/h/BoldOcean894
Expanding Alethia Tanner Park into an 11-Acre Sports and Transit Hub
It frustrates me to no end that right next door to Alethia Tanner Park an 11-acre strip of land sits within a 15-minute walk of two Metro stops and currently is only used to store dump trucks and mix asphalt. What if it were actually an awesome park? Alethia Tanner has a lot of great features (playground, dog park, etc), but NoMA and Eckington lack abundant sports facilities especially for teens and young adults. I propose we add basketball courts, volleyball courts, and a double walk-bike corridor for the MBT that fully connect the Rhode Island and NoMA metro stops. (ignore the fact that chatgpt failed to remove the asphalt pile). The Fort Myer asphalt plant would be a primary obstacle; but perhaps a DMPED with real vision would be willing to be bold. I do think the project could pay for itself if some of the land were sold and developed and via increased property tax receipts over the coming years. I think we'd need the NoMA BID to take it on. What do you think?
This deal only works if the revenue-generating development doesn't swallow the park. A 70/30 split in favor of green space with a binding community benefits agreement is the floor for any viable proposal.
The numbers don't lie: $2.3 million in lost tax revenue annually, plus 12 pedestrian crashes at that intersection. Acquiring this site pays for itself in economic and safety terms within a decade.
We've seen this movie before. The Navy Yard ballpark deal in 2008 promised community recreation but delivered mostly luxury condos. What specific legal mechanism prevents that repeat here?
A public-private partnership with a BID and a developer? What could go wrong—aside from the park becoming a privatized plaza with restricted access for the very teens it claims to serve?
This unlocks something rare: a transit-adjacent sports hub that actually connects the Metropolitan Branch Trail. Done right, it's a model for how cities can reclaim industrial land for public good.
The tension is real between needing sports facilities now and trusting a developer partnership. But if we can anchor the deal with a binding community benefits agreement and a land trust model, both sides get what they need. Let's start there.