Kaid Benfield's Blog
Sean Taylor, 1983-2007
November 27, 2007
Posted by Kaid Benfield
People who aren’t sports fans don’t get it about what sports can do to enhance community. They scoff at us for watching games, make cynical comments about athletes and team management, oppose any public financial support for arenas and stadiums. They aren’t always wrong in their criticisms, but there is a lot that they are missing.
Me, I had season tickets for a decade to our city’s pro football team, the Washington Redskins (no, I don’t like the name, either, but let’s save that for another day). I gave them up this year, in part because of the major hassle getting to and from their suburban stadium. And I have season tickets to Georgetown Hoyas basketball, where the home games are just a short walk from my office. There’s actually quite a smart growth story in the difference between the two locations; the downtown arena has been wonderful for DC’s revitalization, and draws 80% of its fans from mass transit.
One of my cycling friends, Diane, was once startled to learn all this about me: “But you’re not the type!” Oh?
Being a fan gives me something in common with people I’d otherwise never know. Go to a football game sometime and you won’t find yourself surrounded by public interest lawyers. It’s a working class fan base for the most part, a mix of urban African-Americans and whites whose roots are in nearby rural Virginia and Maryland. And a smattering of people like me, of course. It’s a similar crowd in some ways to what I see when I show up for jury duty, or have one of those hellish days at the DMV when I need to bring some sort of paperwork up to date. Only at the game, we’re having fun together. This is called community, folks.
We’re not having fun today.
Arguably the Redskins’ best player, 24-year-old Sean Taylor was gunned down in his home night before last. The doctors and nurses kept him alive as long as they could, but they lost him early this morning. So did we. Our community of sports fans is unified again, but this time in mourning.
It’s not like losing someone you know and love personally, at least not for those of us who didn’t know him. (He leaves behind, among others, an 18-month-old daughter.) But it is still unsettling, and it hurts. Taylor was a controversial figure when he first arrived in DC, exhibiting careless, over-aggressive play on the field and getting into petty trouble off of it. But by all accounts he was maturing. It certainly showed on the field, where he was having an all-pro season before an injury a couple of weeks ago. People who knew him well described him as unfailingly polite and respectful around his teammates and coaches.
Horrible.
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- Kaid Benfield
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Comments
Darik Elwan — Nov 29 2007 02:01 AM
Mr. Benfield:
Your viewpoint on the proposed designation as a landmark of the 'brutal' Third Church of Christ, Scientist was refreshing. Unfortunately, involuntary historic preservation is one of those issues which upsets people when it is explained to them but doesn't affect enough people for something to be done about it.
In this case, the Church committed to the location in the early 1900s. They are committed to being an urban congregation. They weathered the riots and stayed put when so many other churches which followed their congregants out to the suburbs.
The Church commissioned and paid for the buildings which two private groups, DCPL and the Committee of 100, are now trying to ossify around them. The building systems are old and wasteful (they have to heat, cool, repair and maintain inefficient buildings built for a large congregation which now have far fewer people in it at any time) and it is almost prohibitively expensive to replace the custom-designed fixtures. In short the buildings deplete the Church's (and the earth's) resources while failing to meet its needs . All they want to do is husband their own property in such a way as to allow them to continue their activities in the same location and they are working with a acclaimed architect to do so.
ICG Properties, the developer with whom Third Church is working to design a solution, has proposed a LEED-rated, mixed-use development in combination with 1600 K Street next door. This would keep the restaurant uses in place, improve the public space between the two buildings, improve traffic flow along K Street (by rationalizing parking and service access down the alley from the service road) and keep the Church downtown. Benefits would also include energy efficiency gains from LEED conversion and increased density , as well as increased public space and entertainment opportunities downtown. It is worth noting that ICG Properties is a homegrown firm that has won awards for both adaptive re-use of historic buildings and new urbanism (www.icgproperties.com). ICG Properties' last adaptive re-use project, the Gallup Building, consolidated two of Gallup's suburban office locations into the Penn Quarter and is on HPRB's tour of successful preservation projects.
Perhaps most astounding is the attempt to preserve a 36-year old structure, which has already been deemed "non-contributing" to the 16th street historic district, recently expanded to include 1600 K Street and the Church by HPRB itself (property owners had half a day to object at a hearing before they were summarily ignored). Despite the absurdity of a 'non-contributing" structure being preserved as an historic landmark, the historic district already guarantees HPRB design approval over anything built there.
In short, this is a proposed landmark designation opposed unanimously by the property owners and the Advisory Neighborhood Commission which threatens to destroy generational opportunity to improve an important corner in downtown DC by making it greener and more lively. All this while adding density within two blocks of two major Metro stations, allowing a downtown congregation to continue its activities downtown and deepening the city property tax base by over $100 million.
Let's leave aside the troubling behaviour of an unaccountable and unelected HPRB for a moment. Let's leave aside the fact that they threaten to ignore the ANC and even Federal criteria for landmark designation. Let's leave aside the practical and financial impacts for the Church. Most of us support preservation efforts when it improves our urban fabric and our quality of life. Taking into account the benefits at stake here, what exactly are DCPL and obnoxiously-named Committee of 100 for the Federal City trying to preserve in this case?
The Church has posted its viewpoint and the surprising findings of the architectural historian at www.thirdchurchfreedom.org.
Kaid Benfield — Nov 29 2007 10:19 AM
Thanks for that additional perspective, Darik, and good luck with the project. You'll need some.