over-enrollment and other infractions, which the university denies.
"They're saying: 'We're losing the ballgame, it's the sixth inning, so let's throw it out and start all over again,' " said Howell.
The group also said that such a "major action," including the 1.73 million square feet of new construction it said the university proposes, requires the submission of an environmental impact statement and more detail on its largest planned project, the commercial redevelopment of the old George Washington University hospital site on Washington Circle.
Officials representing the university respond that the new campus plan actually came at the request of city officials, who asked that GWU come up with a comprehensive, long-term vision for development. The university has two large projects planned that would change the Foggy Bottom landscape -- redevelopment of the hospital site and the construction of a new undergraduate dormitory alongside the School Without Walls, at 2130 G St. NW.
"I'm not sure why the Foggy Bottom Association feels this is an illegal action," said Tracy Schario, a university spokeswoman. "We've done it at the request of the [D.C.] Office of Planning."
As GWU has expanded its undergraduate student body over the past few decades and gobbled up property around the Foggy Bottom neighborhood to support more residential and academic programs, neighbors have posed development battles with the university as David vs. Goliath. Yet the association's scrappy activism paid off in 2004, when developer Trammell Crow Co. gave the group $5 million in exchange for its support of a mixed-use development at the old Columbia Hospital for Women. About $2.6 million of that is left.
The cash windfall has made the Foggy Bottom Association's slingshot and stones much larger: The group hired the law firm of Bode & Grenier to represent it in legal proceedings. In addition, the group has signed up M+R Strategic Services, a consulting firm, to coordinate a public relations campaign to bolster its crusade to limit development. Those efforts included Tuesday's news conference, where representatives of the D.C. Federation of Citizens Associations and the Committee of 100 on the Federal City joined the Foggy Bottom residents.
Even with additional resources at their disposal, Foggy Bottom Association members expect an uphill battle. Last week, the head of the Office of Planning (OP) wrote a letter endorsing the university's request to have the zoning commission proceed with hearings on the new campus plan. "OP has spent more than a year working with GWU and the surrounding community on the specifics of this plan," wrote planning chief Ellen McCarthy.
"It's odd to us that they wouldn't even wait for their own enforcement arm to determine whether GW is in compliance [with the current plan]," Howell said.
University officials said that given that the last campus plan was entangled in court for some time, the additional years on the current campus plan might come into use. "It's not a secret that our town-gown relationships with certain members of the Foggy Bottom neighborhood have been tense. Over the past three to four years, we have made a concerted effort to change the tide," said university spokeswoman Schario.
"One could argue we are just starting early," she added.
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