Gallery Place Living Transforms Into Penn Quarter Living - New Domain, New Host, Same Great Content!

Well folks, this has been in the works for quite some time. When I first started Gallery Place Living, I only intended to report news that occurred in a 2-3 block radius of 7th & G St NW (the area around the Gallery Place Metro station).

With the addition of writers, PQResident, Columbo, and Clara Barton Dweller, and with the discovery of more news and events in the greater Penn Quarter area, this name change became necessary.

So, without further delay, the writers at Gallery Place Living would like to present you with Penn Quarter Living. PQLiving's look and feel should be very familiar, but now we have the capability to add so much more functionality. We'll add new features in the coming weeks and months.


Some administrative notes:

• gpliving.blogspot will redirect to the new pqliving.com site starting Monday
  
• New posts will only be published on the pqliving.com site
  
• All posts and comments have been copied from gpliving.blogspot to the new pqliving.com site
  
• Comments have been disabled on the gpliving.blogspot site, new comments should be posted at pqliving.com
  

7th And H Starbucks Turns 24 Hours On Weekends

An anonymous poster commented that the Starbucks at 7th and H will be open 24 hours during the weekend starting this weekend. We verified that this is true so now you can get your late night ice cream at the CVS while enjoying a Frappuccino.

Barry Is In The Museum

As if Marion Barry won't have enough mentions in the annals of history, along comes Madame Tussauds to freeze him in time. The two time Mississippi born mayor who served for two continuous periods in D.C.'s history now represents Ward 8 on the City Council and received news this week that the general DC populace chose him to be in MT's wax museum opening in the PQ in October. The highly scientific poll was conducted by talking to people at Union Station, the Mall and the future downtown site of MT's. He went from being placed in the "Scandal Room" to the "Spirit of Washington Room" in less time than you can say "* set me up!" But, as Barry waxes more senior and his most egregious act becomes more distant, Marc Fisher of the WaPo couldn't be more right - for better or for worse, Barry's still got pull.

Penn Quarter Building Permit Update

F Street side of the Woodies building gets signs & flags
07/09/07
1001 F ST NW
INSTALL 3 SIGNS ON FRONT SIDE OF THE BLDG. 2--71FT-101/2INCHES X4FT6IN-323 SF ----12FT-1/8INX28FT-43SF---4 FLAGS
DOULGLAS DEVELOPMENT CORP

More signs
07/09/07
1025 F ST NW
INSTALL 3 SIGNS ON BLDG MARQUEE ON FRONT OF BLDG, AS PER PLANS
DOUGLASS DEVELOPMENT CORP

Shelly's Backroom or Subway gets rennovated
07/11/07
1331 F ST NW
NEW FIXTURES AND DÉCOR FOR MODIFICATION AND REVISE OF EXISTING SANDWICH SHOP AS DELI / RESTAURANT
JAMES CAMPBELL COMPANY

4-Eyes sets up office in DC
07/13/07
1310 G ST NW
ALTERATIONS AND REPAIRS FOR INTERIOR TENANT BUILD OUT OF EXISTING OFFICES
4-EYES EPES OPTICAL

Cadwalader Coming to 700 6th ST

The Akridge website has a press release showing that Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP will be moving into 700 6th ST NW.

Some of the earlier posts on this location can be found here.

(Photo Courtesy of Akridge Website)

Gallery Place to Metro Center - The Solutions

This is part two of two in our Gallery Place-Metro Center subterranean pedestrian tunnel series.

A representative tunnel concept above, as depicted in a Metro presentation [page 18 of the PDF], presents how a GP-MC tunnel could look. If you’ve switched lines on the subway in New York or Boston you probably know all about pedestrian tunnels as station interconnects. Switching from Park Street to Downtown Crossing (Red to Orange - Boston) or Canal/Lafayette to Canal/Broadway (6 to N,Q - NYC) gives you a good idea of the concept. Tunnel construction isn’t cheap and the financing bandied about in the press comes in the form of city money plus the excess returns from selling the Metro HQ building on 5th Street. DC is dangling a financing package in front of Metro to move to Anacostia and Metro may open up a comment period on the matter but there are many priorities competing for attention. No further word since mid-June from John Catoe, Metro's GM.

A possible stopgap solution is the “overland transfer” where Metro’s electronic gates would be programmed to allow Metro Center and Gallery Place passengers to transfer at no cost between those stations within a certain period of time. Exit one station, walk the street between them and enter the other free of charge. AJ's comments on the DCist tunnel story mentioned this option in April of this year and NYC already puts the idea to work between the Lex/59th and Lex/63rd stations.

I'd gladly walk a tunnel but my current solution takes a different form. This blogger stays away from GP and MC as much as possible during rush hour and transfers at L’Enfant Plaza. Trains don’t bunch up, aren’t as crowded and who doesn't like rail surfing those shiny, brand, spanking new cars on the Yellow-Green line?

DC Weddings: How To Get Married In 3 Easy Steps

Step 1: Discover bureaucratic nightmare that is DC.
Step 2: Get blood test for syphilis despite how crazy & outdated that is.
Step 3: Decide DC's not worth it and get married in Vegas.

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Despite her online moniker, Mrs Columbo isn't really a Mrs yet. We're to be married this summer, right here in PQ, DC. A small, family only affair, we figured picking a caterer, photographer, and wedding dress would be the hard part. Little did we realize that the DC bureaucracy would be the biggest obstacle we'd run up against. Should you decide, like Mrs Columbo and I to get married in DC, hopefully some of the below can help.
First things first: get a blood test for syphilis (welcome to the 1940's; why not test for the clap while you're at it?) and when you get the results, take them to the DC Department of Health's Public Health Laboratory. Your name & the date of the test are then put onto form DHS-366 (aka the "blue card"). $10 per card, checks only.
You have 30 days from the date of the blood test to apply for your marriage license.

Armed with DHS-366 you can now head over to the DC Superior Court, Family Division, Domestic Relations Branch, Marriage Bureau Section to apply for marriage in DC. Here is where the Columbo's got tripped up, not paying enough attention to the application. You have to already know who will perform your ceremony. You cannot get a marriage license in DC, and then just take it later to whomever you want to marry you. You have to know who the officiant will be prior to DC issuing a license. If you want to change the officiant later, you wait in line and pay again to change this information.

Thinking on our feet (we had not decided who would wed us), we tried to opt for a civil ceremony at the marriage bureau instead, no doubt due to the thoughtfully decorated door in the marriage bureau, leading to the chapel.

However the only available time for a ceremony on our requested day was 10 am. The clerk laughed when we suggested we'd prefer an afternoon wedding. Apparently they don't do (or at least don't do many) afternoon ceremonies. Not wanting to start out the day with vows over coffee (and not wanting to change our date) we opted to apply for the license, which would not be issued to us until we named the officiant.

This brings up another rule: DC requires a 3 day waiting period between the time you apply for a marriage license and the date you can pick it up. You pay on the date of application though, $45 cash or check only.

When we decided on an officiant, and I went to get the license, I had a wait of over an hour (despite the fact that I was the only person at the marriage bureau) because no one could get the printers to print the license out properly. The person who knew how to fix the printers came back from lunch an hour later and I was finally on my way.

To recap, for those of you scoring at home (or even if you're alone), to get married in DC you have to make a minimum of 5 outings to get your license:

1. Go to Dr to get blood test;
2. Pick up test results from Dr;
3. Take test results to DoH;
4. Take results from DoH to Superior Court, apply for license, pay fees;
5. Return to Superior Court 3 days later to get license.

Mrs Columbo & I have to compromise our wedding plans, not the end of the world. I wonder though how many people just end up going to the Arlington Court House or to Vegas?

Gallery Place to Metro Center - The Problem

This is part one of a two part series highlighting the sometimes discussed Gallery Place-Metro Center subterranean pedestrian tunnel.

Living downtown means knowing how to get around downtown. Walk? Car? Taxi? Bus? Segway? Subway? All are options but friends often tout the subway, aka the Metro, as “the way” to move around DC quickly. Faster than the bus, cheaper than the car and less effort than walking or driving, the subway is an attractive travel option especially inside the city limits and close-in suburbs where stations dot popular retail destinations and places to meet up with friends.

Designed as a hub and spoke system in the late 1960s, all of Metro’s lines meet at one of two downtown stations where lines intersect, Gallery Place (Red meets Green-Yellow) and Metro Center (Red meets Orange-Blue); they both are in the top 10 busiest station list [PDF] and mirror the PQ’s growth with Gallery Place’s boardings up 84 % from 2000 to 2005 [PDF]. As rush hour riders know (this blogger being one of them), sardine packed train cars deposit riders during peak hours at these stations with the masses mimicking movements (sometimes noises) similar to a Colorado cattle drive. Metro has looked at the feasibility of constructing an underground pedestrian tunnel connecting the two stations [PDF] to relieve human congestion between the two stations. With an initial usage estimate of 11,750 passengers per day by 2030, Metro is taking the long view.

What if the two stations could act as a true, single central hub? Throw in some underground retail and thoughtful design with public art spaces and the idea becomes potentially attractive. To be sure, there would be downsides including cost and street level disruption to accommodate construction. Getting on the Red Line for one, very short train ride to get to the Yellow Line never struck me as a choice one would make voluntarily and there are times when I feel like John Wayne should be riding herd underground. Later this week, we’ll look at where the tunnel idea stands and one alternative solution.

Why Mt. Vernon Triangle Needs A Blog - A Neighborhood In The Making

Mount Vernon Triangle is just a bit out of reach for this blog. Many of us don't walk the streets of Mt Vernon Triangle everyday. But, as each residential building is completed in the triangle, there's more chance of someone starting a neighborhood blog!

300 block of Mass Ave NW: Sonata completed, The Cave retail, four story building gets new windows/renovated, Madrigal Lofts almost complete.

200 block of H St NW: 7-story office building at 251 H ST NW being constructed. The original plan called for 150 residential units.