C4 newcomers from C1
ma — and founder of a nonprofit group. Traci Hughes, spokeswom- an for the Gray campaign, also stressed his deliberative, inclu- sive decision-making style and said new voters want a candidate “who really cares about the peo- ple living in the city.” In the hierarchy of sought-after voters, residents with habitual records of participation are espe- cially prized. At the other end are those who typically cast ballots only in presidential elections. Then there are the newbies, who have yet to establish a voting pat- tern in the District. The get-out-the-vote challenge for both mayoral campaigns heading into the September pri- mary is to persuade the newly registered — without ignoring es- tablished voters — that they have a personal stake in who is elected mayor.
Varied perspectives Newlyweds Jennifer Hickman
and Paul Gorski recently moved to a part of 14th Street NW in Pre- cinct 22, which added the most new Democratic voters to the rolls in Ward 1 since the last may- or’s race. The couple was attract- ed to the neighborhood’s diversity and the thriving, locally owned businesses that they walk to from their home. Hickman, who works for the
National Wildlife Federation, reg- istered to vote in the District in time for the 2008 presidential election, but she said she pays more attention to environmental- justice and animal-welfare issues than to local politics. She ac- knowledged being chagrined at not knowing about Gray’s candi- dacy. Gorski, an assistant professor
at George Mason University, moved to the District from North- ern Virginia six months ago to join his bride. He talked fluently about the race and the debate over the perception that Fenty has favored more-affluent parts of the city. “Most people who live in this area are probably going to be okay no matter what happens in the election,” said Gorski, who is undecided. “For people who are less privileged, it’s a bigger issue. The question is: Who is going to do more for them?” In Mount Vernon Triangle, Mi- hir Shah is an undecided voter who praises Fenty for the city’s handling of the February snow- storms. But Shah, who moved to the city after the 2006 election, faults officials for not doing more to alert neighborhood residents when the District installed a tem- porary parking lot at Fifth and I streets on land that is slated to be- come part of a development with a boutique hotel and jazz club. “I’d love to stay longer and raise
my children here,” said Shah, an IT portfolio manager whose wife is expecting their first child. “But if we’re willing to invest, the city has to come halfway to meet us.” Trying to motivate new resi- dents to vote seems like a gamble given the District’s long experi- ence with low turnout. At the same time, campaigns are about return on investment, and it is not especially cost-effective to pursue less-reliable new voters. Fenty and Gray must also manage their efforts in an election season that for the first time will allow residents to register and vote on
Democrats 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 295 10,000
38,389 20%
20% 20 0%
S
KLMNO New voters are another variable in D.C. mayor’s race
SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 2010
Hospital urged to alter plan
to expand Montgomery official
says Suburban proposal is too disruptive
by Miranda S. Spivack Suburban Hospital should re-
MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST
Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, the main contender in the mayoral race, courted young professionals at a function last month.
KEY 3
xx% xx,xxx
0 MILE 1 Ward
Registered Democrats in 2010
Percent change from 2006 to 2010
MILITARY RD.
47,206 13%
13% LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s camp contends that he deserves credit for improvements that make the city more attractive to newcomers.
An influx of new voters
35,093 15%
1 37,299
The District’s Mount Vernon Triangle neighborhood did not have a voting precinct of its own when Adrian M. Fenty was elected mayor in 2006. However, Precinct 143 was created in 2008 to accommodate an influx of condominium dwellers along Massachusetts Avenue NW. More than 47,000 new Democrats registered citywide in the past four years.
46,843 14%
4%
Precinct 143 Mt. Vernon Sq.
50 29,995
2006 2010 Registered
INDEP. AVE. M ST. H ST. ST. CONST. AVE.
40,011 16%
16% 295
46,269 18%
%
Wards 1 and 7 saw the largest increase in the number of registered Democrats in the last four years, in part because of residents inspired to participate in the Obama presidential race.
WARD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
the same day; offer no-excuse ab- sentee voting; and provide early voting locations in the 10 days be- fore the Sept. 14 election. Same-day registration, already the norm in nine states, has boosted turnout between 4 and 7 percent, but not immediately, said Michael McDonald, a George Mason University professor who studies national turnout trends. “It’s not like you just flip a switch and get higher turnout. There’s a learning curve,” McDonald said. “There may be a small boost, but it’s probably not going to be huge.” In a city with a population now nearing 600,000, the District’s mayors historically have been elected from a Democratic pri- mary pool of about 100,000 vot-
ers. But the presidential race in 2008 produced an increase in reg- istered Democrats, many ener- gized by the opportunity to help elect the first African American president. Even without that motivation, some Obama voters could return to the polls in the fall because of the perceived competitiveness in the mayor’s race, and the new vot- ing conveniences will ease the way for those who decide to par- ticipate at the last minute, said Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Ore. The new voting options “don’t
expand the electorate,” Gronke said, “but they retain the elector- ate.” To Donald Isaac Jr. of Ward 7, a
SOURCE: D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics THE WASHINGTON POST
native Washingtonian who said he will vote in a mayor’s race for the first time, the contest is crit- ical to the future of the city and to his community, where the un- employment rate is among the highest in the District. Isaac, who returned to the city
from Morehouse College last year, is a community organizer who is part of an effort to drive up turn- out among younger residents. “If we don’t become politically en- gaged, we’re just talking,” said Isaac, who is uncommitted. “I want everyone to be afforded the same opportunities citywide.”
Making contact In a private bar last month at
The Park at Fourteenth down- town, a crowd of 20- and 30-
E. CAP. ST.
somethings in pinstripes and strappy sheaths sipped cham- pagne, snacked on little crab cakes and talked politics as they waited for the main attraction. The fundraiser was part of Gray’s appeal to young professionals, a strategy that also includes target- ed social media sites. His message has resonated with Cordelia Chansler, a recent transplant from New Jersey who attended the event. Chansler, who works for a nonprofit group and lives in the Mount Vernon Trian- gle, said that she was concerned about the awarding of parks and recreation contracts, without council approval, to companies with ties to Fenty and that she was attracted by Gray’s talk of unifying the District. Brian Kosack, a Mount Vernon
Triangle resident and dedicated D.C. sports fan (dressed in a Na- tionals T-shirt and Capitals hat), did not know until recently of this year’s mayoral race. He found out when he spotted Fenty at Wiscon- sin and M streets in Georgetown near the restaurant where he is a chef. “I said, ‘I thought you al- ready had the job,’ ” Kosack re- called, describing his encounter with the mayor. “He seemed like a nice guy.” Kosack registered to vote a year and a half ago when he changed his driver’s license after buying an apartment. He said he was at- tracted by the neighborhood’s possibilities in light of what rede- velopment was doing in places such as Columbia Heights. But he doesn’t necessarily give Fenty credit for the changes, he said, and is not inclined to vote in the primary. He said he doesn’t con- sider District politics competitive because elections are dominated by one party. A few blocks away, Thais Aus- tin, president of the board of the 14-story condominium building at 555 Massachusetts Ave., hopes to persuade newcomers to partic- ipate. Austin and her neighbors learned firsthand the importance of strong relationships with local elected officials after they helped prod the city to shut an adult- entertainment shop on Fifth Street that residents said was a haven for prostitution and drugs. Especially in a neighborhood
that until recently was a no man’s land, Austin said, “local politics impacts your daily life much more than national politics.”
marimowa@washpost.com
Seeking to transform Tysons from crossroads to community tysons from C1
blueprint for changing all of that when it considers a 20-year plan to remake Tysons Corner into an urban center with four Metrorail stations surrounded by clusters of office, retail and apartment towers and connected by tree- lined, walkable streets. “Tysons is still in its first life,
but Metro is going to change that,” said Walter L. Alcorn, a former environmental consul- tant who for the past two years has led a Tysons Corner plan- ning task force. “Eventually you’re going to see new smaller communities with new centers of activity.” The hope, land-use planners,
developers and Fairfax County officials say, is to give Tysons the identity it is sorely lacking. But those involved in plan- ning the future of Tysons face a daunting task. The new urban center could be home to 200,000 jobs and 100,000 residents by 2050, and three-fourths of all de- velopment will be located within a half mile of the Metro stations. It is a significant departure after more than six decades of sprawl that turned a collection of dairy farms into Northern Virginia’s economic engine. “It’s a very difficult task to change from an area dependent
on autos and free parking to a place where you can get off a Metro stop and walk across the street to lunch,” said Paul E. Ce- ruzzi, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum who au- thored the book, “Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Cor- ner, 1945-2005.” “Tysons doesn’t have a sense of itself yet.”
Decades of change
Since World War II, Tysons has grown from a rural rest stop with a general store and gas sta- tion to one of the largest busi- ness districts in the country, a sweeping tangle of sleek-looking offices, high-end shops and parking lots. The arrival of the “Beltway Bandits” — specialized defense contractors — brought with them the high-tech firms that spurred the economic boom of the 1980s and ’90s. By the 2000s, Tysons had be- come a classic “edge city” — an affluent suburb with none of the traditional qualities that define a community. The county’s com- prehensive plan, a constantly changing document that lays out a community’s vision for itself, has for years acknowledged that Tysons’s sprawling size and lack of pedestrian and transit options led to a dearth of “cohesiveness and identity.” Planners have spent five years debating the
merits of growth, at first calling for an ambitious vertical city be- fore eventually reducing the lev- el of density and reining in the project’s timeline from 40 years to 20. “We’ve worn this thing out. We had this very idealistic plan: ‘Build it and they shall come,’ ” said Thomas Fleury, a Tysons de- veloper for nearly four decades. “The idea was to max out these rail stops with enormous densi- ty. But there was a regression and now the shiny Mercedes with the 12-cylinder is a four- cylinder. But it will work.”
Little sense of place Still, hurdles remain to remak-
ing Tysons into something akin to Arlington County, with its dis- tinct Ballston, Clarendon and Court House neighborhoods. Take Tysons’s missing Zip code, for example. It shares Zip codes with the neighboring bed- room communities of McLean and Vienna while being defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as a designated place. The federal government and Fairfax can’t even agree on an up-to-date population estimate: The 2000 Census listed Tysons’s popula- tion at 18,540. Fairfax’s most re- cent estimate in 2010 is closer to 17,000. “The county will have to make
many changes to build a sense of place where people will want to live and play as well as work,” wrote Alan Fogg, a spokesman for the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority in a col- umn about Tysons’s identity cri- sis. “A good way to begin build- ing the identity of this 21st- century urban center would be to brand Tysons as its own place and not as an appendage.” Those who call Tysons home tend to be better-educated than the Fairfax County average; nearly 70 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree. More than a third were born outside the United States. But Tysons’s pov- erty rate is also higher than the Fairfax average, underscoring the transient and constantly shifting nature of a place where more than half the population rents instead of owns. “I’ve often said Tysons is an of-
fice park on steroids,” said Stew- art Schwartz, executive director of the Washington-based Coali- tion for Smarter Growth. “You have a lot of these isolated en- claves but nothing else there for residents to stay.” Despite con- cerns that Tysons will become too urban and lack single-family housing, Schwartz said aging baby boomers-turned-empty nesters will spur future demand for “scaled-down” apartments
and condos. Still, there is no prototype for
what Tysons wants to become. Portland and Arlington were cit- ed as examples for specific por- tions of Fairfax’s plan, but the wholesale changes proposed by planners and developers are un- precedented and costly. Trans- portation and infrastructure im- provements not connected to the construction of Metrorail’s Sil- ver Line could run upwards of $1.2 billion over the next two decades.
But Alcorn, the planning task force leader, said part of estab- lishing the new Tysons will be the smaller projects that provide community connections — side- walk cafes, a performing arts center, a centrally located “sig- nature” park and police, fire and electricity substations. One change, offered up by task force members earlier this month, was simply to rename Tysons Cor- ner’s eight planning districts. The names, such as Tysons Cen- tral 123 and West Side, now re- flect Tysons’ identity issues. “Names say a lot about a com-
munity,” he said. But Alcorn said those names, like Tysons’s fu- ture, is still being written.
kravitzd@washpost.com
Staff writer Kafia A. Hosh contributed to this report.
vamp its $200 million planned expansion in Bethesda that neighbors have complained could disrupt the nearby commu- nity, a Montgomery County hear- ing examiner said. The 162-page report from chief hearing examiner Francoise M. Carrier, issued late Friday, said the hospital proposal does not mesh with long-standing county plans to maintain a residential feel along Old Georgetown Road, where the hospital has delivered health care since 1943. The re- port, a recommendation to the county’s appeals board, can carry substantial weight when that part-time zoning panel considers the case later this year. Suburban, a designated re- gional trauma center, is across the street from the National In- stitutes of Health in a leafy neigh- borhood that includes high- priced and mid-priced single- family houses, as well as medical facilities. The hospital has an- nual admissions of about 15,000. Last year, Suburban became part of Johns Hopkins Medicine. Suburban, which says it needs
the expansion to improve its de- livery of medical services, wants to grow by about 240,000 square feet and add 66 beds to give it a total of about 300. The hospital also wants to add more parking, physicians’ offices and a park-like “relaxation garden” that could act as a buffer with the communi- ty.
“We hope that the board will see this
important issue differently once they . . . review
all of the facts.” — Rona Borenstein-Levy, Suburban Hospital spokeswoman
To do this, Suburban proposed closing part of a public street and building over it — thereby block- ing a neighborhood access route to Old Georgetown Road, a major thoroughfare — adding a parking garage and tearing down 23 hos- pital-owned single-family houses.
Carrier said the plans should
be revised and careful consider- ation should be given to closing the portion of Lincoln Street, which she said could have an “ad- verse impact” on the neighbor- hood. Carrier could have rejected the plans but said “an outright denial would be contrary to the public interest in supporting an important health facility.” Carrier held a record-breaking 34 hearings before issuing the re- port. The next stop is the county’s five-member Board of Appeals, which could accept the recom- mendations or come up with a plan of its own. The county’s Planning Board, which advises the County Council on planning matters, voted 3 to 2 in favor of Suburban’s plans in 2008, after extensive internal dissension in which some staffers said the plans were incompatible with the area’s master plan. Efforts to complete the report led Carrier to delay by two weeks her arrival at the Planning Board, where she will take the reins as chairman on June 28. Suburban spokeswoman Rona Borenstein-Levy said Saturday that hospital officials, who are still culling through the report, are “disappointed” by Carrier’s conclusions but said they would await review by the Board of Ap- peals. “We hope that the board will see this important issue differ- ently once they have had the op- portunity to review all of the facts,” she said. Amy Shiman, president of the nearby Huntington Terrace Citi- zens’ Association, which opposed the scope of the expansion, said she was hopeful that revised plans could “meet both the hospi- tal’s and community’s goals.” “We are confident that Mont-
gomery County will continue its long tradition of not just pre- serving, but treasuring its resi- dential neighborhoods,” she said.
spivackm@washpost.com
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