Archives for January 2015

Mobilizing to Protect the Neighborhood: The 5333 Connecticut Avenue Development Plan, 1977-2013

On November 23, 2013, HCCDC board member Carl Lankowski sat down with Richard Graham, who has been active in the CNC—Connecticut Avenue Neighborhood Coalition—to discuss the history of the controversy surrounding plans to build a large glass structure on the block defined by Connecticut Avenue, Military Road, Kanawha Street and an alley running parallel to Connecticut Avenue. Though animated by the specifics of the 5333 case, the issues involved transcend it, creating an opportunity to offer insight into the broader characteristics of the Chevy Chase community, its outlook, capacity to act, and willingness to engage.

The Avalon Theatre Birth – and Rebirth

There is the maxim that says “Be careful what you wish. You may get it.” Rare in this way as so many others, the Avalon Theatre Project, which mid-wifed the rebirth, can boast: we have wished the theatre reborn, and it was reborn. Astonishingly, this rebirth has proved to be even as good -- really, really good -- as it was in our dream.

Politics & Prose – The Neighborhood Bookstore

There's an old retail maxim, "location, location, location," and Carla Cohen, a former urban planner with HUD, got location exactly right when she selected a vacant storefront in a what had been for years the most dreary retail grouping of stores on both sides of one block of Connecticut Avenue.

Snowmaggedon, February 2010

Snowmaggedon—February 2010, one of the biggest snows over the course of a century—did not particularly distinguish Chevy Chase DC from the surrounding region, but that is the week we moved to McKinley Street from our previous home in Friendship Heights DC.