The District of Columbia Office of Planning is shining a light on our neighborhood. The OP wants, as most residents do, for the Mount Pleasant commercial strip and the neighborhood as a while to thrive. Currently, thrive is not the word I'd use to describe mount Pleasant Street. Stunted, stagnant, other words, but not thriving. That's where we want to be though and this study and plan are a huge step in the right direction.
The plan offered by the OP is broken up into four files available on their Mount P Revitalization Strategy Page. It's 89 pages long and printed in both English and Spanish. Pretty comprehensive. In addition to laying out the existing conditions of the neighborhood, the plan discusses the publicly perceived issues facing commercial and residential development as well as the official strategy to mitigate the sordid state of progress we've been enveloped in lately.
There has already been plenty of input over the years by the public and those one liners, meetings, brainstorms and testimonies have been included in the strategy plan as well. As I said, it is fairly comprehensive. However, there is still time to comment on the draft plan itself. The best way may be in person. The Office of Planning will allow oral testimony via a Mayoral hearing at Bancroft Elementary School (1755 Newton St NW). Held on a Saturday no less: June 19 from 10:00am until 12:00pm. Kudos for having this thing on a weekend; should increase the chance of attendance for a lot of us. You'll need to register before hand in order to testify. See the DC OP page for details. Otherwise you can submit comments via written letter (imagine that) or email.
This is great news and although it promises to be a slow and probably contentious process, let's go ahead and get it all on the table so we can move ahead, keeping Mount Pleasant one of the best neighborhoods in the District.
