The 2.5 acre Tanner Park is slated to be finished some time in late 2019 or early 2020. (Courtesy of the NoMa Parks Foundation)

By DCist contributor Edward Russell

NoMa has a name drawn from a buried piece of D.C.’s African American history for a new large park in the works.

The new 2.5-acre park adjacent to the Metropolitan Branch Trail just north of the New York Avenue bridge in NoMa will be called Tanner Park. It is named for Alethia Browning Tanner, a former slave who helped open the District’s first school for African American children, the Bell School, in 1807.

“We’re very excited about uncovering the legacy of such an important person,” said Robin-Eve Jasper, president of the NoMa Business Improvement District, at a community meeting where the name was announced on August 28.

Depending on when construction begins, the NoMa Parks Foundation hopes to open Tanner Park by late 2019 or in 2020.

Planning for the park, which had temporarily been called “NoMa Green”, has been ongoing since NoMa Parks announced a deal to purchase the land from Pepco in January 2016. It is part of a larger effort aimed at adding green space to the rapidly developing neighborhood.

“The city reserved no land for parks and, come 2011, we started to think what a terrible legacy it would be to have no parks for people,” Jasper says. Other planned additions include Swampoodle Park, lighting installations in four underpasses under the Amtrak tracks that bisect NoMa, a mid-block “meander” between First Street NE and North Capitol Street, and other spaces.

Tanner Park was selected from four options voted on by residents and those interested in the park. Other options included Gales Wood, Met Branch Commons, and Union Green, all of which draw from D.C. history and the local area, including one-time mayor Joseph Gales Jr., whose country home became the Eckington neighborhood where the park is located.

More than 65 percent of the 2,111 votes cast were for the Tanner Park name, NoMa Parks Foundation director of parks projects Stacie West said at the meeting.

Tanner, who was born a slave in Maryland in the 1780s and bought her freedom in 1810, supported educational initiatives for African Americans in the District. In addition to supporting several schools for free black children though her entrepreneurial ventures, including a produce stand in Lafayette Park, she funded the education of family members who would later be leaders in D.C.’s education scene, including the city’s first superintendent of what was then called “colored public schools”.

“I think it’s wonderful that this woman, who not very many of us know about, is going to be honored in this way,” Sylvia Pinkney, commissioner of ANC 5E04 that is adjacent to the new park, told DCist.

The name of the park has been somewhat controversial in Eckington. Residents have expressed fears that the neighborhood could lose some of its identity to its better-known and newer neighbor to the south if “NoMa” were included in the name.

The park, which will rise on the southern half of the empty field at the corner of Harry Thomas Way and R Street NE, is located within both the Eckington neighborhood and the NoMa BID, the latter of which was only established in 2007.

“We are invested in creating a park that is loved by the surrounding community for a couple of hundred years at a minimum, we’re not invested in a name,” Jasper said last year.

The Tanner Park name still must be approved by the D.C. Council before it becomes official. It’s the larger of the two parks that the NoMa Parks Foundation is developing.

Swampoodle Park, which includes a dog park and children’s play area, is expected to open in September, according to Jasper. Comprising less than half an acre at the corner of L Street and 3rd Street NE, “Swampoodle” comes from the Irish community that lived there in the mid-1800s as the area was prone to flooding that would leave the ground swampy and full of puddles.

When Tanner Park opens, it will be one of the largest new green spaces in D.C. since Canal Park opened in 2012. The park will feature a large lawn, playground, and dog park, as well as straightening the S-curve on the Met Branch Trail at R Street, and pedestrian walkways continuing both Q Street and Quincy Street through the space.

Some elements, like a planned water feature, have been dropped from earlier designs. West says the combination of “astronomical” costs of maintaining a water feature and planned upgrades to the nearby Harry Thomas Sr. pool prompted the decision.

Tanner Park will also abut the planned Eckington Park development, which will add 328 residential units on the northern half of the same empty field as the park. The building will feature ground floor retail facing the park, or as West put it at the meeting “park-oriented retail.”

Construction on the new park will necessitate some temporary modifications to the Metropolitan Branch Trail.

Forrester Construction, which NoMa Parks has contracted to build Tanner Park, will temporarily reroute the MBT around the space for around six months early in construction. That detour will include a new two-way protected bike lane on R Street and Harry Thomas Way that will replace some parking spots on those streets, according to West.

“It’s going to be a little uncomfortable for a little while,” she says, adding that they do not have a timeline for the detour as they are still in the process of securing construction permits from the city.

Previously:
NoMa Is Taking Names … For Two New Parks
NoMa BID Aquires Its Second Park Site From Pepco