January 4, 2008
Morning Roundup: Rock Out With Your Caucus Out
Good morning, Washington. Supporters of Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Barack Obama are riding high off their caucus victories in Iowa last night, but locally, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty continues to suffer some bumps in the road after one year in office. Just weeks after the resignation of Attorney General Linda Singer, Fenty's former deputy chief of staff, Neil Richardson, has also resigned. Richardson, who was a key Fenty aide during his mayoral campaign, had been moved out of Fenty's "bullpen" in October and placed in an office called Serve DC, where he was tasked with creating a volunteer program to help the school system. Yesterday Richardson decided that the demotion, which came, according to the Post, after Richardson complained to the mayor that he was not listening enough to the public on key decisions, wasn't worth sticking around for, and tendered his resignation. WTOP has excerpts from Richardson's resignation letter, which reiterates complaints heard from others about Fenty's dictatorial governing style.
Dellinger Will Argue Supreme Court Case: Days after Acting Attorney General Peter Nickles fired Alan Morrison, removing him as the lead attorney on the District's handgun case in the Supreme Court, the Fenty administration has announced his replacement: former acting U.S. solicitor general Walter Dellinger will argue the case before the high court. Dellinger, a highly regarded litigator with O'Melveny & Myers, had been working under Morrison with the team of lawyers who prepared the city's Supreme Court brief. D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson is still demanding that Nickles explain why he fired Morrison in the first place.
Lawsuit Filed Against City, Officer for Nightclub Incident: The Post reports on a federal lawsuit filed yesterday which alleges that an off-duty D.C. police officer, Talika Moore, spat on a nightclub bouncer while drunk, and that some police officer called to the scene refused to file a complaint against a fellow officer.
Briefly Noted: Police are investigating an officer-involved shooting on Indian Head Highway in Oxon Hill ... Fairfax County police are the scene of a shooting outside a hotel in Alexandria ... Union Station retailers decry taxes.
This Day in DCist: In 2007 we took a closer look at the Homeopathy Monument, and in 2005 we wondered where exactly Route 29 actually is.
Photo by andertho
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First post at 10 am? You guys are later than jaimie lynn spears' period.
Get on the ball. LAist already has a story for today up!
The suit seeks $1 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
That's a lot of money for a mouth full of spit. I wonder what the bouncer would sue for had the officer farted at him? Flung a booger? Dog doo on a stick?
Dellinger is one vowel off from having the most ironic Supreme Court defense hearing ever.
The assessed value of Union Station’s commercial interests will soar from $41 million in 2007 to $158 million in 2008, according to the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. The station’s long-term lease holder, New York-based Ashkenazy Acquisition, has a $2.9 million tax bill coming in 2008, a 278 percent jump over last year.
That's pretty much in line with most business real estate taxes. Ben's Chili Bowl's taxes went from $300k to $1.2 million in 2006, but they got some kind of exemption. I'm sure they'll pass some kind of tax freeze for the Union Station businesses. But how many more businesses will get this kind of tax relief before the Council realizes they're putting people out of business? And once those businesses are gone, good bye tax revenue, hello defecit spending. It's not like any DC agency's budget is going to be cut just because the government ran out of money.
Complicating things: The nine-screen cineplex at the station is likely to close “in the near future” due to a lack of revenue
Gee, do you think that would have anything to do with the place being a pig sty full of jackasses who yell at the screen and babble on their cellphones? Gut it, put in a glass floor, and move the National Aquarium there. It'd be like a glass bottom boat with mass transit access.
Wait, so Fenty is an egomaniacal douche bag? I wish I would have known that before I voted for him. Oh wait, I did, which is why I didn't vote for him. And Fleet Feet sucks anyway.
Sounds like Union Station is paying for the new ballpark, or at least a couple of trips to Nordstrom.
At those prices, the only businesses that could afford to locate in Union Station would be high-end restaurants/boutiques. But with places like Viridian folding, I don't see Panda Cafe being replaced by a Citronelle-on-the-Run or a CitiZen Carrout.
I won't miss the Union Station movie theater. My fondest memories there (in order of fondness):
1) Watching the opening scenes of "Saving Private Ryan" when the troops are storming the beaches of Normandy and the film starting moving around from side to side in the projector, then disappeared, then reappeared, then disappeared, but the audio kept going. So the crowd was sitting in complete darkness listening to machine gun fire, screams, explosions, etc. Eventually some manager realized something was wrong, turned on the lights, and fixed the problem. The movie reel then came back on, but this time, no sound. So we watched the invasion in silence. Then the film broke again. The managers were refusing to issue refunds until the crowd became belligerent and openly hostile. Eventually the told everyone to come back tomorrow and we could see the movie for free. There was no need for tickets or any other proof.
2) Going to see a movie and trying to pick up tickets that I had ordered at the will call window. The line of people at the regular windows were not amused with me cutting the line to get to the will call/regular tickets window. The ticket people were of no use since they were telling me I had to go to the back of the line to pick up the will call tickets (sorta defeats the purpose of calling ahead to order tickets). Eventually a manager came over and gave us our tickets. The ticket workers than cursed us out in front of their manager, who did nothing.
3) Watching "Showgirls." The only good thing about Union Station was the audience participation in movies. And with a quality piece of cinema like "Showgirls", that was well worth the price of admission (as opposed to, say, the end of "Life is Beautiful" when members of the audience were laughing and hollering at the end).
monkey, i love your idea for the DC Aquarium move. maybe then people will actually realize we have this aquarium in town and visit it. think of all the revenue from the stuffed eels and gaudy shot glasses!
Please read the article - the city has changed the way taxes are assessed on set-ups like Union Station, and the prime schmucks who are the prime leaseholders are upset that their sweetheart deal is gone.
It isn't like the leaseholders passed their previous tax savings on to the retailers, and I bet that originally the city never envisioned the revenues now derived from renting out the lobby and Columbus Club for special events.
If the leaseholders don't like it I bet there are plenty of other investors who would be glad to take the Union Station lease off their hands.
I only just heard about the aquarium yesterday! And I have friends in low places! ;)
But as for the good ol' office of Tax and Revenue plus Hizonher's increasingly "dictatorial governing style"... "Fenty! You got some 'splainin' to do!"
I'm confused. They are closing the theaters and putting in something else, or closing the existing theaters and spending $8 million on nice theaters?
There's no reason you couldn't have nice little theaters there, especially with the MASSIVE development planned for the air rights over Union Station. The primary problem is the staff is woefully untrained and basically lazy, and they allow behavior that shouldn't be allowed. All that could change quickly if you turned it over to a company that would run it right.
But it would be the end of an era of sorts.