This is Bardo's second attempt at the ABC process for this site (the first placard having been rescinded just a few weeks after a filing in August), and is now technically the fourth time that the notion of a large outdoor activity/party/drinking/whatever space has been attempted at this spot across from Nats Park.

This application is for a Retailer's Class D Tavern license (as opposed to a Class C Tavern license last time), and is described thusly: "Outdoor Beer Garden. Beer made on premise. Food Trucks to supply food. Total number of Summer Garden seats: 700. Total Occupancy Load: 750. Brew Pub Endorsement."

As to why Bardo's application earlier in 2015 never made it all the way through after being announced back in March, one might want to read this transcript from the April hearing at the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to see the many (many) concerns raised by the board and by MPD, which clearly is not supportive of any venture of this type in this location. (And I can't not highlight the comments from Commander Jeff Brown of MPD about how the "applicant here says it's going to be cornhole bean-bag toss, which I'm not even going to pretend to know what that is, but I think I'll be safe to say that it's not very popular.")

* DOCK 79 FLOOR PLANS: While the potential Bardo Riverfront footprint is on the western, later-phase portion of the Florida Rock site, construction is progressing on Dock 79, the 320ish-unit residential building at the east end of the property (seen above from across the Anacostia River at Poplar Point). The project's web site and Facebook/Twitter accounts having been active for a while, and there are now virtual tours available of studio, 1-bedroom, and 2-bedroom units, as well as the roof.

* JUST BECAUSE: Like that photo up top? Here's the same spot, more than 10 years ago.

The menu shows a lineup of Indian food, with a buffet at all times as well as chicken tikka, kabobs, lamp chops, biryani, and karahi. And nan, of course.

I do not know the hours (not seeing a phone number to call on the menu posted in the window), so if anyone feels like heading over there for lunch and coming back with a report, you'll get a JDLand Gold Star. UPDATE: The BID says the hours are 10 am to 10 pm daily.

(I'll update here as I get more info, but didn't want this dish to be served cold, as it were. Also, the "Muy Pronto" sign in the Las Placitas window is pretty funny.)

If you never went to Levi's, you may not know that it's not exactly a spacious interior, so be prepared for more of a carryout option than fine sit-down dining.

* DC STATE RAIL PLAN OPEN HOUSE: The project to create an official "State Rail Plan" (ahem) for DC is kicking off, and DDOT is holding an open house on Monday, Sept. 28 to "introduce the plan to the community." This rail plan is a requirement for any state (again, ahem) wishing to be eligible for grants and other federal financial assistance, and is going to focus on "passenger and freight rail infrastructure shared by CSX, VRE, MARC, Amtrak, and Norfolk Southern." The intent is to have a completed plan that will provide a high-level strategic framework, goals, and objectives to leverage the District’s rail network for continuing economic competitiveness and quality-of-life investments while also addressing ongoing concerns about rail safety and oversight."

The open house will run from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm at Friendship Public Charter School-Chamberlain Campus, 1345 Potomac Avenue, SE. This start time is 30 minutes earlier than originally announced, because....:

* VIRGINIA AVE. STREETSCAPE RESTORATION REVIEW MEETING: Also on Monday, Sept. 28, beginning at 6:30 pm at 200 I St. SE, a joint meeting by DDOT and ANCs 6B and 6D will go over CSX's draft plans for rebuilding Virginia Avenue once construction is complete on the Virginia Avenue Tunnel. The first 30 minutes will be an open house, and then presentations and discussions will begin at 7 pm. There will also be a special public meeting of DDOT's Public Space Committee about the plans on Nov. 12.

(And then maybe for Christmas we can pitch in and get DDOT a group calendar, to perhaps avoid in the future scheduling two meetings with a very similar audience on the same night at nearly the same time in not-particularly-adjoining locations.)

* CIRCULATOR STOP CONSOLIDATION MEETING: On Wednesday, Sept. 30, DDOT is having a public meeting to talk about possibly consolidating some stops on the Union Station-Navy Yard line "to improve on-time performance and reliability." The only south-of-the-freeway stops on the potential chopping block are the ones at 4th and M SE in both directions, with the 6th and M stops being the closet ones to use instead. (The announcement gives the full lineup.) The meeting is from 6pm to 8pm at the Southeast Neighborhood Library, 403 7th Street SE.

* CSX'S "COFFEE WITH CHUCK": If you want to go for the 72-hour quadfecta of transportation sessions, there's also the next edition of CSX's monthly meetings with the community to discuss the Virginia Avenue Tunnel project, on Wednesday, Sept. 30 from 8 to 9 am at the Courtyard by Marriott at 140 L St. SE. Items that might be up for discussion include the coming closure of the 300 block of Virginia Ave. (in "early October") and also the temporary closures of 4th Street SE from just north of the I-695 underpass down to I Street from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm this week and probably into next week.

It will be named District Winery, and is to "feature the most popular components" of the Brooklyn version--it will be a full-service restaurant, and will also have a wine tasting area, a private events space with an open-air terrace, and, "of course, an impressive collection of wines, crafted and aged onsite." The Brooklyn operation is also apparently a quite popular venue for weddings.

The new pavilion's design will apparently be quite a wood-and-glass look that will echo the nearby Lumber Shed and the Yards Park itself. When I wrote about the rumors back in May, I included some 2009-era imaginings of what the pavilion could look like from when the Yards Park was going through its approvals process, but my understanding is that the design has evolved considerably, with District Winery's input. (No new renderings are being made available just yet, however.)

Forest City says it expects to start construction in the spring of 2016 and that the winery would open in the fall of 2017.

With a theme of "Neighbors No Longer Strangers," the Navy Yard Neighborhood Association is having a combination community picnic and fundraising flea market from noon to 5 pm at the Joy Evans Park, 555 L St., SE, just behind Van Ness Elementary.

Co-sponsored with the Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg Village Timebanks and Capitol Quarter Community Associations I and II, paper plates, utensils, beverages and much of the food will be provided, and while grilling won't be allowed (or dogs), attendees are welcome to bring along "food offerings" to share.

Flea market donations such as books, toys, games, and small appliances in good condition (but no clothes) will be accepted.

See the NYNA's Facebook page for more details about the picnic and the group.

(The first bad weather in weeks has prompted the organizers to postpone the picnic from its original Sept. 12 date.)

There will be a whole lot of swag for CaBi members, with your key fob getting you $1 off a regular cone at Ice Cream Jubilee, $1 off pints of Forbidden Planet at Bluejacket, 10% off all food orders, and 20% off drink orders at the bar at Osteria Morini, 10% off all food orders and Happy Hour pricing on drinks at Agua 301, and giveaways of Capital Bikeshare blankets and tote bags to early arriving members. (Founding members get special reserved VIP seating with their black fobs--like mine, still going!)

As for Breaking Away, it warms my heart to see this choice, because it is one of my all-time favorite movies, and is highly recommended to anyone who's never seen it. (The word "REFUND?!" is legendary in my family thanks to Paul Dooley.)

UPDATE: And I should have looked around a bit more before posting this, because it's a movie weekend at Yards Park, with Guardians of the Galaxy at 7 pm on Friday night (Sept. 18) and Romeo + Juliet on Sunday, Sept. 20 at 7 pm.

The new project, designed by Gensler and which is Monument is "contemplating" as a condo building while still "keeping all options on the table," will have a mix of one-, two-, and three-bedroom units as well as multi-level two-bedroom townhouses facing both Van and South Capitol.

In the renderings provided by Monument, you can see the red-and-black-and-glass 10 Van paired with the more beige One M (and also the Self Storage building and JBG's 1244 South Capitol at the far end of the Van Street rendering below). The townhouse portions are visible as the areas with the dark "glazed brick material" at street level. In the rendering at below right, you can see the building from above South Capitol Street and how it is paired with the NAB HQ and also its west-facing courtyard that will front South Capitol.

It's expected to be built concurrently with NAB/One M beginning next spring, with completion in 2018. The project will need to complete this Capital Gateway Overlay Review first.

* After a private opening party Thursday night, Due South is now in full operating mode, open in its Lumber Shed spot at 301 Water St. SE for dinner seven days a week plus lunch on weekdays and brunch on weekends. Its complete menu is now in place (which is also available for carryout). The restaurant's web site is now fully formed as well, if you want additional information. Plus, here's Tom Sietsema's review. Hours are 11 am to 10 pm Sunday through Thursday and 11 am to 11 pm Friday and Saturday.

* Right this very minute the doors are opening on the last Truckeroo food truck festival of 2015, at the Fairgrounds at Half and M Streets SE. Free admission, live music, "plenty of shade and picnic tables," and a whole lot of different trucks. And some pretty nice weather for that 12 hours of corn hole the kids will all be playing.

And if I had just walked on that side of the street during a long photo-taking excursion on Sunday that included multiple shots at 8th and L, I would have seen the signs in the window, but at least the high resolution of my camera can now confirm that the signs were/are there.

This spot is one block south of the freeway, and let's call it three blocks south of Las Placitas's existing home, which will eventually become expansion space for Matchbox.

CSX is in charge of this streetscape-and-landscaping upgrade and has submitted draft plans to various groups for review, and has posted some big (BIG) PDFs on the project web site. Meanwhile, ANC 6D commissioner Meredith Fascett put out the call last week looking for volunteers to join a neighborhood working group on the restoration plans.

But for those who don't want to wade through the PDFs, here are some partial screen grabs of CSX's submittals for the new Virginia Avenue, and I'm sure the bike/ped paths (both shared and separate) will be of interest, along with the plans to perk up Virginia Avenue Park.

These first two screen grabs show the general landscape and "roadway" plans from 2nd to 4th Street, and from 4th to 5th (click to enlarge):

For the westernmost blocks, there will be a shared porous asphalt path on the street's south side. Then, starting at 4th Street, there will be separate asphalt bike path and a companion walking path with permeable pavers. The second image also shows the expanded pocket park between 4th and 5th that will be created thanks to the planned realignment of Virginia. Note that it also has a bike path that runs down to the I Street stub--which will make for a decent cut-over to I and its bike lanes from 3rd St. SE all the way into Southwest (well, once that little part between 2nd and New Jersey opens!).

The split paths continue from 5th Street to 9th Street, as you see below (once you click to enlarge, that is):

East of 9th, into Virginia Avenue Park, the path being built by CSX disappears, but the park design seen at right shows a path that runs along the north end of the park to 11th Street, where we can all dream of a day that it hooks up with the path that is supposed to be built alongside Southeast Blvd. to Barney Circle, making for an alternate route to the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail near RFK without having to go along M Street SE.

As for the park itself, the current dog park will be reconfigured, with both "large dog" and "small dog" areas. Some of the original paving stones recently uncovered will be placed in the park as well.

A public meeting to receive resident comments and feedback is expected to be happening soon, which I'm sure will be announced two minutes after I finish this post. UPDATE: Yup, less than 24 hours later, I'm seeing that the public meeting will be on Monday, Sept. 28 at 6:30, at a location to be determined.

Take a look at the full lineup of PDFs for better detail.

UPDATE, 10/7: After the meeting, updated block-by-block designs were made available (including a revision to reestablish the connection between the 400 block of I Street and Virginia Avenue), along with notes from the meeting.

But I can't completely ignore the recent news that Ronald D. Paul Cos. has now bought 31,000 square feet of land south of N Street, directly across from the Nats Park, and just north of Camden's 1325 South Capitol apartment building.

And while WBJ says the company "is in no rush to build," according to SWill this is part of a joint venture with Altus Realty Partners to build 1319 South Capitol, a 250-unit building that could get underway in 2016.

The rendering below is paired with a photo of mine from 2013 from a strikingly similar angle:

As seen in the drawing, the new building is designed to for an L shape around the existing rowhouses on South Capitol.

The project will need to go through zoning hearings since that stretch of South Capitol St. SW is covered by the Capitol Gateway Overlay.

This tidbit also gives me an excuse to post photos of the Jas. T. Warring building (Est. 1918!) building that used to be on the site until it disappeared sometime in 2008 or early 2009.

The restaurant will take 5,000 square feet in the building's corner space (seen in the rendering) and will have both indoor and outdoor seating.

Circa also currently has locations in Foggy Bottom, Dupont Circle, and Clarendon, and is part of the Metropolitan Hospitality Group, which also operates three restaurants in Merrifield.

This is the first announcement of any tenants for 99 M (either retail or office space), though Skanska's Rob Ward is quoted by WBJ as saying that they are in talks with a "handful" of prospective office anchors.

Circa serves a full menu (including lunch and brunch) at its other locations, "offering American style cuisine with international flair."

This building is on the north end of the stretch of 1st Street between M and N just north of Nats Park, a strip where the Hampton Inn is wrapping up construction and where Grosvenor's Residence Inn and F1rst residential buildings are getting their vertical construction started.

It's not expected that 99 M will open before late 2017.

UPDATE: Circa Navy Yard now has a Facebook page and a web site.

But never fear, my feet and my camera worked very hard in recent days to bring it all together for you.

Let's take a walk from west to east, shall we?

* FROM 2ND TO 3RD: The little-used stretch of Virginia from where the tracks first go underground at 2nd Street east toward 3rd was the first to close, depriving me of a good Park Chelsea/800 New Jersey vantage point (waaah!).

There's still pedestrian access right up against 200 I as you see at right, but the street itself is mostly gone, except for the portion that allows access to 200 I's loading dock.

* FROM 3RD TO 4TH: The thorniest part of the entire project is of course the 300 block of Virginia, where the townhouses on the south side of the block are taking the lion's share of residential impact during the reconstruction. As you see below, the trees along both sides of the street are gone, and access to the houses' front sidewalk from the east end is gone, as prep work is done for a new temporary driveway from 3rd Street to the alley that runs behind the houses. It's anticipated that this block will close to traffic completely next month.

* FROM 4TH TO 5TH: The intersection of 4th and Virginia is shrinking as prep work begins to build the temporary decking that will allow traffic to cross over the tunnel construction. The stretch from 4th to 5th has been stripped of its asphalt, as you see in the second photo below and the one at the top of this post. You can also see in the below right photo why there will be a temporary closure for a few weeks next spring of the 6th Street exit ramp from the freeway, so that it can be shifted north to allow for tunnel work.

* FROM 5TH TO 7TH: Those coming down the freeway ramp are now greeted with a sea of orange, and with the loss of the right lane. (And pedestrians have lost any sidewalk access to this block.) This block will remain open with reduced lanes into 2017.

* FROM 7TH TO 9TH: The small stretch of Virginia between 7th and 8th is currently untouched, but the street is closed from east of 8th to 9th (as I grumble about how part of this area was JUST ripped up and rebuilt as part of the 11th Street Bridges project).

With help from a tree stump, I was able to get a look at not only the initial work on Virginia but the clearing of a big chunk of Virginia Avenue Park, all the way across to 11th Street. The community garden remains untouched, however.

* FROM 10TH TO 12TH: The construction bends south in Virginia Avenue Park to meet up with L Street at 10th (below left), and L is now closed at its intersection with 11th (below middle). East of 11th the construction site continues (below right), but after all of this walking I failed you and did not get across there to peek in. It's in this final section where CSX reports having found more than 8,800 original paving stones buried a few feet below ground, apparently laid sometime during the 1880s-1890s. CSX says it will use some of the stones in its restoration of Virginia Avenue Park and will provide the rest to DDOT.

The sidewalk on the west side of 11th between the freeway and M Street is closed, but a recent missive from CSX says this is temporary "while we install pilings and temporary bridge decks, and work on utility relocations."

E-mail updates on closures and other construction aspects are sent out by the project team pretty regularly, if you are not already signed up. The next monthly "Coffee with Chuck" meeting with the project's chief engineer is scheduled for Sept. 30 at 8 am at the Courtyard by Marriott. (Though perhaps at some point though there needs to be a "Warm Milk/Nightcap with Chuck" for folks who don't operate well before noon.)

And my Virginia Avenue Tunnel project page is now refreshed with a fair number of before-and-after pairings to be able to see the changes at the various intersections along the construction footprint.

* FROM FAR ABOVE, 2015: With thanks to reader Maelstrom for the heads up, I've added Google's new satellite view of the neighborhood from April 11, 2015 to my Images From Above page, which displays annotated images first from 1949 then every few years from 1988 to the present, showing the changing landscape of Near Southeast.

This From Above page allows you to choose certain photos to compare, and now you can also click them to pop them up, easily toggling between them for better comparisons. (The new pop-up option also now means I need to do a better job of cropping and matching the photos, but not today.)

This particular shot marks the changes since the October 2012, and there's a pile of them, as you can see by the yellow highlights, since it was taken just as excavation had gotten underway at four sites and work was well underway at quite a few others. (The 2017 image should be a beaut!)

* FROM NEAR ABOVE, 1965: DDOT has a cool Tumblr where they post long-ago photos of the city from their archives, and recently they tossed me a bone with two helicopter (?) shots of the construction of the Southeast/Southwest Freeway taken in 1965, one of which shows the northern portion of Near Southeast, including the building on the site where the Park Chelsea and 800 New Jersey are being built, that I looked at for years from the freeway but never took my own photos of before it was demolished around 2000. (WAAAAAH) I hope they don't mind my reproducing them here, and adding them to my Historic Photos page.

Of course, if you want to see what the construction of the Southeast Freeway looked like from ground level in about 1964, I can once again go to the well to show you this photo of my brother on the swings at Garfield Park, with the new freeway looming (and the former Washington Star building at 225 Virginia, now better known as the renovated 200 I, at rear). There's also the brief snippet of Super 8 film my grandmother took in 1969 from the tennis courts at South Capitol and I, where she panned across the freeway vista. (I'm the one burning rubber on the tricycle.)

And if that makes you want even more of a peek into the past , I can again point you to the series of posts my dad wrote for JDLand of what life on the Hill was like in the 1960s, with more photos and home movies.

First, at the large open space along 1st Street south of M that I've taken to calling Spooky Park in honor of the former inhabitants, the beginnings of the new foot paths through what will eventually be green space on the northern end of the block are in evidence, as is the new parking lot in the southwest corner, closest to the ballpark. (Not quite so obvious at the moment is that the southeast corner, at New Jersey and Tingey, is slated to be the new home for the trapeze school.)

These spaces are temporary uses for the site, which is expected to eventually be where the bulk of The Yards's office space inventory will be situated, perhaps as much as 1.5 million square feet.

Meanwhile, a few blocks to the north, a lovely sidewalk was laid down recently on the south side of the new one-block stretch of I Street between 2nd and New Jersey, which remains fenced off while WC Smith continues work on its Park Chelsea and 800 New Jersey apartment buildings.

Wouldn't it be keen if this lovely sidewalk could be opened for pedestrians and cyclists even while waiting for the stretch of road to come open? Especially for, say, all those neighborhood bloggers who are getting really tired of having to walk down to K Street and then back up to I Street while being tormented with the view of a fenced-off cut-through? Who will think of them??

Finally, it's nice to see a covered walkway being built along the Half Street frontage of the 909 Half Mystery Building construction site. Wouldn't it be keen if one could also be built on the north side, along I Street? (Dock 79 also gets props for its new covered walkway along Potomac Avenue, one I'm sure will be used by tens of people each week, but rules are rules.)

Otherwise, the masonry work continues slowly at the Lofts at Capitol Quarter (lower left), while the windows are in at the new Community Center (lower middle) and the Brig beer garden at 8th and L does show evidence of progress.

This is the location where Skanska is planning 99 M Street, a 233,000ish-square-foot building that would be the first new office development in the neighborhood since 1015 Half Street was finally completed back in 2011.

Excavation and foundation permits were both issued back in July, and my understanding is that the construction team is indeed "mobilizing," plus plans for a formal groundbreaking are in the works.

No tenants have been announced as yet.

When complete, the building will have 11,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, and one heck of a rooftop. And it will look slightly different from the former resident of the site.

Once the digging begins, it will then mean that the entire west side of 1st between M and N will be under construction, as the Hampton Inn on the south end of the block nears completion and the Residence Inn and F1st residential projects in the middle of the block are at the start of their vertical construction.

In the meantime, vertical construction is underway at the bottom of three of the neighborhood's other four holes in the ground, starting from below left with the 909 Half Mystery Residential Building, the joint Residence Inn/F1rst residential project on 1st Street, and at the Gallery at Capitol Riverfront residential building at New Jersey and M. The Homewood Suites at 50 M hasn't hit bottom yet (so to speak), but its crane is now up.

But is there about to be a new entry in the Holes in the Ground lineup? More on that soon!

Not only did this "Opening Fall 2015" sign recently materialize on the building's west face, but the hotel now appears in the Hampton Inn web site inventory, with a note that it "will soon be joining the Hilton Worldwide Portfolio of Brands and is presently accepting reservations for arrival November 19, 2015 and beyond."

The ad copy suggests meeting for drinks "in our rooftop lounge as you take in spectacular views over the cityscape, Anacostia Riverfront, and Nationals Park."

It also notes that the hotel is within walking distance of the ballpark, which may be underselling the location just a touch.

And with $587 million in DC's budget already earmarked for the project, DDOT can move forward with the next big step: choosing the design-build team, presumably from among the "final four" bidders identified back in February 2014, a process that is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2016.

The current Douglass Bridge is now 66 years old, and has been classified as "functionally obsolete." DDOT says that if it is not replaced "within the next five years, the bridge would require an estimated $110 million in major rehabilitation work and would need to be closed for more than a year."

(And, maybe I'm just getting older and turning into even more of a fraidy cat, but holy moly is the traffic making the current bridge vibrate like crazy when you walk the pedestrian path. I just don't remember it moving that much even six months ago. Which perhaps might explain this bit of crumbling I saw on Saturday.)

This is now at least my 120th post on the bridge and the plans to replace it, so I'll go with a very quick summary (this post from last December is a good catch-up option). As you can see in the pilfered-from-DDOT graphic above, the new bridge will run immediately parallel and downriver of the existing bridge, with two new large traffic ovals on its approaches. There will also be a much-needed reconstruction of the I-295/Suitland Parkway interchange.

The eventual second phase of this overall "South Capitol Street Corridor Project" will be streetscape improvements to the north end of the street, similar to the spiffening that the blocks from N to Potomac received back in 2007 that give the street more of an "urban boulevard" feel. This will include a full redesign of the M Street intersection and a reconfiguration of South Capitol's interchange with I-395.

The full Request for Proposals is expected to be released in the spring of 2016.

While waiting for the new bridge to arrive, I may have to put out calls for volunteers willing to let me tether myself to them when I need to take pictures from the existing bridge, because otherwise the authorities will probably have to respond to calls of an old lady frozen in place on the pedestrian path, holding a camera but too terrified to move.