A New Park For Mount Vernon Triangle?

• April 26, 2018

by Nena Perry-Brown

Last week, UrbanTurf took a refreshed look at the Mount Vernon Triangle (MVT) neighborhood, for which open green space has become a glaring necessity. Now, the MVT Community Improvement District (CID) has released the results of its Open Space Study and plans for a new park.

Since 2000, development in the neighborhood has boomed, going from 435 housing units and less than 750,000 square feet of combined office and retail space to nearly 4,000 housing units, 1.8 million square feet of office space, 290,000 square feet of retail and 238 hotel rooms in 2018. The associated ballooning population means the need for open space is becoming more critical.

The study identifies several "opportunity sites" to create open space, including the parking deck at 2nd and K and the bowtie of green space that includes Chinatown Park. One lost space the neighborhood plans to reclaim is Cobb Park, which is currently being used as a construction staging area for the Capitol Crossing development spanning the center-leg of 395. Completion of that development will also deliver a larger contiguous space to convert back into park space.

As seen in the above rendering, the re-envisioned Cobb Park includes a water feature and would have interactive public art and some sort of café and outdoor dining space. An elevated portion would also give visitors a different vantage of the plaza.

The parking deck further down 2nd Street is envisioned as including permanent and temporary public art installations and serving as more of a community gathering place for events, sports and recreation. The city-owned sloping lawn along the freeway between New York Avenue and K Street NW, adjacent to the future Plaza West development, can be brought to grade and incorporate a dog park and children's playground.

Some smaller sites around the perimeter of the neighborhood are owned by the National Park Service and could incorporate gardens and additional seating. A swath of land near New Jersey and K Streets is owned by the District Department of Transportation and Pepco and could accommodate children's and dog playground spaces.

The MVT CID is continuing to solicit feedback as it develops a plan moving forward.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the-return-of-park-space-for-mount-vernon-triangle/13895