* The Examiner looks (again) at the city still paying $500,000 a month in rent for 225 Virginia Avenue (aka the old Post Plant) even though there are no plans to use it, which apparently continues to drive Phil Mendelson nuts. The city requested expressions of interest from developers to take over the lease in the fall, but has yet to announce any deal. The Examiner piece frames the continued payments for an empty building against the District's budget shortfalls: "The last thing Fenty should do, Mendelson said, is 'dump the building below cost' just to escape the lease. 'It makes sense to me to use it,' he said." If you want the entire sordid past of the city's relationship with this building, browse through my 225 Virginia news items.

* Also from the Examiner, a story last week on how the murder of Diamond Teague remains unsolved: "Diamond Teague was 19 years old and going from the rough streets of D.C. on to college when he was gunned down on his Southeast Washington front stoop, and police are still looking for his killer. Teague had earned a scholarship to the University of the District of Columbia by helping with projects for the Earth Conservation Corps, a nonprofit organization for disadvantaged youth. Teague was the drummer at Galilee Baptist Church and an avid basketball player, and friends and family said he had managed to avoid the street life and violence that had marred his neighborhood." The park named in his honor is expected to open this spring.

* It's confirmed that Artomatic will be held in Near Southeast in May and June of 2009.

* The opening date for Diamond Teague Park continues to be set at March of '09. However, the BID's executive director said that Canal Park would be coming "in late 2010."

* The Capitol Riverfront area (which is a bit larger than my Near Southeast domain, since it also includes Buzzard Point) now has 1,100 residents.

Hopefully they'll be posting the spiffy Annual Report online, since it gives a lot of detail about development in the Capitol Riverfront area and the work that the BID does to promote and "brand" the neighborhood. (Though JDLand readers will be familiar with most of it already.) Best stat? The BID's Clean and Safe team members collected 3,600 bags of trash this year.

The keynote address was given by Greg Leisch of Delta Associates, and provided a flurry of statistics about the residential and commercial office space markets in DC compared to the rest of the country (in short: It Could Be Worse). Leisch said that he felt that the Capitol Riverfront area is well-positioned to benefit from the recovery that's expected to begin in late 2009/early 2010, in much the same way that the East End did after the 1990-91 recession and the Capitol Hill submarket did after the 2001-2002 recession. He also said that only about 1,600 new condos will have been sold across the Metro area in 2008. Ouch. You can see some of the stats from this presentation on the Delta web site.

UPDATE: From the BID, here's the Annual Report, and Greg Leisch's presentation.

Among the examples in the article are three delayed projects near the ballpark--WC Smith's 250 M Street office building, the residential and hotel portion of Monument's Half Street project, and also the Corcoran's Randall School development at Half and I, SW (which Monument pulled out of recently): "Perhaps no area is more central to the District's long-term ambitions than the streets around Nationals Park. At every opportunity, Fenty talks of a cosmopolitan destination featuring new parks, offices, stylish apartments and restaurants, all of it along the Anacostia River. Yet, how soon that vision materializes is fraught with uncertainty."

(Full disclosure: I provided a bit of basic status on ballpark-area projects for the piece, hence the "contributed" line.)

Some additional perspective: Certainly there's a slowdown afoot. (It's almost like there's some sort of cycle of boom and bust in commercial real estate!) I've been joking that I should just put a "Gone Fishin'" sign up here at JDLand during 2009, and come back in 2010 to see what's cooking, because other than the first offerings at the Yards and perhaps Canal Park {cough}, I'm not expecting much to get underway in the next little while. On the other hand, Capitol Quarter is moving forward, 1015 Half Street is now out of the ground, Diamond Teague Park is expected to open in the spring, and 100 M and 55 M and 909 New Jersey and Velocity will all be opening their doors before long, and perhaps the lure of another season of baseball will get some retail into the empty ground-floor spaces of those buildings and 20 M.

So, it's not like tumbleweeds are blowing down M Street or vines are growing on buildings a la Logan's Run--and it would be hard to make the case that it's the neighborhood's fault or the stadium's fault when the entire region is feeling the pain. The expectation would be that when the market improves, development in Near Southeast should pick up again. But we'll all just have to wait and see, won't we?

Having sworn off taking any more photos of The Mayor at the Microphone (unless he shows up in a Hawaiian shirt and swimtrunks or something), I decided to record the 20-minute event instead, so that the five or six of you interested in hearing the remarks can do so. (It's a 2.6-mb MP3 file; the first few seconds are rough, but then it settles in.)

If you listen, you'll hear how the mayor managed to cajole the notoriously camera-shy Stan Kasten into saying a few words about what's happening along the river and in the neighborhood from the point of view of the area's largest tenant. Deputy Mayor Neil Albert, DDOT Director Frank Seales, Office of Planning head Harriet Tregoning, and the director of the city's Office of the Environment George Hawkins spoke as well. There was some discussion throughout (and especially at the end) about how the slowing economy might be impacting both the city's plans and developers' projects, but the mayor remains optimistic.

The press release from the mayor's office sums up the main points of today's event, but here's the Near Southeast-specific highlights from both the remarks and some other chatter of the day. First up, news of the three big parks:

The city "will break ground at Diamond Teague Park by the end of 2008." (And the guide for tomorrow's fair says that the park will be completed in spring 2009, which is the same date we've been hearing for a while.) The mayor also touted the operating agreement with Forest City Washington to build and maintain the $42 million, 5-acre Park at the Yards (but you knew about this already), as well as the the agreement with the Canal Park Development Corp. to build the $13.1 million, three-block-long park. (No mention of school buses.)

Then there's the bridges: Reconstruction of the 11th Street Bridges is scheduled to begin in mid-2009. (The shortlist of firms vying for the design-build contract was announced a few weeks ago.) Whether we actually see heavy equipment moving in mid-2009, or whether this just marks the first part of the design-build project is not quite clear. I was also told that the contract to demolish the flyover ramps to and from RFK could be completed soon, and that demolition would happen not long after the contract is signed.

Plus, the final Environmental Impact Statement for South Capitol Street and the Douglass Bridge is expected in spring 2009; that's when we'll hear which of the four bridge designs has been chosen.

As for the river itself, the city has started real-time water quality monitoring, updated automatically online 24 hours a day. There's also now the Anacostia 2032 Plan "to make the Anacostia River boatable, swimmable, and fishable in 25 years." And a Green Summer Jobs Corps was created earlier this year to "engage youth in the cleaning and greening of District neighborhoods and parks and to introduce them to green-collar job opportunities."

Finally, a planning process is underway to revamp Boathouse Row, the stretch of boat clubs along the Anacostia between 11th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. (I took a bunch of photos near the boathouses a few months back, and have been lazy about ever getting them posted, though you can see a few boathouse-free shots of the environs here and here.)

There's more about projects elsewhere along the Anacostia, but other bloggers get to cover those. Will update this post if there's any media coverage from today's event, and will have a fresh post on Saturday after the fair. I imagine I'll Twitter a bit from those festivities (like I did from today's); remember that if you aren't a Twitter-er, you can read my tweets on the JDLand homepage--check 'em out frequently, because I do sometimes post news there first, before I write full blog entries.

SATURDAY FAIR UPDATE: They're now going to be providing free shuttle bus service from the New Jersey & M Metro entrance to/from the ballpark, from 12:30 pm to 5:15 pm. (After they heard somewhere that the Half and M subway entrance is going to be closed on Saturday.)

Here's what the press release says about the park (emphases mine): "The District will use the $800,000 contribution from Florida Rock to help pay for Diamond Teague Park, which is dedicated to the memory of Diamond Teague, a member of the Earth Conservation Corps (ECC) who was murdered five years ago. The Park will include a water taxi; new boat slips for the ECC and fire and life safety vessels; an environmental pier for educational groups, kayaks and canoes; and a riverfront boardwalk and a half-acre park. Construction of the park is expected to start in November and will be completed this spring."

The event was also touted as an "unveiling" of the plans for the Florida Rock site, which I'm assuming (since I wasn't able to be at this event today) haven't changed too much since they were approved by the Zoning Commission in May. The press release has the raw numbers, which don't look too different: "Florida Rock's 'Riverfront on the Anacostia' will include about 560,000 square feet of residential and hotel space - with 29,000 square feet is reserved for affordable housing. It will also include about 545,000 square feet of commercial office space, at least 80,000 square feet of retail and a large waterfront plaza with a waterfront promenade."

But there is one line in the release that's going to chagrin those who have been looking forward to this project: "Construction could begin as soon as 2011." During the time leading up to the final zoning approvals, RiverFront's developers had said that it was possible that the first phase of the project--the eastern office building and the public plaza, adjacent to Teague Park--could see construction begin in fall 2009.

* The mayor's schedule today has a "Diamond Teague Press Conference" scheduled for 3:15 pm at First and Potomac, on the grand staircase at Nationals Park. Alas, I can't be there, but perhaps it's some sort of status update on the construction of the park, which is supposed to get underway this fall.

* A little off-topic, but on Tuesday night (Oct. 7) there is a debate between the city's seven candidates for the two at-large council seats, at Tyler Elementary at 10th and G streets, SE. Then, after the forum, there's a Second Presidential Debate Watch Party being held at Finn Maccool's on Eighth Street.

* And, today (Oct. 6) is the last day to register to vote in DC for the general election. The DC Board of Elections office will be open until midnight. No excuses!

On the consent agenda of Thursday's National Capital Planning Commission meeting is a request for "approval of preliminary and final site development plans" for Diamond Teague Park, the new public park to be built by the city on the Anacostia River at the foot of First Street, SE, just across Potomac Avenue from Nationals Park.

As I've written about in the past, plans call for piers to be built around the red brick Capitol Pumphouse that is home to the Earth Conservation Corps, and there will also be floating docks that will allow visitors to see the wetlands along the water's edge (one of the last waterfront segments in the area not to have been bulkheaded, apparently). Benches, granite paths, and a garden will be installed, along with a memorial to Diamond Teague, the ECC volunteer who was murdered in 2003. Eventually this park will be connected via a floating boardwalk to the Waterfront Park at the Yards.

In the Executive Director's recommendation, the NCPC commends the city "for linking this project to planned open space along the waterfront to provide a continuous public open space system along the Anacostia River; for developing a portion of the Anacostia River as a high-quality urban park with a mix of recreational opportunities that emphasizes the river's ecological and scenic qualities and character; and for providing accommodations for a water taxi system to serve the neighborhood and the Washington Nationals' baseball stadium."

Statements over the summer from the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (which is stewarding the park) indicated that work will begin on the park this fall, with this first phase completed by spring 2009. (And yes, that includes the water taxi piers. Though there's been no word yet of any deals with taxi companies.)

As I scrounge around the interwebs in a desperate search for news, I see that on June 27 the Baltimore District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the city's permit application for Diamond Teague Park, the 39,000-sq-ft public park planned for the land where First Street ends at Potomac Avenue, on the banks of the Anacostia River across from Nationals Park. The office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development tells me that the receipt of this permit allows the city to complete the design of the park, which will include water taxi piers surrounding the little red brick pumphouse used by the Earth Conservation Corps. While there's still DC and National Park Service permits to be acquired, the city expects to begin construction on the first phase of the park this fall--yes, this means that the water taxi piers would be completed by Opening Day 2009, if all goes according to the current schedule. The second phase of the park will come if and when WASA vacates the southern portion of its property. See my Diamond Teague project page for recent renderings of the park's design and photos of the site. The park is named for an Earth Conservation Corps volunteer who was murdered in 2003.

(Stay tuned over the next few days for some additional interesting tidbits I've unearthed from digging through public records.)