President's Message
/By Eric Langenbacher, president@burleith.org
Despite the cold temperatures, there is a lot going on in Burleith. I’m sure that many of you read in the Georgetown Current—as we on the BCA Board did—that the District Department of Transportation has decided to locate the Ellington garage entrance on 36th Street instead of Reservoir Road. According to the Current, this decision was based on the level of traffic on Reservoir Road.
I remain quite concerned that this outcome will negatively affect all of Burleith, but especially the residents on 36th and R Streets, who already have to deal with the entrance to the Washington International School as well as the delivery entrance for Ellington on 36th. As you will recall, the survey that we did last spring revealed that 76 percent of Burleith residents support a Reservoir Road entrance (14 percent were for 36th Street and 9 percent were undecided at that time). This position differed from that of the ANC, which passed a resolution in December 2013 advocating for a 36th Street entrance. Nonetheless, the BCA wrote several letters to DDOT outlining our concerns about a 36th Street entrance to the school and advocated our position to our representatives. We wish we had succeeded and that the decision-making process had worked to our benefit.
There are other recent changes to the Ellington project due to the original plans exceeding the likely budget. The envisioned fourth floor has been eliminated with much of the programmatic space relocated to the basement. This has reduced the number of parking spaces.
On a happier note, the annual mid-winter gløgg party took place on Sunday, January 25. We are very grateful to Linda Brooks and Ross Schipper for hosting such a well-attended event. In addition to approximately 70 Burleith residents, we were happy that representatives from Georgetown University, as well as Ward 2 councilmember Jack Evans and ANC2E chair Ron Lewis stopped by.
The re-vamped Burleith website will be live in a few weeks. I’m sure that all of you will be as excited as the board is with the beautiful design and greater usability of the new site. We are planning to move more fully into the 21st century by using the website vigorously for community reporting and outreach. We hope that the website will become your first stop for all Burleith-related matters.
One related change is that the board has decided to transition from ten issues of the Burleith Bell per year to four (March, June, October, and December). We feel that this is a prudent cost-cutting measure in light of the possibilities of the new website, which will provide fresh content every month (including July and August, when the Bell has not been published). Eliminating several print issues will reduce the duplication of effort as well as the expenses and challenges of designing, printing, and distributing the Bell. The board is likely to revisit this frequency as the website becomes the primary communications vehicle for the community. We certainly welcome your thoughts on this new way of doing business after the website is up and running.