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| Mixed Use |
By Gary Imhoff
Posted 10/12/2006
Viewed 11046 times
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Richard Layman, below, makes an interesting argument in favor of the administration’s land grab of library and school system properties. In the last issue of themail, I linked to an online article by Mark Jenkins, http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/citydesk/2006/10/libraries-mixed-use-messages.html, about a public meeting on the administration’s plan for the Benning Library. That article focused on the outrageous tactics that the Library Board of Trustees and the Williams administration are using to force their plan through without giving the affected community an adequate opportunity to have any say about it. This is reminiscent of how the Library Board attempted to dispose of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Central Library quickly, before the public became aware of it, and I’m sure that Richard doesn’t mean to defend these tactics. But setting aside this issue, and setting aside the question of favoritism and sweetheart deals in these land deals, the question remains: is there anything inherently wrong with mixed-use development of these properties, and, if not, why do many people in DC and I oppose giving these public properties to developers for mixed-use buildings that would incorporate public functions?
In most areas, mixed-use buildings and neighborhoods don’t make much sense. In suburbs, small towns, and rural areas, space is plentiful and people can travel easily by car among neighborhoods that are predominantly dedicated to residential, retail, industrial, or office uses. But mixed-use buildings are crucial for the vitality of downtown neighborhoods in populous congested cities, and they have been for thousands of years. (In the Roman Forum, the government and religious buildings were all dedicated to a single purpose, but the shopping mall at the other end of the street was mixed with residential uses.) In DC, downtown had been dead at night because it had been reduced to office buildings and a few types of retail businesses that could survive from the patronage of daytime office workers (coffee shops and lunch rooms, card and gift shops, cell phone stores, and a few dry cleaners). Now it is being slowly revitalized by reintroducing residential buildings and entertainment venues. Zoning requirements for the main shopping streets of other neighborhoods that require retail or arts uses on the first floors of new apartment and office buildings keep the street life of those neighborhoods vital.
However, not all buildings should be mixed use. As the Romans knew when they built the Forum, community centers of all types are better, for their communities and for their own purposes, if they’re dedicated to a single use. Schools, churches, and libraries are prime examples of uses that are better housed in stand-alone buildings. There, they are focal points for their neighborhoods, in the way that a residential, retail, office, or mixed-use building can never be. Only a serious money shortage, the complete financial inability to build or maintain them in their own buildings, should lead to subordinating them in a mixed-use building. DC isn’t that poor. Keeping schools, churches, and libraries in their own buildings is important symbolically. It is a statement of the importance we put on their uses, as a community or a congregation, a statement that they are the heart of our community, where we gather to be a community.
It is also important for practical reasons. If public schools and libraries are important to our government, it will maintain them much better than the owners of office or residential buildings who put a library or a school on one floor of their developments. It would be taking a needless risk to give up the public land on which schools and libraries are built, and then to trust private developers to maintain the buildings and the libraries and schools incorporated within them for decades in the future. Although the District government’s neglect of its schools and libraries would seem to argue against this, our city’s neglect of its public assets hasn’t resulted from a lack of funds. The District has been awash in ample tax money for the last decade. The neglect has resulted from mismanagement and skewed priorities. The past failure of the District government to maintain our most important public assets should not be an excuse for giving them away now.
Orginal text available at: http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2006/06-10-11.htm
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