Walking through the campus of George Washington University last fall, we wondered aloud to a friend what the university intended to do with the site of the old George Washington University Hospital, also known as the ginormous empty lot next to the new GW hospital off Washington Circle on Pennsylvania Avenue. The site is seen to the right in a GW photo. At the time our companion mused that it would probably sit empty for a while because it “is GW after all.”

It turns out they were exactly right: in a pair of press releases issued just before Christmas, GW says they have begun planning in order to begin the planning what to do with the site. Indeed the West End Guide reports in their January edition GW was asked by the city to engage in such thorough planning due to the university’s bad relations with neighborhood groups. In the first GW release (complete with a ridiculously long 6-line headline) GW announces they’ve hired an architectural firm and will soon hire a facilitator to conduct a 6-month campus and community study on the Foggy Bottom neighborhood in coordination with the city’s Office of Planning. Then, in spring 2005, they say they’ll have the Urban Land Institute conduct a study of specifically what to do with the GW hospital site, noting “Community engagement will be a critical piece of this study as well.”