[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CHANGES TO THE HEIGHT ACT: SHAPING
WASHINGTON, D.C., FOR THE FUTURE, PART II
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 2, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-80
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://www.house.gov/reform
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
DARRELL E. ISSA, California, Chairman
JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland,
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Ranking Minority Member
JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
JIM JORDAN, Ohio Columbia
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TIM WALBERG, Michigan WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan JIM COOPER, Tennessee
PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania JACKIE SPEIER, California
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee MATTHEW A. CARTWRIGHT,
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina Pennsylvania
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
DOC HASTINGS, Washington ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
ROB WOODALL, Georgia PETER WELCH, Vermont
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky TONY CARDENAS, California
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia STEVEN A. HORSFORD, Nevada
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico
KERRY L. BENTIVOLIO, Michigan Vacancy
RON DeSANTIS, Florida
Lawrence J. Brady, Staff Director
John D. Cuaderes, Deputy Staff Director
Stephen Castor, General Counsel
Linda A. Good, Chief Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on December 2, 2013................................. 1
WITNESSES
Ms. Harriet Tregoning, Director, D.C. Office of Planning
Oral Statement............................................... 7
Written Statement............................................ 11
Mr. Marcel C. Acosta, Executive Director, National Capital
Planning Commission
Oral Statement............................................... 21
Written Statement............................................ 23
APPENDIX
The Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Opening Statement................ 56
The Height Master Plan for Washington D.C., Executive Summary.... 59
The Height Master Plan for Washington D.C., Final Evaluation &
Recommendations................................................ 70
Selected Visual Modeling Images.................................. 124
Letter to Mayor Gray and Mr. Preston Bryant Jr. from Chairman
Issa........................................................... 143
Letter to Harriet Tregoning from the Developer Roundtable........ 145
ANC IC Opposition to Proposed Draft Recommendations on Changes to
Height Act..................................................... 147
Letter to Chairman Issa from Mayor Vincent C. Gray............... 149
Letter to Chairman Issa from Chairman of the D.C. Council, Phil
Mendelson...................................................... 150
Referral of Proposed Legislation................................. 151
Letter to Eleanor Holmes Norton from Historic Districts Coalition 157
Letter from U.S. Commission of Fine Arts......................... 159
Letter from Capitol Hill Restoration Society..................... 161
Testimony of Commissioner Kathy Henderson, 5D05 and Chairman
Advisory Neighborhood 5D....................................... 171
Statement for the Record of William N. Brown, President,
Association, Oldest Inhabitants of D.C......................... 174
Testimony on Proposed Expansion of the DC Height Act by Loretta
Neumann, VP, Alliance to Preserve the Civil War Defenses of
Washington..................................................... 176
Letters from Kalorama Citizens Association....................... 178
Statement of James C. Dinegar, President & CEO, Greater
Washington Board of Trade...................................... 180
Statement from American Institute of Architects.................. 183
Statement From Norman M. Glasgow, Jr., Holland & Knight.......... 185
Board of Zoning Adjustment....................................... 188
Statement from Coalition for Smarter Growth...................... 205
Comments of the District of Columbia Building Industry
Association on the Reports filed by the District of Columbia &
NCPC........................................................... 207
Testimony of Christopher H. Collins, Counsel District of Columbia
Bldg. Industry Assoc........................................... 211
Premium Content from Washington Business Journal by Whayne S.
Quin........................................................... 220
CHANGES TO THE HEIGHT ACT: SHAPING WASHINGTON, D.C., FOR THE FUTURE,
PART II
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Monday, December 2, 2013
House of Representatives,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Darrell E. Issa
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Issa, Meadows, Norton and
Connolly.
Staff Present: Ali Ahmad, Senior Communications Advisor;
Will L. Boyington, Press Assistant; Molly Boyl, Deputy General
Counsel and Parliamentarian; Lawrence J. Brady, Staff Director;
Daniel Bucheli, Assistant Clerk; John Cuaderes, Deputy Staff
Director; Howard A. Denis, Senior Counsel; Adam P. Fromm,
Director of Member Services and Committee Operations; Linda
Good, Chief Clerk; Mark D. Marin, Deputy Staff Director for
Oversight; James Robertson, Senior Professional Staff Member;
Laura L. Rush, Deputy Chief Clerk; Sarah Vance, Assistant
Clerk; Rebecca Watkins, Communications Director; Jedd Bellman,
Minority Counsel; Peter Kenny, Minority Counsel; Adam Koshkin,
Minority Research Assistant; Julia Krieger, Minority New Media
Press Secretary; Elisa LaNier, Minority Director of Operations;
Daniel Roberts, Minority Staff Assistant/Legislative
Correspondent; and Juan McCullum, Minority Clerk.
Chairman Issa. Good morning, and welcome. The committee
will come to order.
The Oversight Committee exists to secure two fundamental
principles: First, Americans have a right to know that the
money Washington takes from them is well spent; and, second,
Americans deserve an efficient, effective government that works
for them. Our duty on the Oversight and Government Reform
Committee is to secure these rights. Our solemn responsibility
is to hold government accountable to taxpayers, because
taxpayers have a right to know what they get from their
government. So our job is to work tirelessly in partnership
with citizen watchdogs to deliver the facts to the American
people and bring genuine reform to the Federal bureaucracy.
Today's hearing is an oversight hearing, but it is not on
waste, fraud or abuse. In this case today's hearing is on
neglect. Limitations on the building heights in the District of
Columbia stretch back to 1791 when President George Washington
issued regulations on buildings in the city, stating that the
wall of no house is to be higher than 40 feet to the roof in
any part of the city, nor shall any be lower than 35 feet on
any of the avenues. As we all know, George Washington cared a
great deal about architecture and helped in the design of this
city and, of course, the roads leading to it.
In 1889 and again in 1910, Federal legislation was enacted
to restrict building heights in the District of Columbia. The
Heights of Building Act of 1910 was the last time that major
legislation was considered before this body. At that time it
modified the maximum heights for buildings and added
enforcement measures for the first time, and it made clear that
there were Federal interests in maintaining certain
characteristics of the city, and that is true today.
Under the law, no building could be erected higher than the
width of the adjoining street plus 20 feet, in residential
areas that is. No building could be constructed higher than 85
feet in commercial areas. No building could be erected greater
than 130 feet between the streets of First Street and 15th
Street, Northwest. And on the Pennsylvania side, on the north
side of Pennsylvania Avenue, there was a height restriction
capped at 160 feet. One hundred sixty feet. At that point it's
only a couple of inches higher than 60 feet to the top of the
White House. So even then the heights above the most revered
building in Washington were 100 feet above the White House.
The 1910 law very rightfully paralleled limitations in many
U.S. cities during the time. However, unlike other cities who
began modifying their height restrictions in 1915, the District
of Columbia has maintained largely unchanged for 100 years. I
might note all of these laws and the last attention to the
Height Act came long before home rule, long before the city
began organizing and running itself in a modern way.
Last year, on July 19th, 2012, our D.C. Subcommittee held a
hearing to explore whether or not this century-old law should
be modified and, if so, how. After that subcommittee hearing, I
wrote the National Capital Planning Commission and the District
of Columbia to ask them to work jointly to answer these
questions. Although the right and the obligation lies
completely within Congress, under home rule there is no
question that it should be done in concert with the desires of
the people of the District of Columbia.
Ultimately, the District of Columbia Office of Planning and
the NCPC came to completely different conclusions about the
need for change of the Height Act, and even further, there
seems to be a growing dissension between city councilmen and
the Mayor. Today we will hear from NCPC and the D.C. Office of
Planning on their separate proposals.
I am here today because we will not close the Height Act
consideration without full consideration, without full
recognition of the benefits and the challenges in any changes
to the Height Act and let it go to sleep for another 100 years.
Would you put the first picture up, please? Quickly.
During the process of review--go to the next one--the next
one. There we go. The next one. One more. Next one. There we
go.
During the process of review, we began to look at things
that other cities have done and are great establishments.
Go one more picture.
And we understand that this may not be exactly everyone's
look, but you will notice that they're architecturally
different than they are today. The recognition is that 100
years from now, we will not have all the early 1900 buildings.
One more.
It may look like this.
One more. Back. Back one more.
It may look like this, or it may look much like it does
today.
The question is will it be in keeping with the best
interests of the Federal city as the seat of government for the
American people and consistent with the best interests of the
people of the District of Columbia? That's a question we're
going to hear today. That's the reason this committee is
putting so much time into it.
Chairman Issa. To give another opening statement, I would
recognize the gentlelady from the District of Columbia.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank you,
Chairman Issa, for scheduling today's hearing as a follow-up to
your hearing last year, the first hearing in anyone's memory on
the Height Act. In more than 20 years of service, neither
business interests nor D.C. residents have approached me
regarding changing the Height Act, but I supported Chairman
Issa's call for a hearing on whether a 100-year-old law
continues to serve the interests of both the Federal Government
and the District of Columbia.
The witnesses at that hearing, the National Planning
Commission, the D.C. Office of Planning, the D.C. Chief
Financial Officer, architect Roger Lewis, the D.C. Building
Industry Association and the Committee of 100 on the Federal
City opened the issue. But the chairman wisely called on D.C.
and NCPC to conduct a joint study of the Height Act, which I
supported, with results that bring us here today.
May I add how much I appreciate that this hearing reflects
the chairman's pattern of unfailing support not only for the
city's ongoing needs, including most recently his strong
assistance in keeping the D.C. government open throughout the
entire fiscal year after the Federal Government shut down, and
the chief financial officer vacancy and salary bill he quickly
got through committee and to the floor. I also appreciate the
chairman's energetic and innovative work for budget autonomy
and his strong support on many occasions for home rule, which
he has raised as a factor in connection with the Height Act.
As the Height Act study unfolded in community meetings and
hearings over the past year, it became clear that many D.C.
residents fear the loss of the unique horizontal scale that is
part of the city's hometown identity, and that there are
differing views on whether or how it should be changed. In
fact, the D.C. government itself appears divided. Twelve of the
thirteen members of the D.C. Council cosponsored a resolution
calling for no changes to the Height Act, quote, ``at this
time,'' while the Mayor has recommended several changes to the
Height Act.
It is not surprising that the Height Act stirs passions and
divisions. The Height Act implicates many important issues:
home rule, D.C. status as the Nation's Capital, economic
development, city planning, affordable housing, architecture,
historic preservation, among many others. The District Office
of Planning argues that changes may be necessary to accommodate
projected population and job growth and to reduce the cost of
housing in the future, and that the historic character of the
city can still be preserved.
Opponents of changes argue just the opposite. They say that
there is sufficient capacity in D.C. to accommodate projected
population and job growth, that changes would increase the cost
of housing, that changes would slow the spread of economic
development across the city to areas that need development, and
that changes would destroy the historic character of the city.
At bottom, the issue raised by the study the chairman
requested unavoidably is if changes ever prove necessary, who
should make changes to the Height Act affecting hometown D.C.,
the D.C. government or the Federal Government, and under what
circumstances?
Every year the underlying development issues have been part
of my own work here in the Congress. I spend considerable time
both fending off attacks on home rule and proposing its
expansion with local democracy, full congressional voting
rights, budget autonomy and statehood, which have been and will
continue to be overriding concerns.
Yet like any Member of Congress, one of my principal jobs
also has been to bring jobs and economic development to my
district. In my role as the chair of the Economic Development
Subcommittee, I took great interest in land development to
bring affordable housing and jobs to the city. Much of the
city's development depends upon the Federal Government either
because it owns a significant percentage of the land throughout
the city, or because the location of Federal agencies in
neighborhoods almost always stimulates the mixed-use
development that residents desire.
My bills and other committee work have created new
neighborhoods all away from downtown. In NOMA, at the Capitol
Riverfront, on the Southwest Waterfront, and in Ward 8 where
the new Department of Homeland Security complex of buildings is
rejuvenating Martin Luther King, Jr., Avenue. Naturally I am
interested in whether the spreading of development away from
downtown would be helped or hampered if space for Federal and
private offices were allowed in taller buildings.
When it comes to the Height Act, I wear two hats. As a
Federal official I have an obligation to protect monumental
Washington as a national symbol, as well as the values
residents have come to associate over time with the scale of
city life imposed by the Height Act. At the same time, as the
congressional representative for the District, I have spent my
career fighting for the District to have the right to make its
own decisions, as every other local government in our country
does. I have not regarded the two obligations as
irreconcilable.
The differences between today's two witnesses, one Federal
and one local, should not be allowed to mask internal
differences within the District that the city should confront.
I have not had the opportunity to speak personally with Mayor
Gray as yet to hear his views, but D.C. Council chair Phil
Mendelson called me, and in that conversation I learned more
about his concerns and perhaps the concerns of some other
members of the council.
Unlike any other issue I have encountered while serving in
the House, the concern seems not to be with what the Congress
does, but with what the District itself will do. How ironic.
There is fear that economic forces, perhaps pulled by business
interests, would lead to undesirably tall buildings. The
implicit argument is that Federal authority is necessary to
protect the District from itself.
Although in my own congressional work on development here,
no developer has ever approached me about the Height Act, there
is some evidence from a 1990 council bill of only three
congressional disapproval resolutions overturning D.C.
legislation since the 1973 Home Rule Act. One involved the
Height Act. In that case the council was convinced by a
developer that buildings adjacent to public buildings could
exceed the overall limits set forth in the Height Act because
the Height Act permitted the District commissioners to select a
schedule of heights for buildings next to public buildings.
Congress, along with the Government Accounting Office and the
Justice Department, disagreed, and the legislation became one
of only three that have been disapproved through that process.
If the city had authority on its own to change the Height
Act in hometown D.C., such changes might come to Congress for a
layover period, but there might be no violation of the Federal
interest to justify congressional intervention. Surely there is
a better solution than coming to Congress to request that
Congress violate a home rule decision or having the D.C. Height
Act with too little defense against local interpretations and
exceptions with results opponents fear.
Considering the strong views of District residents on home
rule and, candidly, the risk to home rule posed by internal
disagreement, I believe that elected officials have an
obligation to avoid home rule division if at all possible. Are
the differences between the NCPC and the D.C. Office of
Planning so far apart that they cannot be reconciled? Even the
D.C. Office of Planning position would not free the District
from the existing multilayered Federal and District planning
processes.
Are there changes in the comprehensive plan process, zoning
process or local legislation that would give residents a
meaningful opportunity to deter or stop risky changes in the
District by the District? If changes by Congress to the Height
Act are contemplated, should they be contingent on changes in
the comprehensive plan process, zoning processes, local
legislation or other changes as well? Can discussions between
the council and the Mayor reconcile their differences between
the two positions we hear today?
I hope the city confronts the issue before us consistent
with its position on the scale of heights in our city and its
position for two centuries that the District, not Congress,
must make its own decisions. I appreciate very much the
intensive work of today's very knowledgeable witnesses and look
forward to hearing from them and to learning more from them of
their study about the Height Act, whether changes are
necessary, and, if so, the best way to see that they occur
responsibly.
I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Issa. I thank you, Eleanor.
Chairman Issa. Anyone else want to make any short comments?
Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Very briefly. I just want to thank the
witnesses for coming and really want to thank the chairman.
This particular issue of D.C. autonomy has been one that the
chairman has championed really in a bipartisan way, which is
really refreshing and unique, and I just look forward to the
testimony, specifically looking forward to the testimony from
an economic standpoint on why we need to address this now.
So as a developer and as someone who's made a living for
many, many years in the real estate business, I look forward to
your expert testimony.
I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Issa. Thank you.
Chairman Issa. Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to
applaud you and Ranking Member Norton for your leadership on
this issue. This committee has a tradition of respecting and
trying to move forward home rule for the District of Columbia,
and I thank you for your leadership in this area.
You know, it is important. You mentioned, Mr. Chairman, in
your opening remarks that this issue goes back to 1791 in the--
--
Chairman Issa. But not I.
Mr. Connolly. But not you nor I. But it is interesting to
note that the correspondence governing this issue between
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington actually expressed
concern--the height issue was less an aesthetic issue and more
of a very practical one. They were concerned about fire. In
those days, in the 18th century, fire was an ever-present
hazard in all human habitation, in all cities, and not least of
which the new Federal Capital City. So some of those concerns
are long past us.
I would like to make three points as somebody who comes
from local government. One is that the Constitution and the
founding of D.C. had within it a built-in tension between the
needs of the Federal Capital and, therefore, the role of
Congress and the President, and the fact that a burgeoning
local government needed to be established to deal with the
local issues governing any city like Washington, and that
tension is built into the system.
I come down in favor of moving home rule and full voting
rights to full expansion. I think D.C. disenfranchisement in
terms of the franchise and the fact that my dear friend and
colleague Ms. Norton does not have a vote on the floor of the
full House I think is really a national shame, and politics
shouldn't have anything to do with it. The citizens of D.C. are
entitled to representation, full representation, voting
representation in the United States Congress.
Finally, I operate on the principle that, generally
speaking, deference should be given to the local government. It
is not the role of Congress to play mediator between the Mayor
and D.C. City Council. Their form of government allows them to
resolve those differences, as any other municipality in America
does. So I think we should be loathe to involve ourselves
unless clear and compelling Federal issues are involved, and
that this issue, like many other issues involving home rule,
should largely be left to the discretion of the local
government.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the testimony
this morning.
Chairman Issa. Thank you.
Chairman Issa. All Members will have 7 days to submit
additional opening statements and extraneous material for the
record.
Chairman Issa. We now recognize our distinguished panel.
Welcome. Ms. Harriet Tregoning is the Director of the D.C.
Office of Planning. Mr. Marcel Acosta is the Executive Director
of the National Capital Planning Commission, or NCPC.
Pursuant to the rules, would you please rise to take the
oath and raise your right hands.
Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you give will be
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Please be seated.
Let the record reflect both witnesses answered in the
affirmative.
My script says you have limited time, 5 minutes and so on,
but this hearing is all about what your two organizations have
done, so if you need a little extra time, I'm not going to cut
you off, and we're going to do the same with questioning.
So please, Ms. Tregoning.
STATEMENT OF HARRIET TREGONING
Ms. Tregoning. Thank you very much.
Good morning Chairman Issa, Congresswoman Norton, members
and staff of the committee. I am Harriet Tregoning, the
Director of the District of Columbia Office of Planning. Thank
you very much for this opportunity to appear before your
committee today on behalf of Mayor Vincent C. Gray in support
of the District of Columbia's proposed changes to the 1910
Federal Heights of Buildings Act. We've made recommendations
for very modest changes to the Height Act intended to give the
District the opportunity to exercise local autonomy in
determining the future heights of buildings in areas of the
city where Federal interests are less significant, while at the
same time maintaining existing protections for Federal
interests over height.
The District of Columbia is a growing city, now robustly
adding population after more than five decades of steady
population loss. Since the 2010 census we have grown to 632,323
District residents as of July of last year, and we continue to
add more than 1,000 residents a month.
The District has begun to realize a long-held aspiration of
retaining and attracting middle-class households and families
back to the city. The population growth has boosted sales and
income tax revenue even during the last recession. We are now
seeing a pattern. Added residents are bringing increases in
District tax revenues, which then fund greater investment in
services, in infrastructure, in other amenities for residents,
workers and visitors to the District.
This turnaround has been the result of very hard work by
successive mayoral administrations and councils addressing
crime, city services, transportation and transit, neighborhood
retail, public school performance, upgrades of public
infrastructure, new or revitalized libraries, parks, rec
centers and schools. This hard-won population growth and the
accompanying boost in local tax base are critical to the
District's fiscal stability because this city has nearly 50
percent of its land off the tax rolls.
Our fiscal stability has to be sought and maintained on a
much smaller, less diverse tax base than other cities. Dr.
Gandhi, the District's Chief Financial Officer, testified
before this committee last year that allowing taller and denser
buildings by relaxing height and density restrictions would
generate more residential units and commercial space, thereby
helping the District more easily accommodate future population
and job growth, as well increasing the value of the District's
property base over time. These changes, he noted, would
eventually slow the rising cost of housing and office spaces,
already becoming too expensive for some residents and
businesses.
The concern that we bring before you today is that the
current Height Act limits constrain the city's ability to grow
and accommodate future demand, which in turn threatens our
ability to maintain our fiscal stability and continue to
provide critical services to residents, workers and visitors of
the city. The District proposes allowing the city to have more
autonomy to work with its residents, the D.C. Council and the
National Capital Planning Commission to determine building
height maximums throughout a collaborative future comprehensive
plan process.
There's one thing I want to emphasize about this proposal.
The opposition we've heard, and we have heard opposition, to
our recommendations, is primarily about opposition to actually
and perhaps immediately raising building heights and doing so
without the consultation with residents that they deserve. This
is not what we are proposing.
The District is asking Congress for the ability to
determine with our residents, with our council, with the
National Capital Planning Commission whether to increase any
height, and, if so, when, where and how to do it. The current
law makes any such conversation moot, which is why we've never
had that conversation before.
As more fully detailed in our report, we examined various
reasonable future growth scenarios for D.C. The high-growth
scenario that we examined using growth rates that are
considerably lower than our current rate of growth indicated
that the District will be experiencing capacity shortages well
before 2040, even if we rezoned land throughout the entire
city. Currently zoned land available for development would
become increasingly scarce and see price pressure well before
the next decade.
The District of Columbia and the National Capital Planning
Commission recently completed the Joint Height Master Plan
requested by this committee to determine the extent to which
the Height Act continues to serve both the Federal and local
interests. The study was guided by three core principles which
were designed to ensure protection of the Federal interests:
Number one, ensuring the prominence of Federal landmarks and
monuments by protecting their views and settings; number two,
maintaining the horizontality of our monumental city skyline;
and, three, minimizing the negative impacts to nationally
significant historic resources.
We modeled different buildings heights in the city using
over 200 panoramic aerial and street-level views of the city in
various locations inside and outside the District of Columbia.
These modeling studies in particular indicated that there were
options for making modest changes to the Height Act while fully
addressing the core principles of the height master plan and
protecting the Federal interests.
We also conducted analysis of future population and
employment growth, existing development capacity, and the
potential new capacity under various approaches to manage
height to determine how well the District could accommodate
future demands. The analysis demonstrated that the current
Height Act limits constrain existing capacity to accommodate
our growth over the next three decades, and will increasingly
do so in subsequent decades, and that the District requires
additional capacity in the future to meet our demand.
Our recommendations for Height Act modifications will
enable the city to create a supply of developable space to
accommodate future growth, maintain the character of the city's
many historic neighborhoods, and avoid extreme upward price
pressures on housing supplies that could greatly and negatively
affect the city.
We believe that the Height Act can be reasonably modified
to strike a balance between accommodating future growth and
protecting significant national monuments and memorials. Our
proposed approach shifts more decisionmaking indeed to local
control, but maintains a very strong Federal consultation and
approval role in order to accommodate future growth. Doing so
will ensure a more prosperous, stable and vibrant District of
Columbia, where residents enjoy a stronger and more resilient
economy. The District's social, cultural and economic diversity
will also be protected. The alternative of retaining unchanged
a century-old law that constrains the city's ability to
accommodate growth will place the District on the path to
becoming a city comprised primarily of national monuments
surrounded by exclusive neighborhoods affordable only to a very
few.
What we propose specifically are the following
recommendations to modify the Height Act. Amend the Height Act
to create new limits based on the relationship between the
street width and the building height within the L'Enfant City.
We recommend using a ratio of 1 to 1.25 for street width to
building height, resulting in a new maximum building height of
200 feet for 160-foot-wide avenues in the L'Enfant City. This
is an urban design-based standard that reflects the
proportionality between individual streets and their buildings
to give us what we currently love about the L'Enfant City, a
pedestrian scale, light and air, and variation; not an
unpleasing uniformity, but variation in building heights,
maintaining horizontality, but having pleasing variation based
on street width.
To ensure that the tops of any future taller buildings
contribute to the use of and views from rooftops, mechanical
penthouses for any buildings that would gain more height we
propose be required to be enclosed within the upper floors
within the new height cap.
The second part of our proposal is language that we
developed with the Chairman of the National Capital Planning
Commission and the staff to limit--to allow the limits
currently established in the Federal Height Act to remain in
place unless and until the District of Columbia completes an
update to the District elements of the comprehensive plan where
targeted areas that meet specific planning goals and don't
impact Federal interests are identified.
Under this recommendation, building heights in targeted
areas such as Friendship Heights at the edge of the District
may be proposed to exceed the maximums under Federal law, and
these may be authorized through the existing comprehensive plan
process that also includes a congressional holdover period.
Should targeted exceptions be authorized through the comp plan,
the Height Act would remain in place for all other areas both
inside and outside the L'Enfant City.
The third thing that we propose is to amend the Height Act
to remove any Federal restrictions on the human occupancy of
penthouses, and to set the maximum height of 20 feet and 1
story. Mechanical equipment will be continue to be required to
be housed within a single structure, and that penthouse would
be subject to a setback.
You might have more questions about the comprehensive plan,
which I would be happy to answer, but in the meantime, what I
would like to do is just conclude by saying that both the
Federal and the local interests are served by having a vibrant,
economically healthy and liveable Capital City. However,
without changes to the Height Act to enable the District to
expand its tax base, protect affordable housing and make
further infrastructure investments, the vibrancy and fiscal
stability as well as the character of the city's many historic
neighborhoods are threatened. We believe that allowing the
District to exercise more local control over how building
height will be managed in the city, while protecting existing
Federal controls over height will prevent those threats from
happening.
On behalf of Mayor Gray, I respectfully ask for your
support for these reasonable amendments to the Heights of
Buildings Act. Thank you.
Chairman Issa. Thank you.
[Prepared statement of Ms. Tregoning follows:]
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Chairman Issa. Mr. Acosta.
STATEMENT OF MARCEL C. ACOSTA
Mr. Acosta. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Congresswoman
Norton and members of the committee. My name is Marcel Acosta.
I am the Executive Director of the National Capital Planning
Commission, a 12-member body that has Federal and District of
Columbia representatives, reflecting its role as a forum to
consider local and national planning issues.
It's been a privilege for NPCP to jointly lead the height
master plan as requested by the committee. The plan explores
potential changes to the Federal Height Act that both protects
national interests and meets important long-term goals for the
District.
For more than a century, the Height Act has played a
central role in shaping Washington's unmistakable and symbolic
skyline that protects the setting and views to and from the
National Mall, the institutions of our democracy, and our
national parks and memorials.
Our written testimony and executive summary includes-- and
you have that before you--first a discussion of Federal
operational and national interests related to heights; second,
our approach to the study, including public outreach and visual
modeling. Here it is of note that, as you mentioned before,
that a majority of District residents who testified strongly
support upholding the Height Act; third, the commission's final
recommendations.
This morning I will speak to the Commission's central
recommendation that the Federal Height Act should remain in
place citywide and no change be made to the formula or approach
for calculating allowable building heights.
The visual modeling work conducted for the height study
shows the potential for significant adverse impacts to national
resources, particularly within the L'Enfant City.
If you would turn the slides back on, and if you would go
back to the beginning, please.
I'll show you a few examples where increased building
heights affect settings and views, and I will refer you to the
screen.
If you go to the next slide.
You will recognize this view of the National Mall from the
U.S. Capitol. This is one of the most important settings in our
city and in our country.
Next slide.
Even at 130 feet the sense of openness around the Mall
changes.
The next slide.
And at 200 feet these buildings compete with the higher
monuments, and the Mall changes from an area framed by
buildings, not trees and open skies.
The next slide.
This is a view from the Jefferson Memorial looking north
towards the White House.
Next slide.
This is the current setting. These are long views of our
national symbols, which are, again, some of the most
significant in our country.
Next slide.
Here again, even at 130 feet the White House is becoming
overshadowed.
And next slide.
And at 200 feet the White House is overwhelmed, and our
skyline shows none of the elegance that we see today.
Next slide.
More specifically, the District is recommending a ratio
proposal to increase heights along the city's widest streets.
Many of these streets terminate on the White House and on the
U.S. Capitol. Now, I also acknowledge that some of the streets
are located in the Capitol Hill Historic Residential Community.
This proposal adds heights to where they're least appropriate.
We do not have composite skyline views of what this would look
like today, but let me share one street-level view with you.
Next slide.
This is the existing view from North Capitol Street looking
south. Our forefathers who established this Capital planned a
city that emphasizes views to and from important public places.
Here you see an example of how this vision has been realized.
The U.S. Capitol Dome is more than just an architectural
feature, and it caps more than just a building. These are
symbols of lasting meaning to Americans. And in Washington our
symbols shine. This is a fundamental principle of our city and
also a legacy tied to our Height Act.
Next slide.
A visual model of the District's ratio proposal shows that
even at 160 feet, the preeminence of the Capitol becomes
diminished, and this fundamentally changes the way people will
experience Washington, especially if applied throughout the
L'Enfant City as proposed.
So mindful of your guidance to proceed carefully in this
area, we strongly recommend no changes to the Height Act within
L'Enfant City. We do support amendments for human occupancy of
penthouses and recommend further protections of critical view-
sheds.
We also share the District's vision for a strong, vital
Capital City that addresses long-term challenges in a very
sophisticated, multidimensional way. We recognize there may be
some opportunities for change outside of L'Enfant City where
there is less concentration of Federal interests. However, we
recommend completing an update to the comprehensive plan for
the Nation's Capital prior to proposing any changes to the law.
Again, we appreciate the opportunity to conduct this
important study. This reaffirmed the importance of the Height
Act and the Federal Government's enduring stewardship in the
form and the character of the Nation's Capital. Thank you.
Chairman Issa. Thank you.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Acosta follows:]
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Chairman Issa. Mr. Acosta, I heard two things as we often
hear in Washington, and examples that were the critical areas,
I think the areas that Ms. Tregoning would also agree, the
areas leading directly in the line of sight to the White House,
to the Capitol, the Washington Monument, and, of course, the
Tidal Pool area. I don't think anyone is questioning, I think
you two are probably very much in agreement, and if the D.C.
plan doesn't reflect that properly, then we should have a
discussion here today.
But I also heard you say what I think I have heard 100
times, if not more, during my tenure on this committee, which
is there are areas. And I heard you also say that a
comprehensive plan should be produced before we go to them. But
when I drive up to Northeast, I'm perhaps by the XM facility
there, I'm so far outside of what most people see as the
District of Columbia except for Eleanor here. When I get past--
and it is not a high-rise area, but when I get past, out to
Cleveland Park, and I am past the cathedral, those views are no
longer the case. And when I go to Georgetown and I look across
the river at Virginia--and we have a distinguished Member from
Virginia--what I see is an area much closer than the Northwest
side of the cathedral, much closer than the XM building up by
New York, up in the far reaches of Northeast, not to mention
some of the areas that Eleanor has been working on developing.
I see this area so close, it has no restriction that can, in
fact, dwarf from there. And the question is not do we preserve
Georgetown. I have no doubt that the city would choose to
maintain that historic area even if the District was not
prohibited in some way by the Federal Government.
And those views you showed, I completely agree with them.
But I would like you to go to the first or second one that you
put up there, if you could, quickly. One more, one more, one
more, one more. Pretty close. Next one. Next one. There we go.
One more. You were there. Go one more. Go back. Right there is
good. Stop.
You see that ugly penthouse on the top right? I think the
one area of agreement that I think I saw in both your findings
was that big boxes with air conditioning towers or elevator
shafts looking like that is an anomaly of the past of the
Height Act, and that buildings--go to the next one where you do
increase it. Here we go. Buildings of today and for a long time
have a tendency not to have that on top of the roof, just as
they no longer have water towers. Would you both agree with
that?
Ms. Tregoning. Certainly.
Mr. Acosta. Yes.
Chairman Issa. So if we do nothing else, addressing the
penthouse issue, is that an area in which you both reached,
subject to further consultation, agreement that we can do
something about that architecturally and to the benefit of the
city's potential income? Yes, Mr. Acosta.
Mr. Acosta. Yes, I do agree that that's an area of
consensus. As you may recall from the previous committee
meeting, actually the Mayor had submitted some recommendations
as to how to improve penthouse design.
I think one of the restrictions, which is the ability to
occupy a penthouse, is actually one of the things that kind of
prohibits making improvements to those spaces, because as you
have noted when you came to our meeting in March, when you look
at our skyline, you look at the penthouses, you notice some
wonderful things that could happen on our rooftops, such as
rooftop gardens, balconies, places for communal recreation,
meeting rooms, party rooms, et cetera, which actually enliven
these spaces, but right now because of their prohibition in the
current law which doesn't allow those spaces to be occupied,
you don't make those investments. And I think by actually
eliminating kind of this barrier to allowing people--this
regulation barrier to allow more investment on the roof, I
think, would actually do a lot to beautify these spaces and
make them better places for the public to enjoy.
Chairman Issa. Ms. Tregoning, I know I'm going to go to you
in a second, but I just want to comment that although we are
dealing with the Height Act, and primarily we're dealing with
commercial buildings, that's what we're really looking at, as a
Washingtonian part time, I must tell you that I am envious that
my neighbors, many of them can go up on their roofs, 90 percent
of them probably not with a valid permit, and sit on their
wooden terraces and enjoy those special days and evenings here
in Washington, where I have to go through a ladder and a
skylight and sneak up there and stand with my air conditioners.
So I think all of us in Washington know that view and how
we achieve it and how the city plans for it will affect the
value of properties, both commercial and residential.
But, Ms. Tregoning, the penthouse issue particularly.
Ms. Tregoning. I think we do have a considerable agreement
on penthouses, although we may not agree exactly on the use. We
would allow human occupancy and not restrict it in any way, and
I don't know that that's the National Capital Planning
Commission's position.
I would just comment that allowing human occupancy would
mean that the materials that were used on the tops of those
roofs would be very different. They would be much more
architecturally significant. They would tend to look more like
the building itself. Right now they use very inexpensive
materials because it's just designed to shield and hide the
mechanical equipment, and it's never architecture, and it does
create that very unpleasing aspect that you pointed out in the
last photograph.
Chairman Issa. It's certainly hard to pay for beautiful
glass fascias if it's just for an air conditioner.
Mr. Acosta, anything else?
Mr. Acosta. I think Ms. Tregoning actually answered the
question quite well.
Chairman Issa. Very good. I would now go to the gentlelady
from the District of Columbia.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Tregoning, you noted the increases in residents, the
District population boom, revenue boom. Have these residents
had difficulty finding housing in the city?
Ms. Tregoning. I would say that the difficulty finding
housing in the city has mostly to do with price and the rapidly
increasing price of housing.
Ms. Norton. Now, let's go to what yields increasing prices
in housing. Much of the building in housing, the housing has
occurred on land where either there was no housing or where
housing was such that people wouldn't want to live in the
housing, and I indicated some of the areas that I've been
interested in. So why has filling in those areas, or has
filling in those areas had anything to do with what you
indicated in your testimony was housing and office space--I'm
looking at page 3--that is already becoming too expensive for
some residents and businesses?
Ms. Tregoning. Well, as you mentioned in your opening
statement, Congresswoman Norton, the--it's been a deliberate
strategy because downtown has been largely built out for some
time to try to move some of the demand for office and housing
to adjacent areas, and it's been wonderful for the city and
wonderful for many neighborhoods to see places----
Ms. Norton. And yet there's a huge complaint in the city
about affordable housing. I wonder if we're promising too much
about affordable housing; either if it stays the way it is, or
if we had storage, or if we do what I've tried to do, I really
wonder whether you are serious about adding a story here and
there, making some buildings taller, not increasing the value
of land, which has effects throughout the city.
Ms. Tregoning. We have citywide inclusionary zoning that we
passed in 2006. The council passed it in----
Ms. Norton. That, of course, would mean that for some
people--and I commend the city for this, if you're referring to
the facts that there must be a certain number of affordable
units in housing in the city.
Well, let me give you NOMA, which is an area that I worked
on for 10 years. A resident told me recently that she moved
into NOMA under the notion you spoke about. She's a middle-
class person who works every day. So your limits are fairly
robust, and I understand those, but she said that now that rent
increases have become possible, there's a tremendous increase
in rents in her area. Now, she moved in under this zoning, this
special zoning of the District.
Ms. Tregoning. I think your point is absolutely a good
point in many parts of the city, although NOMA isn't subject to
IZ because it was already allowed to be developed at the
maximum height because there was no height to give a density
bonus for. NOMA----
Ms. Norton. Are you saying this only occurs where you can
give----
Ms. Tregoning. Give a density bonus.
Ms. Norton. Where you can give a density bonus.
Ms. Tregoning. Most of downtown isn't included, and NOMA
isn't included, and historic areas are not included.
Ms. Norton. So if you increase the height of buildings in
L'Enfant City--and would you describe what L'Enfant City is?
Ms. Tregoning. Well, it's the area that is essentially
south of the escarpment. Florida Avenue, as you know, used to
be Boundary Street. So it's basically that area of the city. We
can show it on a map, I think.
Chairman Issa. If I could interrupt, one might call it
historic Washington. You're talking smaller than that, aren't
you?
Ms. Norton. Yeah. I want to get to the actual streets where
you're talking about. If you're saying up to Florida Avenue----
Chairman Issa. It is beyond what you call L'Enfant.
Ms. Norton. It is beyond what I think most people think of
as L'Enfant City. I think most people think you are talking
about an area----
Chairman Issa. I am just past Boundary, so I am very aware
that is a long way from L'Enfant.
Ms. Tregoning. It is the area that's shown there. It is
Florida Avenue. It's the Potomac and the Anacostia Rivers to
the west and to the south, and to the north it's primarily
Florida Avenue.
Ms. Norton. It includes K Street?
Ms. Tregoning. It does include K Street, which is the 100
percent street in the District of Columbia. It is the most
heavily used transit corridor in the entire region, and it's
where most of our business activity is concentrated.
Ms. Norton. And you believe that if heights are raised in
these most desirable parts of the city, places where people are
swarming to now, that affordable housing and office space will
become more likely than now. I would like to understand that,
please.
Ms. Tregoning. Well, in the L'Enfant City, if we go back to
the map, through most of it we don't have density bonuses to
grant in the downtown for additional height because the----
Ms. Norton. How would that work to--how would the density
bonuses help to keep down the cost of office space and housing?
Ms. Tregoning. Well, for housing it would require currently
that at least 8 percent of all the housing that's built be
permanently affordable, as long as the building stands, for
people making 50 percent and 80 percent of the area median
income.
Ms. Norton. So it's your view that if you were to add--if
there were to be taller buildings in the most desirable parts
of the city, there would be no effect on spreading development
to other parts of the city?
Ms. Tregoning. I think that you would want to allow any
additional development capacity, wherever it is in the city, to
be added gradually so as to not affect overly the market.
Ms. Norton. Would you want to add capacity along K Street?
Ms. Tregoning. Potentially along K Street. But I would also
just say----
Ms. Norton. Well, why would you want to do that if you
wanted to spread office space around the city?
Ms. Tregoning. Because even adding the modest amount of
capacity on K Street that we're talking about doesn't narrowly
meet the demand that we project coming to the city.
Ms. Norton. Of course it doesn't. Don't you want--Ms.
Tregoning, this is my point: We could not get the Federal
Government to develop what is now Capitol Riverfront--this is
this wonderful burgeoning area south of M Street which is a new
community--because GSA said Federal agencies did not want to
move so far from K Street. Now, that's not in the far reaches
of the city. It took a bill; I had to introduce a bill in order
to develop that part of Washington. And the same way NOMA,
which I would say is a stone's throw from the Senate----
Ms. Tregoning. Absolutely.
Ms. Norton. --stood there, a shambles, close to midtown
with no development. What I had to do, frankly, was to get a
Federal agency to move there, and then another one, and then
developers began to build there. Again, the Federal agencies
were the stimulus, but the Federal Government--it was all I
could do to pull teeth to make the Federal Government know, and
there is an Executive Order that says they should build in
outlying areas of the city, but the pull was so hard toward K
Street that one would wonder why one would want to have any
more development in that part of city, and whether it would
not, in fact, slow development outside of L'Enfant City.
Ms. Tregoning. If the question is whether that would slow
development into places, you could decide when and how you
developed in different parts of the city. And we still have a
very keen interest in the Capitol Riverfront, in the Anacostia,
in Poplar Point, in St. Elizabeth's, so those would remain city
priorities in terms of enticing development to those locations.
But our projections show with all of those places and the
places that we proposed very modest height increases for inside
the L'Enfant City, that we would still be looking at
significant potential capacity constraints.
Chairman Issa. Thank you.
Eleanor, we are going to do a second round, if that's okay.
Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to pick up a little bit. You keep talking about the
historic nature and about preserving the historic nature in
your testimony. What historic nature are we talking about?
Because this seems to be counterintuitive. If we are going to
protect the historic nature, what are we talking about there?
Ms. Tregoning. So as part of a study that we did with the
National Capital Planning Commission, we jointly agreed on some
principles that would govern the study and that would govern
our conclusions and recommendations, including determining that
the Federal landmarks and monuments would continue to be
prominent and preserve their views and settings.
Now, what's so interesting about the design of our city is
that most of our streets, especially our diagonal streets, are
designed with the beautiful views that terminate at the end of
street. So having a little height, additional height, on many
of the streets doesn't affect the views. In some cases it
enhances the views that frame the building at the end of the
street even better.
We also talk about maintaining the horizontality of the
skyline. That's also something iconic----
Mr. Meadows. You're talking about primarily in those
corridors as it looks to the Capitol. You are not talking about
the historic nature of a neighborhood that is a mile out.
Ms. Tregoning. I am talking about those historic
neighborhoods in the following sense, that if----
Mr. Meadows. Let me be specific. Like Henry's Soul Food
that's right around the corner, is that historic, or is that
not historic? That's the Mount Vernon Triangle. And I live in
the city, and there's no one who wants cheaper rent than I do,
I promise you that. But at the same time----
Chairman Issa. You can live in your office.
Mr. Meadows. I'm not living in my office.
Is Henry's Soul Food, is that considered historic, or could
that be torn down and developed?
Ms. Tregoning. So the actual building, I couldn't tell you
off the top of my head, but that is a neighborhood that is
designated a historic neighborhood. And so you raise a really
critical point with your question, which is if we don't have
any increases in height, the city can accommodate its growth,
but it would probably change the character of most of our
neighborhoods, because we would have to change those buildings.
So having a row house neighborhood that's primarily two
stories, if we made it four stories or eight stories, we could
accommodate a lot of growth, but those neighborhoods be very,
very different.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Tregoning. Or we could accommodate the same amount of
development in taller buildings in smaller--in fewer places and
protect those neighborhoods.
Mr. Meadows. But your point is exactly where I'm going,
because we would not see what has happened over by the ball
field or the Navy Yards or any of that urban renewal if we
allow the concentration to be downtown. It does not sprawl out.
Now, if that's what we're--if that's what we're wanting to see,
but what it does is creates pockets of unsure and
questionable--we walk all over the city, and so there are
certain areas that we walk in and certain areas that we don't,
but that's based on that urban renewals aspect. And I live I
think what they call a transitional area. Based on price, it
wouldn't be transitional, but how does adding two stories to a
building downtown actually make for more affordable housing,
because I'm in this--I've been in this business for 28 years,
and I don't see--because location is what you pay for, and if
we add two stories to a building that's closer to the Capitol,
generally what that will do is translate into much higher
dollars for that rent, not lower. And that's following up on
what Ms. Norton said.
Ms. Tregoning. So high rise buildings definitely have
higher construction costs, but we do have city-wide
inclusionary zoning. And the only reason it does not apply in
some parts of the city is because we didn't have the height
left----
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Tregoning. --to allow the density bonus that is the
thing that enables it to happen.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Tregoning. So that's one way in which that happens, but
it's also true that we have tremendous demand for housing
throughout the city. In the last year, our average housing
price went up 22 percent. It's now $800,000 for a home on
average in the District of Columbia. So what's happening is
people who can afford $1 million house don't have enough
million dollar house supply, so they start looking for $800,000
houses.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Tregoning. The people who were buying $800,000 houses
are seeing those prices bid up. They start buying $600,000
houses.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Tregoning. And it trickles down and the price at every
level ends up rising. So part of it is increasing the supply,
period, at every level affects the housing and the price of
housing that's available throughout the entire market. The
other thing is specifically in places where we haven't been
able to offer inclusionary zoning with density bonuses, now we
could do that.
I will finally say that we saw a lot of the modeling that
showed city-wide increases. What we've actually proposed inside
the L'Enfant City, it's a very, very few streets that would be
affected. The vast majority of streets would not be affected.
So it's not even like we're adding an enormous amount of supply
inside the L'Enfant City, but we're adding it in places where
it reinforces that urban design relationship that we really
love about Washington, the height of buildings related to the
width of streets that makes the city so walkable, so
interesting and so pedestrian-friendly.
So we're saying the horizontality, the prominence of the
monuments and memorials are unaffected by the proposal that
we're talking about inside the L'Enfant City, but it does give
us some critical capacity that, along with development outside
the L'Enfant City in other parts of the city would accommodate.
Mr. Meadows. So how many square feet are we talking about
in this critical area are you talking about adding?
Ms. Tregoning. I think it's about 109 million square feet
total over time, which isn't an enormous amount, inside the
L'Enfant City.
Mr. Meadows. So how would that affect prices? If it's not
an enormous amount, how would it affect prices?
Ms. Tregoning. Well, and it would be about 317 million
outside the L'Enfant City. So together, it would add a lot of
supply and at least moderate----
Mr. Meadows. I'll wait for the second round. I see I'm out
of time. That's a hard sell for me. You know, as you start to
look at the economics, that's a real hard sell. So I will
follow up, but I'll yield back. Thank you.
Chairman Issa. Mr. Meadows, I'm surprised you didn't ask
what you thought the--ask what the average square foot per
square foot costs of that development would be. I've noticed
there's a lot of $1000-a-square-foot development going on in
D.C. sometimes.
The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome, Ms.
Tregoning and Mr. Acosta. I enjoyed working with both of you in
local government and regional bodies over the years. Did I just
hear you say, Ms. Tregoning, that you're talking about 109
million square feet?
Ms. Tregoning. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. New?
Ms. Tregoning. [Nonverbal response.]
Mr. Connolly. If my friend is familiar with Tyson's Corner,
that's almost 2-1/2 times the size of everything that's in
Tyson's Corner, one of the emerging edge cities in the United
States, so that's a lot of square footage.
To your point, Mr. Meadows, I would also say just from my
own observation, having worked on affordable housing, the best
way to get affordable housing is to preserve what you've got.
The idea that you're going to construct new affordable housing
is, frankly, very problematic, even with the affordable density
bonus that most jurisdictions, in fact, do try to encourage,
but very difficult given today's construction costs. And so,
you know, preservation's the key, and that may have something
to do also with building height, because the two may not be
compatible, but in terms of changing building height while
trying to preserve affordable housing, so----
Let me just read what the Founders said they wanted to
achieve in the design of the city. They envisioned, ``a city
with sweeping vistas that emphasized civic structures and an
orderly system of boulevards with reverential private
buildings.''
Is that spirit still something the National Capital
Planning Commission follows, Mr. Acosta?
Mr. Acosta. Yes. I think our recent updates to our comp
plan, for instance, talk about the importance of vistas to and
from the monuments throughout the city. I think that's not only
a national interest issue, but I think the residents of our
city enjoy that, too.
Mr. Connolly. And Ms. Tregoning, listening to you describe
things like pleasant views, it sounds consistent with also that
original vision for the city.
Ms. Tregoning. Absolutely.
Mr. Connolly. Help us understand a little bit the statutory
framework here. I'm familiar with how we work in Virginia, but
it may be a little bit different, because the National Capital
Planning Commission, you have limited--I remember we had to
submit things to the National Capital Planning Commission, but
you didn't have statutory authority over zoning or planning per
se in Virginia, did you?
Mr. Acosta. Not in Virginia. We--except for Federal
property.
Mr. Connolly. Right. But to the chairman's point, for
example, if you look at Rosslyn in Arlington, lots of high
rises, much closer to the L'Enfant part of the city, as the
chairman pointed out, than say parts of northwest. You have no
jurisdiction with whatever goes on in the County of Arlington?
Mr. Acosta. Except for Federal property.
Mr. Connolly. Pardon me?
Mr. Acosta. Except for Federal properties.
Mr. Connolly. Except for Federal properties. So do you have
statutory authority over the planning process in the District
of Columbia?
Mr. Acosta. Yes, we do.
Mr. Connolly. Irrespective of whether they're Federal
properties or not?
Mr. Acosta. It's--well, we look at certain zoning proposals
in an advisory role to the District. The comprehensive plan for
the Nation's capital both have Federal elements and local
elements, as prescribed by the law, and that we work jointly in
terms of putting together that plan, the focus has been.
Mr. Connolly. Exactly. So the adoption of a comprehensive
plan by the District of Columbia is not entirely its own
willful act. It involves your consent, your review?
Mr. Acosta. Yes, it does.
Mr. Connolly. And potentially a veto?
Mr. Acosta. Yes, it does.
Mr. Connolly. The comprehensive plan, the D.C. law, is
required before any zoning occurs?
Ms. Tregoning. That's correct.
Mr. Connolly. And it presumably, like Virginia law, it runs
with the land, so whatever the FAR on a particular site or the
language granting density runs with the land. Is that correct?
Ms. Tregoning. Right. And zoning cannot--must be not
inconsistent with the comprehensive plan.
Mr. Connolly. When you're talking about building height
changes, you know, we're going to add some stories, you're
changing the FAR, the floor-to-area ratio. Is that consistent
with the existing comprehensive plan or would you have to amend
the plan to take that into account as well?
Ms. Tregoning. We would have to amend the plan to take that
into account, absolutely.
Mr. Connolly. And do we care about, Mr. Acosta, FAR? We're
talking building heights, but what about the mass of a building
on the same footprint?
Mr. Acosta. It's an important issue, I think. We do take a
look at that, but in terms of reviewing it against conformity
with the Federal law, it is about heights.
Mr. Connolly. Ms. Tregoning and Mr. Acosta, are you
familiar the residential high rise building called the Cairo?
Mr. Acosta. Yes.
Ms. Tregoning. Very familiar.
Mr. Connolly. Now, refresh my memory. I used to--my wife
and I had an apartment on P Street, and I am old enough to
remember when that building, which had really been run down and
became a flophouse, was bought and renovated, and there were
stories at the time that that building exceeded the height
limits in Washington, D.C. Is that correct?
Ms. Tregoning. It's the thing that caused the height limits
to be. There were no height limits in the District until that
building arose at 164 feet.
Mr. Connolly. And when did that occur?
Ms. Tregoning. In the late part of the 19th century.
Mr. Connolly. So that triggered, in many ways, the
discussion we're having right now?
Ms. Tregoning. I mean, Mr. Connolly, you are very familiar
with local government. So the residents and the citizens in the
vicinity of that building did what your constituents did: They
ran to their local government to protest, to make sure that it
wouldn't happen again, and that local government at that time
was the U.S. Congress.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you. My time is up. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Issa. Well, thank you for bringing up the 1894
construction of that building.
Mr. Connolly. I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, as a then-
resident of the District of Columbia, we were at least glad it
got renovated.
Chairman Issa. Yeah. Oh, you're talking about when it was
renovated, not when it was built.
Mr. Connolly. When it was renovated, yeah. I missed the
original construction.
Chairman Issa. I'm going to briefly ask a couple of related
questions. Mr. Acosta, one of the other bans, I understand,
here in the District is after the fires of the early 20th
century, we banned wooden construction down here in the
District area. In other words, suddenly all those wooden
buildings were all old, and there's a date and suddenly they
were all brick and stone. Is that right?
Mr. Acosta. I believe so.
Chairman Issa. But our Founding Fathers thought wood was
just fine, apparently. So it was okay to build chicken coop
houses for the first 100 years of our founding, but there came
a day when we realized we needed to do better in a high density
modern city.
Mr. Acosta. Absolutely.
Chairman Issa. And that was going on all over the country,
that in high density modern cities, the recognition that it was
just about impossible for a fire department to keep up with,
and particularly row homes, with what happens in fires. And
that's still today. I mean, wood homes in the District,
although precious and all protected, are hard to protect. Is
that true?
Mr. Acosta. It depends on the fire fighting technology.
Chairman Issa. And so leaving the Height Act alone for a
moment and setting that aside, the architectural planning of
the city, has it achieved all of the goals, in other words,
this fairly eclectic high and low, because we don't have
minimums, the penthouses we saw earlier? Can we do better than
that?
Mr. Acosta. We can always do better, but I think in
general, it has achieved some of the goals we've talked about,
including the preeminence of the memorials, because of the
lower heights. I think it has done a lot in terms----
Chairman Issa. Well, I appreciate the memorials, but let me
interrupt for a second. The Federal construction, there's been
a lot mentioned about jurisdiction over Federal construction.
When I look at Federal buildings and major embassies like the
Canadian Embassy and so on, what I see is no consistency of
height, no consistency of the architecture. There's some butt
ugly Federal buildings that were built in the 60's. I don't
know what it was in the 60s, but the protestors should have
been protesting the architecture. Isn't that true?
So when I look at the development of the city, don't we
have both in Federal building construction and in the
commercial buildings epitomized by K Street, don't we have a
need to do better than we're doing today? And if so, isn't it
long overdue for us to update a master plan with great detail
of the vision for the 21st century?
Mr. Acosta. I actually concur with that. I think one effort
that----
Chairman Issa. I'm looking for concurrence here. Trust me.
Mr. Acosta. Well, for instance, one effort that both the
District and NCPC has looked at is kind of what is the future
of the southwest of the--you know, south of the National Mall,
which is the Federal Center down there. And that I think we
both agree that times have changed. The buildings are
inefficient, it's a single-use district. It could become much
more of a vibrant place.
Chairman Issa. And St. Elizabeth isn't really a new area.
It's an area that fell into decay for a number of years that's
being revitalized. Isn't that true?
Mr. Acosta. Yes, it is.
Chairman Issa. It was once a great area apparently. I
certainly look at some of the large structures there that
either have been removed or, in some cases, renovated.
To a certain extent, aren't we dealing with the
revitalization of a city where, and I think Ms. Tregoning
mentioned this, it had 50 years of decline in population, in
significance of people wanting to live in conventional
residential structures, relatively little new construction
until the post 70's period. And the last decade or so has been
an amazing time for the District. I've served 13 years. I've
watched the District go from, and Mr. Meadows mentioned this,
these sort of no go zones versus go zones, and we're watching
them being pushed out.
So in light of that, and recognizing what Ms. Norton said,
don't we in Congress have an obligation to task you, as the two
bodies overseeing the future, not just in the height, because I
said I'd set it aside for a second, but also in the planning of
a city, there are large areas that could have modern affordable
homes. There are areas like K Street that have relatively
little residential and a high capacity for lobbyists. We don't
expect that if you build a residence on K Street, that it's
going to be occupied by the downtrodden or the needy of the
District, because the downtrodden and the needy of the
District, I understand that we have the highest--to be in the
top 5 percent of income producers, D.C. is the richest city
from that standpoint. No city has more of, if you will, what it
takes to be the top end of income. But, Ms. Norton----
Mr. Connolly. Which is why, Mr. Chairman, we're glad you
live here.
Chairman Issa. I pay my taxes in California. Thank you. I
do pay my property taxes here.
But I think, and I'll close with this. My concern is this:
Ms. Norton needs areas of development that are currently
underdeveloped. The K Street corridor has metastasized because
of the growth of government. The concentration of Federal
buildings, new Federal buildings in the District will only
exacerbate that concentration.
Let me just ask a closing question, and I will go back to
the height. If I go out to JFK Stadium, which is up and down.
It's probably 12 feet above sea level. I think it's kind of
down there. And I go from there to the river, don't I see an
example of historic district where they mowed down probably
huge amounts of homes to build that stadium.
And now the question is, how do we attract a football team
or how do we attract something back to these underutilized
areas? Isn't the challenge for the District of Columbia, for
the Federal Government to challenge you, work with you and ask
you to come back on the modification of the Height Act beyond
anything we might mandate as a result of this study, and a real
plan that is much more future looking? In other words, we're
only going to deal with this every 40 or 50 or 100 years. What
are you going to do to give us the vision for the next 100
years, and are you prepared to do it? And, Mr. Acosta, in your
opening statement, you said it needed to happen. How long will
it take?
Mr. Acosta. Well, typically the comp plan updates typically
take 2 to 3 years to produce.
I do think you raise a couple of very good points. I think
this is the first time that the city in a very long time has
been faced with growth, and that I think it makes a lot of
people nervous to some extent, but I also think it's an
opportunity to kind of re-examine and revisit some of these
issues.
The issues that you've raised with respect to property,
actually the Federal Government over the last 10 years have
actually, you know, through the assistance of Mrs. Norton, you
know, you look at things like Walter Reed as being kind of a
place for new private development to occur. The area by the
stadium, which you pointed out had----
Chairman Issa. That's not affordable housing up there.
Mr. Acosta. It isn't affordable housing, right, but it
could be. But Reservation 13, which is adjacent to RFK Stadium
is another piece of Federal land that was given to the District
for future development. Poplar Point, which is across the
river, with a huge track of land that could be redeveloped,
that was an old Federal property that was transferred back to
the District. So there are plenty of opportunities to grow with
respect to these vacant lands, and the District has done a very
good job of trying to identify what is going there.
But I do think what is needed today in terms of pulling
together the pieces to make the community feel comfortable
about the prospects of growth, to look at the implications in
terms of what it may mean to our national symbols, you know, I
do think we have to pull that together in terms of revisiting
this comp plan. That is the one thing that we both have agreed
to. I think the question is, you know, how does it relate to
ultimately heights as a final matter, but I think this is all
interrelated that----
Chairman Issa. Well, I heard 2 years. And my time is up, so
briefly, would you agree that 2 years for this kind of
challenge is something that if we challenge you, that you can
come back to Congress with much more--hopefully a consensus in
2 years on the long-term future of these areas for the
District?
Ms. Tregoning. I think that a comp plan takes at least 2
years. What I would--I guess what I would say is that the
process is already a well-known, well-understood, well-
developed process within the city, that it already has the
review and approval required by the National Capital Planning
Commission. The comp plan has to be passed by the council, so
it becomes a District law, so then you also get it again in the
holdover period at Congress.
So my point is whether we do it now over the next 2 years
or whether we do it 5 years from now or 10 years from now, you
know, I don't know the next time we'll have a chairman of this
committee who's as interested in ths issues as the current
chairman is.
Chairman Issa. Eleanor is looking forward to the
opportunity.
Ms. Tregoning. I'm just saying, I don't know. We haven't
been asked this question, in my memory: What does the District
think the Height Act means and how does it affect its future.
And honestly, I'm not very confident that when the need is
imminent for the city, that we'll have someone who has an ear
to that need.
So I would argue that those protections already exist. They
could be made more robust, perhaps, if you'd like to make them
so, but they are already very, very well used. Every time the
NCPC has vetoed a portion of the comp plan, the city has
changed it, and must. Our own Home Rule Charter requires that
we change it, otherwise, that provision shall have no effect in
the city. So those are robust protections.
So I would argue that the changes that we're asking for
have to be accomplished through the comprehensive plan, and
that's something that we should indeed undertake together. I
think the next comprehensive plan revision, there'll never be
more interest in a comp plan than there will in this one, but
that the law itself should change now.
Chairman Issa. Thank you.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I agree
with Ms. Tregoning. The chairman's interest here came from his
own understanding of the District. He didn't confer with me and
said, do you think it's wise to have a hearing? He doesn't do
that, but I'm very pleased he did, and I think Ms. Tregoning
makes a good point that if the city doesn't want changes, it
thinks it won't ever want changes and it's making that decision
for better or worse right now, because these opportunities
don't come up very often.
Mr. Chairman, I also associate myself with your views about
the undistinguished look of downtown Washington. I'm not sure
that's because of the Height Act. It seems to me there's got to
be better architects than the ones who have built downtown
Washington. It is one of the least distinguished, most
pedestrian downtowns, and I have never thought that that had to
do with the Height Act, and I hope that's not the reason.
And I also must say that among the things I try not to do
is to say to residents in the great beyond, there is a hope for
something that nowhere in the country for a reason that is
structural, that affordable housing will come out of what we're
doing here today, or what we're discussing here today. The fact
is that there is no case to be made for affordable housing
coming out of the status quo. There is, I think, even less case
to be made for affordable housing coming out of taller
buildings.
One way or the other, the country is going to have to live
within the market system, and that's what we've got and that's
what we're all going to have. And understand what is happening
to big cities. How do you keep them diverse, how much does city
planning have to do with it, but I for one do not see the
elixirs either in the spread of development that I myself have
put a priority on or in taller buildings.
That said, I'm making no promises that way. That doesn't
decide the issue for me, because I do think we are getting
growth and I think trying to figure out if that growth will
continue is very difficult, but you certainly have to plan for
it. And then there are differences on whether the way to plan
for it is to look across the city or to also look for taller
buildings.
Now, Mr. Acosta, I didn't get to ask you questions before.
I note you said, page 4, Commission recommended that the
Federal Height Act remain in place city-wide and no changes be
made to the formula, et cetera, or the approach. Now, did not
the Commission overrule the staff recommendation, and what was
the staff recommendation?
Mr. Acosta. Well, the staff recommendation actually had to
do with the comprehensive plan and kind of whether you put the
cart before the horse, whether you change the law dealing with
heights before you undertake the next comprehensive plan.
I think, based open the testimony that they heard during
the hearings, we had several hearings on this matter, as well
as the council, as you know, Mr. Mendelson sits on our
Commission, his statements regarding his opposition to the
mayor's position, and also kind of the need to do the
comprehensive plan first and then change the law, I think our
Commission was essentially swayed to----
Ms. Norton. Now, Ms. Tregoning, did you disagree with that
notion to do the comprehensive plan first?
Ms. Tregoning. I do disagree, in that the effect is
essentially the same. You know, whether you change the law now
or you change the law in the future, the only thing is you have
no certainty in the future that there will be a Congressman or
there will be a chairman of this committee who's in the
slightest bit interested in this issue.
We have to change the comp plan, it has to be approved by
the NCPC, it has to be passed by the council, it has to have
public input. And even if we end up with the same result as if
we don't change the Federal Height Act, it will be the
District's decision, and that, in and of itself, is an
important principle, but it is possible that a future city
leader, a future planning director, a future council might find
it very much in its interest to make judicious changes to
heights of buildings in some parts of the city, and this would
allow that to happen.
Ms. Norton. Okay. See, I see room for accommodation there,
but I don't want to pursue that further.
You also say in your testimony, Mr. Acosta, because you go
right on right after that to say, Commission recognize that
there may be opportunities for ``strategic change'' in areas
outside of L'Enfant City.
Does that mean you don't see any opportunity for
``strategic change'' inside that massive area inside L'Enfant
City?
Mr. Acosta. Well, I think we should kind of view this as a
whole. I think the greatest concentration of Federal interest,
the things that we care most about as a Nation are essentially
the L'Enfant City.
Chairman Issa. Would the gentlelady yield for a second?
Ms. Norton. Certainly.
Chairman Issa. We had a disagreement on what L'Enfant City
was, and because I live at Boundary, now called Florida, you're
talking, I assume, the smaller L'Enfant, not the expansive one
that goes all the way to Florida.
Mr. Acosta. Well, we're talking about the L'Enfant City.
Chairman Issa. You are? All the way to Florida?
Mr. Acosta. Yes, all the way the Florida.
Chairman Issa. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Acosta. Yes. I think that----
Ms. Norton. So it's all the way to Florida. And on the east
and the west----
Mr. Acosta. The rivers.
Ms. Norton. --what is it, east and west?
Ms. Tregoning. The rivers.
Ms. Norton. Huh?
Ms. Tregoning. The Potomac and the Anacostia Rivers.
Mr. Acosta. The rivers. The Potomac and the Anacostia----
Ms. Norton. Okay.
Mr. Acosta. --rivers, roughly.
Ms. Norton. So what neighborhoods does that include, if--
you know, so----
Ms. Tregoning. Capitol Hill, Shaw. It includes, you know,
most of Dupont Circle, of Georgetown, and Mt. Vernon.
Ms. Norton. Now, you want to change heights within those
areas?
Ms. Tregoning. For the most part, no, because only on
streets that are basically, you know, 120 feet or higher would
there be any actual change in----
Ms. Norton. Yeah. This is old Washington. That is old
Washington. So what kind of streets are we talking about?
Ms. Tregoning. It's----
Ms. Norton. I mean, there's 14th Street.
Ms. Tregoning. It would--it would largely be not the--it
would largely be the avenues, so it would be Pennsylvania
Avenue, it could be Massachusetts Avenue, it could be parts of
Rhode Island Avenue, parts of those avenues, and, again, not
probably through historic districts, so it's modest. So those
monolithic height increases that we saw in the modeling, we're
not proposing that.
Ms. Norton. Well, do you envision most changes, if any,
coming outside of L'Enfant City or within L'Enfant City?
Ms. Tregoning. Over time, most of the changes will probably
be outside the L'Enfant City, but you know, our proposal for
the city is some very judicious changes inside the L'Enfant
City that would make building tops more beautiful and would
take advantage of the dense transit that we have inside the
L'Enfant City.
Mr. Connolly. Would the gentlelady yield just for a moment?
Ms. Norton. Certainly.
Mr. Connolly. The chairman asked this question, but let me
ask it again. The monumental core of L'Enfant City is 10.7
square miles. That's 16 percent of the original L'Enfant City.
You're talking about all of L'Enfant's plan, not just the
monumental core?
Ms. Tregoning. Correct. Most of it would not be happening
at the monumental core.
Mr. Connolly. All right. I thank my colleague.
Ms. Norton. But it does include downtown D.C.?
Ms. Tregoning. It does.
Ms. Norton. Now, Mr. Acosta, you speak about the so-called
ratio approach on page 5, that it allowed, and here I'm quoting
you, greater height precisely where it was least appropriate on
L'Enfant's streets, framing views of the U.S. Capitol and the
White House.
Now, Ms. Tregoning, do you agree that those areas would not
be protected if D.C. had flexibility?
Ms. Tregoning. I don't agree, for the reasons we earlier
discussed, that the city is designed so that the views are at
the end of streets, that they are terminated, those views, with
significant civic and monumental structures, and so those views
aren't destroyed by having----
Ms. Norton. Well, just a moment.
Do you agree with that, Mr. Acosta, that the view is at the
end and not----
Mr. Acosta. Well, the----
Ms. Norton. --in the areas leading----
Mr. Acosta. Of the streets that are being proposed for
taller buildings, the wider streets, they typically are the
streets that radiate from the Capitol or terminate at the White
House, these are significant view sheds.
One of the beauties of the L'Enfant plan of the city is
kind of, like, the spaciousness that you see on the streets.
That's why it's wide, that's why it's ceremonial, that's why
you can see the whole dome. The taller the buildings are along
the street, the more crowded it becomes, that you see, you
know, kind of the spaciousness around the capital, the
foreground of the buildings seem taller, your perception of the
important symbol of the dome is--it's smaller, it's diminished.
And I think what was the point we were trying to make with
this.
I think the key issue here is really this: that we want to
understand what's possible outside of L'Enfant City, because of
the growth issue, because much of it is residential, what are
some of the options to accommodate growth before we make
determinations about what happens inside of L'Enfant City? From
a national standpoint, from a Federal interest standpoint, that
is what we care about collectively, and that I think it's--we
should do no harm until we have a better understanding after
the comp plan is completed what can be done to accommodate, if
the District does grow, what can be accommodated there before
we make any changes to those important views. That's our
legacy. That has to be here centuries from now.
Ms. Norton. Do you think in the past, we could pass a law--
I mean, Ms. Tregoning, that it is very controversial, your
position that the viewpoints at the end and not in between is
what matters. I mean, isn't this the kind of thing that you and
Mr. Acosta ought to be reaching some accommodation on?
Ms. Tregoning. And we would actually have to reach some
accommodation in order for a comp plan to be approved. We've
proposed to institute----
Ms. Norton. Yes, but as has been indicated, what is before
the Congress at the moment is not the comp plan but whether
there should be any changes in the law. And the chairman and I
are trying to find whether there are ways to satisfy the
different views that we see even here before us, which may, by
the way, reflect some of the views in the city. So would you
continue?
Ms. Tregoning. I was just going to say that these
differences are important differences and they do take time and
study to understand and to work out, but a change to the
Federal Height Act does not change the height of buildings in
the city. They won't change until there's a comp plan. And we
have to agree, because they could veto, based on the Federal
interest, the very things the they say they object to. So we
could live with that. That's something that we know that we'll
have to work with them on, but the change to the Federal Height
Act doesn't do any harm, it doesn't do anything until there's a
change to the comp plan.
Ms. Norton. Well, what this says, it has to come before you
before----
Mr. Acosta. Well, let me just make the recommendations
clearer. I think what is on the table right now in terms of
what Congress could consider are changes in the L'Enfant City.
That is what the District is requesting. They aren't suggesting
any changes outside of L'Enfant City.
Chairman Issa. Would the gentlelady yield?
Ms. Norton. Certainly.
Chairman Issa. I think I have a certain role in presenting
this. What I asked was for the city to review the Height Act
and to figure out whether or not changes could be proposed. I
never envisioned, and quite frankly, I was very pleased that a
lot of the study and a lot of the proposals, a lot of the
architects that participated began visualizing specific
changes.
I only asked the not-so-rhetorical question of after 100
years, couldn't Congress consider a change to the Height Act,
and if so, what would be some of the guidelines?
What I think I heard, and if the gentlelady would give me
just another moment, is the city presented a hypothetical that
included some specifics of the changes, which went beyond just
should we consider a change to the Height Act. It actually
proposed them. Those were treated, I think, as though they
would go into effect if NCPC said yes. You said no, seven to
three, with the two Members of Congress who have votes
abstaining. That meant you rejected the District's specific
proposal.
The interesting thing for me, and this also includes the
city council's, Mr. Mendelson's, resolution, is that I heard
separately to my astonishment for the first time ever a
rejection of home rule, a rejection of could we give you a
process to go further at some future time assuming you could
reach a yes. And I think that's what I've heard today. And
that's one of my frustrations is, I expected you all to say,
gosh, this will take years and years, and it'll probably be
done in bits and pieces. And I think Eleanor and I would hope
that some of the first pieces would not be K Street, but, in
fact, potentially blighted areas, areas of new development. I
did not expect for the first time ever to have people say,
Please don't give me authority. I can't be trusted, but to a
certain extent, I'm hearing that. And all of us here, who've
never shied away from being given more authority, one of my
challenges now, not just today, but the public comment and so
on afterwards is before I leave this chair, do I, in fact, find
a way to make changes to the Height Act that in the future
would leave you with choices, even if those choices required
obviously the consent of both your agencies and even
potentially a referral back to Congress, or do I simply close
up the book on a 1910 law and wait until the city and NCPC come
to us at some future time, and if so, am I living up to my
obligation? So that's how I define it, which is a little
different than I asked you to----
Ms. Norton. Let them answer.
Chairman Issa. Please. Any comments?
Ms. Norton. I want to hear how they respond to that.
Ms. Tregoning. I would just say I think you framed it
exactly right. And I have to say that I'm also confused and
appalled that after the city fighting so hard for any increment
of additional democracy--and democracy is messy, it isn't
consensus-based, there's always disagreement.
I don't think that the Congress, and with all due respect,
should protect the District from the consequences of its own
choices in terms of electoral decisions. So if we want to
retain heights, that is within our power even after you change
the law. That's entirely within the control of the District of
Columbia. And we may never have higher building heights, but we
desperately want the ability to decide. And our pressure for
growth gives us the sense of urgency to seek it. Thank you.
Chairman Issa. Eleanor.
Ms. Norton. Yeah. Just a couple more questions, if I could
just finish----
Chairman Issa. Well, why don't I come back to you, because
I think Mr. Meadows will be done after one more.
Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you.
Mr. Acosta, I want to come back to you, because one of the
troubling things, even though I've shared that there's a very
high bar that I would look at from this standpoint, I would
come back to you. Certainly there are areas of agreement and
there's certainly areas of modification that I would encourage
you and your board strongly to see how we can accommodate
those, if nothing more, to make sure that we can get the
chairman where he doesn't have to use that wood ladder to get
up on the roof, but there has to be areas--it becomes very easy
when you have a body like yours to just say no. And I've dealt
with it all my life, and so I would encourage you strongly to
look for those areas where we can find consensus.
I guess what I'm trying to figure out is what is our
objective? Is it additional tax base? Is it affordable housing?
Where exactly is the city wanting to go with this in terms of,
at the end of the day, how do say you're successful?
Ms. Tregoning. So it's the things that you mentioned. It is
additional tax base, it is affordable housing. The thing is,
we've made the investments to make our city more livable and a
place that's desirable for people to be, which is good, right?
Mr. Meadows. Sure.
Ms. Tregoning. We're not a shrinking city anymore.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Tregoning. But the very thing that's made us successful
is also putting a lot of pressure on our long-time residents,
on the people who would like to be here, on the children of
people who currently live here, can they afford to ever live in
our city? The major----
Mr. Meadows. But I doubt that they will ever be able to
afford to live on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Ms. Tregoning. The thing is, the tax base that's increased
has given us the capacity to do amazing things. The mayor just
announced $187 million worth of spending on affordable housing.
That wouldn't have been possible 10 years ago.
Mr. Meadows. So are you saying that because of this height
restriction, that development is going outside the city?
Ms. Tregoning. It is.
Mr. Meadows. So that's your premise here today is, is that
people are building outside the city because of this height
restriction?
Ms. Tregoning. We're about, and Mr. Connolly can help me
with this, between 10 and 11 percent of the region's
population. For the last several years, we've been capturing
something closer to 14 or 15 percent of the region's population
growth, and a similar--not as large a number, but we're batting
above our--we're punching above our weight in terms of both
jobs and housing. That may or may not continue into the future,
but if our prices continue to rise, if our supply continues to
be constrained over time, yes, we're absolutely going to lose
more people to other jurisdictions.
Mr. Meadows. But you haven't seen that yet?
Ms. Tregoning. No. We have. That's been our story for 50
years, for the last 50 years. It's only recently that we've
begun to do better relative to the rest of the region, and we
still have very expensive rent, so we don't have the diversity
of jobs, we don't have the diversity of housing that we'd
necessarily like to have. And people who can't afford to be
here are starting their companies somewhere else, because, you
know, our rents are too high.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. What I would like for you, if you would
just put a priority in terms of what you're hoping to see in
terms of affordable housing, number of units that this would
do, because I have a hard time grasping that, because actually
what you're proposing would have the counter effect, because as
you go further out, it would actually allow for more affordable
housing there. We had a statement. I'll give you an analogy.
It's like selling the filet from the beef cattle and saying,
we're going to develop the filet and we're going to leave, you
know, the rump roast for everybody else.
And so if you look at this, what we've got to do is we've
got to figure out a way to allow for urban renewal, some of the
great things that are happening here, and yet at the same time,
not hamstring it so much, Mr. Acosta, that there is no growth
within that critical area. And I think that's what I'm looking
for. Where is the balance, because if not, we'll end up with
greater heights in this corridor that we all want to protect
from a visually aesthetic, pleasing manner, but we'll still
have the Henry's soul food out close to where I live. And so
that's what I'm looking for, is this balance, and I look
forward to working with the chairman and the ranking member to
hopefully come up with a solution. I'll yield back.
Chairman Issa. I'm personally fond, by the way, of the tri
tip, which is slightly outside that filet area.
Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And my friend from
North Carolina's beginning to sound like a bleeding heart
conservative, but I really welcome his interest and his insight
into affordable housing. I reiterate, my own experience is if
you want affordable housing, you have to preserve it. You're
not going to build a lot of new affordable housing, given
today's construction. It just isn't economically viable. And so
I don't know what the District is doing in terms of
preservation, but growth incentives can actually work against
that. So you've got to be careful what parts of the city you
target.
Mr. Meadows. If the gentleman will yield.
Mr. Connolly. I will.
Mr. Meadows. That's my point exactly. And I concur with the
gentleman from Virginia. In addition to that, we've been on a
committee where we've talked about some of these Federal
buildings that do not get used. I would look to work in a
bipartisan fashion to get some of those where they're actually
developed and used within the city on a regular basis. Thank
you.
Mr. Connolly. Point well taken.
Ms. Norton. If the gentleman would yield, since we seem to
have some kind of consensus, I don't know about the chairman,
on this one. Look, the fact is that the major complaints in the
city about the cost of housing more than I've ever seen before.
Rents are too high, housing too high, we're in the top 10
already of most expensive cities in the United States.
That's why I take the gentleman's point. You lose
credibility when you come before Members of Congress who
believe in the market economy, understand the market economy,
have seen its effects on housing throughout the country; when
you say there is a way to reduce the cost of housing, and that
is by adding more housing, which, and this is what I want to
get across to you, Ms. Tregoning, that housing has not, except
for that 8 percent, been for the people who've lived here most
of their lives, that hasn't been for middle class people, that
hasn't been for people in the lower middle class.
Let's face it. It's been for single people who don't yet
have families. It's been for single people who are able to take
the housing because two and three of them are living in housing
that should have been occupied by one person, but it has two
bedrooms, and that's how they can afford the rent.
So with all acclaim about spreading development, of which I
have been a part, I will not say from this rostrum that that is
the way to reduce the cost of housing in a city which does not
have room to expand, or even if it expanded by four stories
going up. And I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Connolly. Absolutely. My friend from Washington, D.C.,
might be interested to know my wife and I bought our first
home, it was a co-op apartment in the District of Columbia, and
in 1974, that apartment cost $16,600. Even we could afford it.
Housing was a lot more affordable when I first moved to this
area than it is today, and it's a challenge for all of us
throughout the region, I might add, not just for the District
of Columbia, but particularly acute in the District.
Mr. Acosta, let me ask, you said in your testimony that
there might be areas outside the L'Enfant City where maximum
heights could be increased, but it's got to be studied. You
want to give us some hints of targets, target areas that would
fall under that rubric?
Mr. Acosta. Well, the study itself, the District put
forward a series of illustrative areas, they ranged everything,
as Ms. Tregoning said, from Friendship heights to Poplar Point
to other places. That could be considered for additional
height.
Mr. Connolly. Well, are you--I guess I'm--is the National
Capital Planning Commission, is that study underway by the NCPC
or is it just something you're saying we ought to study that?
Mr. Acosta. It's something that we would have to pursue in
the next comp plan update. I think that's part of the answer.
Mr. Connolly. In light of this hearing and other
conversations, don't you think maybe that should be in the work
plan?
Mr. Acosta. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. The chairman made a good point. Looking at
parts of the city and what they border; for example, do we
really care that much about building heights in areas of the
city that border Chevy Chase or Bethesda, where building
heights right across the border are not restricted?
Mr. Acosta. There are fewer Federal interests with----
Mr. Connolly. I'm sorry?
Mr. Acosta. There are fewer Federal interests with respect
to----
Mr. Connolly. Right. So, I mean, my only point is, I mean,
we may reject them or not, but clearly, there are some areas of
the city ripe for that kind of examination.
Mr. Acosta. There could be. I think you're absolutely
right, that that's a discussion that we would have as part of
this. I think one of the issues that, you know, because of the
timing, the District could not put forward, you know, two or
three areas explicitly that would be targeted for heights.
Mr. Connolly. Yeah.
Mr. Acosta. They did it as part of this process. We could
have evaluated it for Federal interest, but I do think it does
take a discussion now with the community and that they want to
be engaged in kind of where these targeted areas might be. And
I think that's part of the bigger question out there, whether
this could be accommodated under the current height limits or
do you need more height to kind of get to the densities that it
requires.
Mr. Connolly. And, Mr. Chairman, let me just say, as I said
to you privately, and to my friend from the District of
Columbia, too, I hope we also, at some point, have a discussion
about the Capitol Hill area. I think there are real security
issues in terms of how this place is functioning and designed
road-wise, pedestrian-wise, proximity to various and sundry
transportation nodes, including CSX, that are of concern to
many of us and ought to be of concern to everyone in the
region.
Ms. Tregoning, I think you and I were on a panel once where
we actually talked about some of those concerns under the aegis
of the Council of Governments, and I would just hope at some
point, Mr. Chairman, while you're chairman, we might be able to
take a fresh look at that, because I think it really needs some
planning help. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Issa. Thank you. I understand that the committee
has received an inordinate, or an unusual amount of input from
residents of the District of Columbia directly. I want to make
sure that it's announced here today that we'll include all of
those in our record.
Additionally, as I said in the beginning, I'm going to hold
the record open for 7 days, so I would take additional comments
from the District of Columbia from residents and interested
parties.
I'm going to summarize a couple of things I heard today,
because I think that leading up to this hearing, things that
were said would make people believe that there's no area of
agreement. What I believe I heard, and I want to be corrected
if I go outside what I heard, there is no question but that a
small change in penthouse could be beneficial to the city, and
not be in any way objectionable to NCPC; that there is clearly
a high level of concern when it comes to L'Enfant Plaza and
particularly old L'Enfant Plaza; that as we go further away
from the Capitol and the White House, and, of course, we
normally rise on the north side, that these areas have
generally less concern, and that the area of vista and
preservation sadly is also at the area of greatest
concentration request, in other words, we referred to K Street,
but there are other areas.
Lastly, that when we ring the city, Maryland on the north,
Virginia on the south in some cases, what we find is areas in
which neither one of your organizations has any authority, and
those States and their incorporated cities are free to expand
to any height they want, and yet we have artificially in--let's
just say, the first half mile or mile around the city, we've
artificially created a similar, or not an identical limitation.
Well, there's no identical need. I think I heard that, Mr.
Acosta, specifically, that they would be seen as less Federal
interest, but had hypothetically the city said for the first
some distance, up in the north it would be a mile, in the south
it might be less, if they'd submitted a ring and said we'd like
to be able to essentially build and obstruct Maryland from
looking at the building, we'd like to obstruct Virginia from
looking at the building unless they want to raise higher,
because we feel we have that right and no obligation to the
people of Chevy Chase or the people of northern Virginia, that
you might have looked at it and said, well, under home rule,
what would be the harm, since 500 feet further in one direction
or another, somebody could build if they chose to and obstruct
effectively everybody else?
Was I accurate in saying that, even though I said it
deliberately in sort of an extreme way, but recognizing that
that's what I thought I heard you say is that you had little or
no interest in those areas that are perimetered by two other
States?
Mr. Acosta. Yeah. Those would be reviewed obviously on a
case-by-case basis. In some locations there may be Federal
parks, for instance, that abut it or Federal facilities that
might abut it, there may be particular view sheds.
Chairman Issa. I'm sure the Pentagon doesn't want to lose
their view of the Capitol.
Mr. Acosta. Right. So, you know, again, that's actually
part of this comp plan process, is that it does allow us to--
for the District to make proposals, you know, to be fully
vetted by the community so they understand the assumptions that
go into it, as well as kind of the growth that may occur and
what it may mean to them. Once it's vetted by the community and
the council accepts it, it comes back to us for a Federal
interest review. I think that's the way the process works in
terms of how these height issues might be addressed in the
future. That was essentially the proposal that the District had
put forward.
Chairman Issa. And lastly, what I think I heard, although
previous statements may indicate differently, that you both
agree that there's a check and balance, that the rejection that
came from NCPC would have been if there were no Height Act, the
same rejection at this time, that you were not prepared to
approve the plan for greater height as it was submitted by the
city, and that effectively your seven-to-three vote would have
been exactly the same if there'd been no Height Act.
And I realize you were looking at both a hypothetical plan
and a modification of the Height Act, but if the Height Act had
no restrictions, you still would have had substantially the
same vote, I assume.
Mr. Acosta. It would have occurred, yes.
Chairman Issa. Okay. Well, I think we have a better
understanding of how we got here today. I'm not done looking at
this or listening and reading. I'm not done with the District
of Columbia's residents having input.
And, Mr. Connolly, I am certainly--immediately following
this, I look forward to having a further dialogue on Federal
buildings in this area. And I think that Mr. Mica and a whole
raft of Members want to try to get it right, including on some
of those buildings I described less than kindly that were built
in the '60s and '70s.
Ms. Norton, you had a closing comment?
Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to clarify where
the final authority would lie.
Before I do that, I noticed that on page 2, you indicate a
full paragraph of consultation with Federal agencies and that
they had views on adverse effects for all kinds of things,
including Federal headquarters and the like. Were these all
within L'Enfant City?
Mr. Acosta. They were actually throughout the entire city.
The Federal facilities are throughout the entire city.
Ms. Norton. All right. Therefore, in the plan that you have
put forward and the plan that Ms. Tregoning as put forward,
would there be retention of ultimate authority in the Federal
Government?
Mr. Acosta. Well, the--yes. I think if you use this comp
plan process, it becomes the law, it comes to the Hill for, you
know, a 30-day preview period.
Ms. Norton. I'm not talking about the 30-day period now,
because remember, the reason I'm not talking about the 30-day
period is that we're talking about changes both within and
without L'Enfant City. And I indicated, and I gave the
hypothetical, at least in my opening remarks, where the changes
did not involve the Federal interest. And I think that some in
the city are concerned about that kind of change, that you'd
kind of have runaway development.
And, indeed, I'd like to ask you, if the District or the
Federal Government stuck to the way it looks at legislation
coming and there were changes in the Height Act, let's say
outside of L'Enfant City, that did not involve the Federal
interest such as perhaps what Mr. Acosta was alluding to on
page 2 with all the Federal headquarters, it didn't involve any
of that, how should the hypothetical that comes in real-time
from the 1990s, apparently, the early 1990s, where apparently a
developer convinced the council to interpret the Height Act as
it now stands as allowing for a height greater than the Height
Act allows, the worry seems to be about exceptions like that,
because they've seen at least one occur. How would that be
handled?
Mr. Acosta. In terms of the comp plan? In terms of any
height changes in the future?
Ms. Norton. Yeah.
Mr. Acosta. I think part of the issue is, you know, how are
these height changes going to be flagged as part of the comp
plan process. I think there was a lot of concern that this
could look more like spot zoning, where two or three parcels as
opposed to kind of taking a thorough and kind of careful look
at areas could occur. I think that was what we heard from some
of the testimony, and that I think a lot of the concern was,
you know, that process hasn't been thought all the way through.
You know, changing heights this way is a new thing, would be a
new thing. It would be a substantial difference in terms of how
people and how the community interface with the planners and
with the city and with even NCPC.
So I think there was lot of concern about, you know, we
haven't set this up, they don't know exactly what would happen,
they don't necessarily--you know, this is from the community.
They're not sure, you know, how they would be notified about
these things or whether it would be kind of done quickly or not
or kind of at the last moment. A lot of the questions kind of
ranged--were kind of in that area of focus.
So I think that's--you know, those are things that, you
know, if Congress at some point in time decided to make a
change, would have to be worked through.
I do think one of the bigger issues is really people enjoy
the certainty that's out there today, and any change that you
make, you know, affects their neighborhoods, affects their
property, affects their assets, and I think to some extent,
that's how people are reacting to this particular issue. It's
an important issue, too, that they see this personally and they
see this as, you know, very fundamental to their property,
their communities, you know, to the way they live. And that,
you know, while they--I think everybody, you know, appreciates
the home rule arguments, I think, you know, they put the two
together, and I think that's essentially what is happening over
this process.
Ms. Norton. Ms. Tregoning, do you see any way to avoid that
hypothetical--it wasn't hypothetical--that example from the
1990s where an exception was made, and the Congress overturned
it, and here we're talking about exceptions that would not
violate the Federal interests. Do you think that the District
could figure out a way to keep controversial exceptions or
interpretations like that from occurring when there was no
backstop in the Congress of the United States?
Ms. Tregoning. I do, and I have had this conversation with
Chairman Mendelson of the Council of the District of Columbia
that these are laws that we can change and strengthen if we
feel the need to do so. For that matter, we could enact our own
version of a height limit that would have to also be passed,
but would also have to be changed by an act of the council, a
majority, a supermajority. You can imagine all sorts of ways.
But there is no perfect land-use process in any place in
the country. And, again, the quality of our government, you
know, is a consequence of the actions of our citizens. If
democracy is messy, I relish the opportunity for our city to
roll up our sleeves and figure out how to do this.
Ms. Norton. Well, I urge you to try to think through some
of the ideas you just laid on the table so that you can quiet
some of the concerns in the city, and so that we are not faced
with the embarrassment of some people not trusting themselves
to make a home rule decision. But it will take some work, and
it will take some consensus between the executive and the
legislative branches.
And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much.
Chairman Issa. I thank you.
I thank our witnesses and our panel. This was an unusual
hearing.
I also want to thank the concerned audience. And, again,
this is an ongoing process. It won't be closed, at least during
my tenure.
With that, we stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:02 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
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