LINK- East Capitol Mall controversy
Both the McMillan plan and the subsequent East Capitol Mall proposal were contemporaneously reported about by newspapers, particularly the former’s West Mall-Lincoln Memorial.
Yet the 1990s “Extending the Legacy” South Capitol Mall was strangely unreported, starting by being un-named (the term “South Capitol Mall” and any variant with the word “Mall”, “Promenade” nor “Greenway” appears nowhere within ‘Extending the Legacy’) and continuing by being mis-described, via the notably vague yet consistent terminology.
This would be universal, not only throughout the “Extending the Legacy” publications, but also throughout the MSM ‘reporting’, within the various ‘news’ reports as a ‘gateway’ and ‘boulevard’ , though never as a promenade, ‘mall or linear park, but also with the various ‘environmentalist’ organizations, all following a consistently selective use of terminology to NOT inform about the proposal for the new linear park along the South Capitol axis.
Also universal was the matter of the St Vincent DePaul Church being the most significant physical barrier to the proposed South Mall being likewise unmentioned.
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1996 MSM non-reporting on proposed South Capitol MallLINK-
'E' Groups IndifferenceIt was like there was a giant ‘magnet’ controlling all of these entities in their selections of words and actions, all working together to obscure the issue for a larger agenda, and logically including those entities sold to the public for defending the very ideals they must actually betray for the sake of their hidden master[s].
In seeking allies for protecting this idea of extending the legacy of L’Enfant and the McMillan Commission, I would find be this nowhere more obvious with the example of the organization that proudly touts itself as promoting and defending the idea of classical monumental Washington, D.C. planning marked by such things as the West Mall/Lincoln and Jefferson Memorial, Union Station and even the subway portions of the WMATA rail transit system, with the selections of words and actions of the “Committee of 100 on the Federal City’. From their web site one would assume they supported Extending the Legacy, given their prominent juxta-positioning of the aerial from Extending the Legacy with various pronouncements of their intent to protect and expand classical planning.
Yet the Committee of 100 actively opposed Extending the Legacy, writing a letter asking then U.S. President Clinton to reverse his support, bashing it as ‘olympian, top down, and too big’ -- words that could as well describe the West Mall/Lincoln Memorial! And are simply rhetoric word tricks of placing a negative spin upon the very principle of extending the legacy of monumental planning of L’Enfant and the McMillan Commission that USNCPC was to advance, when being directed to so go apostate.
The tendency of such entities to vote unanimously, and often without pubic debate, is suggestive of an ordered political dynamics, especially when understanding such workings as part of an obscured larger agenda.
LINK-
1996 Committee of 100 opposed Extending the LegacyLINK-
Ruminations following the 2005 Committee of 100 Christmas Party at the Perry Belmont Mansion (Masonic Eastern Star Temple) New Hampshire Avenue, Washington, D.C.
IIRC, this was the only infrastructure related item at Clinton's 2nd inauguration,
January 20, 1997, the
"Bridge to the 21st Century"IIRC, congressional efforts to implement the Extending the Legacy plan, along with any reiterations of support by then President William Clinton, appear to flounder and die by the late 1990s, around the time of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Joseph Passonneau, that the ‘Committee of 100’ awarded for ‘his superb and longstanding work as an architect, planner, transportation designer, and publisher in the Nation’s Capital’, opposed the Extending the Legacy’ South Capitol Mall.
I only knew that because I attended various events at Washington, D.C.’s ‘National Building Museum’, including some featuring Passonneau, starting with his summer 2000 slide show presentation. That would showcase his poorly developed proposal to bury the SE Freeway (with a rendering showing a lid erected atop the existing ELEVATED freeway). It included a flashing of his proposal for the future of Washington, D.C.’ South Capitol Street, which I thankfully recorded.
.
LINK-
South Capitol AvenueLINK-
SW-SE Freeway Burial?
Passonneau's Ideal South Capitol Street
Note the massive new white buildings, with the St Vincent DePaul Church in its exact same location at the right.
I write ‘thankfully recorded’ because, AFAIK, Passonneau did not otherwise make such images publicly available, with none of the narrow South Capitol Street upon the Passonneau and Associates web site, as if it were something to minimize publicizing.
I asked him at a subsequent National Building Museum event (in 2003 IIRC) about the Extending the legacy South Capitol Mall, to hear his (to me- bizarre) response that it “would wreck the Mall.- something which he would not further elaborate: go figure!
Any sort of explanations for such a statement, like the SCM mall itself would be nonexistent publicly.
Further reflecting the uncertainties were the subsequent Federal and local (District) planning efforts.
I knew that the SCM appeared less then certain, with the public unveiling of the District’s Anacostia Waterfront Initiative. IIRC an AWI model was on display at the National Building Museum by 2004. Notably none of the MSM or MSOs (media or organizations) reports would mention the conspicuous departure from Extending the Legacy that had its model also prominently publicly displayed.
The uncertainty was apparent within the USNCPC publication ‘Memorials and Museums’, released in September 2001, within 9 months of the start of the Administration of 43rd U.S. President George Walker Bush, son of the 41st U.S. President Herbert Walker Bush,
“One of several recent concepts for a revitalized South Capitol Street with … land use and new public space reaching from the U.S. Capitol to the Anacostia waterfront”
Notice the location of the church like building to the east just north of M Street, suggestive of my idea of a few hundred foot relocation of the St Vincent DePaul Church.
(Such makes a good ‘alternative reality” of the Roman Catholic Church being civic-minded.)
While people’s attentions were focused upon the events of September, 2001, the next official planning for Washington, D.C.’s South Capitol Street underwent a radically different course of events, with the South Capitol Mall concept being subsequently cut down and discarded by the subsequent February 2003 South Capitol Street Urban Design Study eschewing its stated mission of a linear park, for the sake of avoiding the need for the government to purchase properties.
This study excluded the full Mall, primarily by sacrificing its western side, with 3 considered options “C” for essentially the eastern half; ‘B’ for a symmetrical yet even narrower Mall; and ‘A’ for maintaining the existing width.
Ostensibly, the full Mall was excluded to reduce the number of dwellings, as it’s the area to the west that has more dwellings along such parallel streets as Carroll Place SW, with several hundred dwellings of the type in the next picture.
Meanwhile the area to the east had but a handful, including the one most architecturally outstanding example, the Alfred Richards House.
LINK-
The Alfred Richards House Demolished for Baseball Stadium May 2006LINK-
Alfred Richards House Part 2LINK- JD announcement of my scoop of the demolition, based upon photos posted by JD though without mention of the house’s identity
"QUOTE- • Background on Demolished Richards House (5/31/06 02:31 PM)
Because I've been writing about Near Southeast for 3 1/2 years now, I admit to not always explaining every item in minute detail--I work under the assumption that everyone's been reading along from the beginning and has committed every iota of my prose to memory. (It's not at all a wise strategy, but you have to admit it saves space.) Anyway, I made mentions over the past few weeks of the demolition of the one nice structure on the ballpark site, which I referred to as the Ken Wyban house (after it's last owner). I didn't give much additional background, but you can go to Douglas Willinger's South Capitol Street Frederick Douglass Mall blog to get a bit more detail--it was actually the Alfred Richards House, built in the 1840s and named after it's original owner. (You'll recognize a lot of familiar verbage and photos in the entry, as Willinger quotes from my site--thanks for the hat tip.) The blog itself discusses the fate of South Capitol Street, which in 1990s planning documents was going to be transformed into a grand boulevard/promenade--the stadium has changed those plans, and Willinger is not happy..."
If the full South Capitol Mall concept was killed because of the displacement, it appears that a good number of people may have been distracted from the fact that the options show an indeterminate number of buildings to the east and west appearing removed and replaced anyway by the adjacent redevelopment.
So here we have a rejection of eminent domain for public use (the linear park), though apparently not for private use (the real estate re-development).
Consistent with the linear park concept, was the inclusion in all three options of a new vehicular traffic tunnel allowing a bypass of the surface, and connecting to I-395, either directly beneath South Capitol Street, or parallel beneath the new linear park of option ‘C’.
Option ‘C’ present the least conflict with maintaining corridor traffic during the construction, making it easier to construct.
The new tunnel itself would swing towards the rear of the St Vincent DePaul Church, beneath its rectory.
However the linear park, whether option ‘c” nor the narrower yet symmetric option ‘b’ would displace the St Vincent DePaul Church.
Illustration: from 2003 SCS Urban Design Study
Of the surface options, only Option ‘a’ didn’t conflict with the St Vincent DePaul Church location. Note the blue representing new buildings, including upon that church’s park lot to its north
The following would be the sole reporting from newspapers within Washington, D.C. about the decision to select option ‘a’ to not widen the South Capitol Street corridor.
This report appeared in the July 2003 The Southwester, circulation 10,000, at the bottom of its back page.
Neither the Post nor the Times would bother themselves to convey the above information to their readers. Anything they did write regarding the South Capitol Street corridor would carefully follow the terminology of the 1996 of the Extending the Legacy program of ‘gateways’ and ‘boulevards’.
This is even though (or because) chief executive officer and chairman of the board of The Washington Post Company, Donald E. Graham is a member of the Federal City Council, founded in 1954 ostensibly as a counterpart to the Committee of 100 as an organization focused upon the planning of Washington, D.C. Their web site boasts they involve themselves with the biggest projects – a claim once juxtapositioned with a picture of a statute of a lion, suggesting an indifference to smaller projects – with a mention of their supporting the construction of the WMATA subway system.
Unmentioned is their past questionable (Hegelian dialectic style) ‘support’ for constructing a fairly comprehensive inside the Beltway-Washington DC freeway system: note how I-95, I-66 and I-295 are truncated. Such ‘support’ centered upon their opposition to
delaying highway construction,
as it meant going with highly unpopular, infinitely far more invasive highway designs/routings, rather then far more politically and environmentally sensible designs were on the drawing boards, undermining building the highway system, as with the mystery of the political subversion of John F. Kennedy’s B&O Route North Central Freeway, which would have gone alongside Catholic University of America (which really did not want it anywhere near them, with CUA strangely silent on proposals to cover the freeway, and to this day opposes proposals to cover this railroad corridor, evidencing an attitude that they like CUA being isolated from the neighborhoods to the east).
LINK-
North Central Freeway- most needed, most botched with initial late 1963-1964 engineering study betraying key component of JFK D.C. Freeway planLINK-
Washington Post Lies about D.C. I-95LINK-
Washington Post Lying About Feasibilities of D.C. FreewaysLINK-
A Telling Deletion (BEST INSIDE THE BELTWAY I-95 ROUTE GOES THROUGH MASONIC EASTERN STAR PROPERTY)Meanwhile, a U.S. NCPC pamphlet from 2002-2003 suggests that the option selected was for the option “c” linear park representing the eastern portion of the full Mall proposal, shown with the new vehicular tunnel.
And as late as October 2004 NCPC was releasing documents suggesting that the South Capitol Mall concept was alive and well with its prominent including of the illustrations of the 1990s Extending the Legacy planning, with the South Mall as the backdrop to the USNCPC ‘leaders’, on their 2004 annual report titled “Fulfilling the Legacy”
“Fulfilling the Legacy” was completely misleading. It showcases the ‘Extending the Legacy’ full South Capitol Mall concept that was
excluded by the 2003 studies, and to be physically blocked by the erection of the new baseball stadium, stipulated in the agreement between the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission and Major League Baseball, to house a newly re-badged Toronto Expos, and completed in time for the March-April opening of the 2008 season. The location would take the space of much of the southeastern area of the Extending the Legacy South Capitol Mall, and the timing would provide the last opportunity that incumbent U.S. President Bush – long time baseball enthusiast part owner of a MLB baseball team -- would have to partake the custom of throwing the new season’s 1st ball at the new stadium.
This stadium option was included within a stadium study report dated November 2002, prior to the 2003 reports.
LINK-
Why was the public not told?Interesting they would include a site totally apostate to the Extending the Legacy planning, before that planning was officially changed, with this stadium site option conflicting with every official option regarding South Capitol Street, except the 2003 option ‘a’ against a widening.
It’s as if the decisions were already made.
And it’s as if this was the project of some rather well connected entities, large enough to pull it together, while trumping any true reporting through their news media and their various other organizations.
The universality un-reporting of the developing stadium proposal, like the selective terminology and silence regarding the Extending the Legacy South Capitol Mall fits with the idea of the public being deliberately non-informed with the South Capitol Street stadium site -- otherwise mislabeled as the M Street SE site -- as this was all the baby from rather from well high up the political pyramid connected to the entities being employed for its facilitation: the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission; Major League Baseball, and the powerful Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling.
Advocates of major league baseball in the District this week made perhaps their boldest step yet in that city’s long quest for a team, sending the sport’s top executives a 70 page report documenting potential site plans for a stadium, as well as financing options for a project that could cost as much as $522 million.
The report – the result of a six-month, $300,000 site selection study by the D.C. Sports & Entertainment Commission, D.C. Office of Planning and a bid group led by financier Fred Malek – details the potential land use and financial plans for five potential stadium sites. The sites are scattered about the city: two along Massachusetts Avenue NW between Mount Vernon Square and Union Station, a location near the Southeast Federal Center and District waterfront, the RFK Stadium property, and located north of Union Station near New York Avenue NE.
Eric Fisher, The Washington Times November 15, 2002 District Outlines
Potential Stadium Plans
Interesting how the South Capitol site is described with the most vague terms “a location near the Southeast Federal Center and District waterfront”.
The universality un-reporting of the developing stadium proposal, like the selective terminology and silence regarding the Extending the Legacy South Capitol Mall fits with the idea of the public being deliberately non-informed with the South Capitol Street stadium site -- otherwise mislabeled as the M Street SE site -- as this was all the baby from rather from well high up the political pyramid connected to the entities being employed for its facilitation: the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission; Major League Baseball, and the powerful Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling.
Michael Tuohey, then head of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission., is well connected to the Roman Catholic Church.
He sits on the board of trustees of three Roman Catholic Schools: Jesuit Academy. Gonzaga High School, and Catholic University of America- the latter where he sits with others including Washington Archbishop Theodore McCarrick (retired May 2006), New York Cardinal Edward Egan (retired 2009), and Egan’s replacement Timothy Dolan.Theodore McCarrick is listed as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. NE, along with Mark Tuohey, of the Washington, D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission at:
http://publicaffairs.cua.edu/factbook/trustees.htmBoard of Trustees*
Carl A. Anderson, New Haven, Conn.
Richard D. Banziger, New York, N.Y.
Nancy J. Bidwill, Phoenix, Ariz.
Bertha S.Braddock, Alexandria, Va.
Bishop Michael J. Bransfield, Wheeling, W.Va.
Archbishop Raymond L. Burke , St. Louis, Mo.
Timothy R. Busch, Esq., Irvine, Calif.
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Denver, Colo.
Paul J. Chiapparone, Frisco, Texas
Robert F. Comstock, Esq., Washington, D.C.
Robert E. Craves, Issaquah, Wash.
Robert J. Crimmins, Huntington, N.Y.
Bishop Edward P. Cullen, Allentown, Pa.
Leo A. Daly III, Washington, D.C.
Bishop Daniel N. DiNardo, Houston, Texas
Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, Milwaukee, Wis. [succeeded Egan]
David A. Donohoe, Esq., Vice Chairman, Washington, D.C.
Bishop Thomas G. Doran, Rockford, Ill.
Cardinal Edward M. Egan, New York, N.Y.
Archbishop John C. Favalora, Miami Shores, Fla.
Frederick R. Favo, Oakmont, Pa.
Sister Margaret Mary Fitzpatrick, S.C., Sparkill, N.Y.
Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, St. Paul, Minn.
Cardinal Francis E. George, O.M.I., Chicago, Ill.
Stephanie Germack-Kerzic, Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich.
Archbishop José H. Gomez, San Antonio, Texas
Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory, Atlanta, Ga.
Ray J. Hillenbrand, Rapid City, S.D.
Michael P. Hoffman, New York, N.Y.
Cardinal William H. Keeler, Baltimore, Md.
Bishop William E. Lori, Chairman, Bridgeport, Conn.
Cardinal Roger Mahony, Los Angeles, Calif.
Cardinal Adam J. Maida, Detroit, Mich.
Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, Chancellor, Washington, D.C.
William A. McKenna Jr., Saugerties, N.Y.
Sandra A. McMurtrie, Bethesda, Md.
Bishop William F. Murphy, Rockville Centre, N.Y.
Archbishop John J. Myers, Newark, N.J.
Very Rev. David M. O’Connell, C.M., President, Washington, D.C.
Archbishop Sean P. O’Malley, O.F.M. Cap., Boston, Mass.
William G. Parrett, New York, N.Y.
Bishop Joseph A. Pepe, Las Vegas, Nev.
Neil J. Rauenhorst, Tampa, Fla.
Cardinal Justin F. Rigali, Philadelphia, Pa.
Andrea Roane, Washington, D.C.
Monsignor Walter R. Rossi, Washington, D.C.
Timothy C. Scheve, Towson, Md.Rodger D. Shay, Miami, Fla.
Mark H. Tuohey III, Esq., Washington, D.C.
Bishop Allen H. Vigneron, Oakland, Calif.
Frank G. Persico, Secretary of the Board, Fulton, Md.
Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s name appears as follows in an article in The Washington Times, September 18, 2005:
OK, we know you have connections. An office overlooking the inaugural parade. Access to a private jet. A drink named after you at Zola. A booth at the Palm restaurant. Your face on the wall at the Palm.
But have you yelled "Beer man" next to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice? Have you spilled popcorn on James Carville? Have you elbowed Tim Russert during the T-shirt toss or tripped over Al Hunt's loafers on the way to the men's room or cut in the hot-dog line in front of Judy Woodruff?
If so, you belong to an exclusive club of baseball fans -- high-priced lawyers, lobbyists, politicos and media types -- who have made RFK Stadium power
central during the balmy nights of late summer. The Nationals may win or lose,
but it's never a bad night behind the dugouts.
Mayor Anthony A. Williams, pundit Mark Shields and AOL emeritus Jim Kimsey all have season tickets. Guests spotted over the summer have been rocker Dave Matthews; rapper Ludacris; Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; actor Kevin Sorbo; White House spokesman Scott McClellan; and athletes Art Monk, Carlton Fisk, Sonny Jurgensen, Joe Theismann and Daryl Green. Fred Malek, who is head of the Washington Baseball Club, a consortium hoping to buy the team when Major League Baseball holds an upcoming auction, has tickets two rows up behind first base.
“It gives you 81 opportunities to do this -- and the seats aren't so darn expensive that people can't accept them as a gift. It falls within the limits," he says. (He is referring to the $50 limit on gifts people in government can accept.)
"People do go to be seen," says a K Street lobbyist who often entertains out-of-town guests with seats at RFK. "Let's face it, there are very few things like this for middle-aged guys like me to do. Washington is venue-starved."
And if you've nibbled on lamb chops in D.C. Sports & Entertainment Commission Chairman Mark Tuohey's private suite, you know you're not in Baltimore anymore, eating soggy crab cakes and dreading that hour long ride home. (Mr. Tuohey also bought up a truckload of hot dogs and serves them to his guests. He also gives them to the team after each game.)
Washington finally has a new venue for schmoozing and deal-making, and by all accounts, the results have been formidable.
"It's all about building relationships," Mr. Tuohey said one humid night in his large suite, where he has entertained guests from Capitol Hill as well as Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Eddie Jordan, coach of the Wizards. "Is this a good place to do that? The answer is yes."
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and his wife, TV journalist Andrea Mitchell, recently sat behind home plate as guests of journalists Al Hunt and Judy Woodruff. Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, has sat on the hard orange seats. So have White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Mary Matalin and President Bush's political architect, Karl Rove. (Mr. Bush himself has attended two games, sitting in the President's Box.)
It was the corporate entity of Major League Baseball that effectively enforced the twin dictates of locating the stadium right next to South Capitol Street – essentially extending the St Vincent DePaul Church building line southward -- and its completion by March 2008, by making these strict conditions of the agreement crafted through Covington & Burling for the Washington Nationals franchise, reportedly via a vote of the MLB team franchise owners.
Now, what sort of organizational fraternizing would bring these owners to all agree upon a decision leaving MLB a conspicuous target for future public wrath for preventing the ‘Extending the Legacy’ South Capitol Mall by insisting upon locating their stadium so damn close to South Capitol Street, particularly as part of an effort pre-dating the South Capitol Mall’s 2003 abandonment?
I see
here that a member of the group of owners of MLB franchises belonged to a Roman Catholic military order known as the
Knights of Malta (SMOM), an organization that at the time of the crafting of the stadium deal, was --- Bertie, who has subsequently died.
The cluster of stadium replacement projects over the past decade, replacing perfectly functional structures for the sake of adding barrier separated sky-boxes for super luxury VIPs, with the numerous charges of political bullying for forcing such, is suggestive of a centralized directing.
W. Andrew Jack
Covington & Burling Building; 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue
The law firm Covington and Burling, an intermediary, is well connected, and long involved with Washington, D.C. planning matters.
It was founded in 1919 by James Harry Covington and Edward Burling.
Covington was a former U.S. Representative and Judge, current Georgetown University Law Professor, and ‘Grand Master’ of his Romish-Masonic Frat that went from Verona Italy to Virginia in 1867.
Burling was a railroad industry attorney; he was the brother in law, via marriage to a pair of sisters, to Frederic Adrian Delano, member of the original 1914 board of directors of the U.S. Federal Reserve and uncle to 32nd U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Covington and Burling was founded to deal with the growing regulatory burden crafted via the early 1900s ‘Progressives’.
Delano in 1914, cropped from the group photo of the original board of the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Delano was obviously an important figure involved with guiding Washington, D.C. planning. Both the [Federal government] U.S. National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), and the [private] ‘Committee of 100 on the Federal City” were his creations. Yes, the NCPC that gave us ‘Extending the Legacy’ that this ‘Committee of 100 on the Federal City’ would oppose for being ‘olympian, top down, and too big’- rhetoric word tricks of placing a negative spin upon the very principle of extending the legacy of monumental planning of L’Enfant and the McMillan Commission that USNCPC was to advance, as such words could have as well described the West Mall, Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, Union Station, etc. Yes, both NCPC and the Committee of 100 were founded with publicly announced good intentions. Yet as the Extending the Legacy South Capitol Mall story reveal, such organizations would clearly be gatherings of ‘jolly good boys (or girls)- IOW yes people agreeing with the idea that white is black and black is white when so directed.
So has Covington and Burling. It appears to be a longstanding ally of this ‘Committee of 100 on the Federal City’, often teamed together within Washington, D.C.’s monumental planning matters, where NCPC plays the role of proposing something, and the “Committee of 100” and Covington and Burling the role of the opposition, such as with the subversion of John F. Kennedy’s B&O Route North Central Freeway (via their law suit building upon widespread local opposition created by the 1964 engineering feasibility study’s abandonment and deviation from Kennedy’s tight routing hugging the existing railroad industrial corridor with 37 route options almost everywhere over the map).
With both the Extending the Legacy South Capitol Mall, and the subsequent addition of a South Capitol Street corridor vehicular tunnel, the ‘Committee’ and ‘Covington’, even if not working together, would work towards the same goal: the ‘Committee’ by opposing Extending the Legacy but not the conflicting stadium site, and ‘Covington’ via facilitating the stadium agreement between the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission and MLB.
Founded in 1924, these organizations were obviously created building upon the popular excitement over the creation of the new Lincoln Memorial that was completed and dedicated in 1922.
Ostensibly these creations were to advance such planning and presuming the popular consciousness of such.
U.S. President Warren Harding in Masonic (Shriners) regalia
Illustrations: Lincoln Memorial Construction and Dedication
Though not apparently by the way things evolved by 2004. Apparently these organizations have been a great failure- assuming a particular definition of failure.
The stadium would go before the D.C. City Council. Over 200 people were listed for making public statements, including myself, at an October 28, 2004 hearing, on Bill 15-1028 “Ballpark Omnibus Financing and Revenue Act of 2004”, extending deep into the night.
I was the only person to speak about the stadium location’s conflict with the South Capitol Mall linear park and with the tunnel.
Of the council people during that hearing, the only one to acknowledge my point about the tunnel (though alas while remaining mute about the South Capitol Mall), was Carol Schwartz. Future D.C. Mayor, then Councilmember Fenty who publicly opposed the stadium (strictly limited to budgetary grounds in accordance with the controlled opposition) would not be in attendance.
Yes there was an opposition to the stadium, such as the October 2004 poster below, and that expressed by Ralph Nader ‘League of Fans’ web site.
Alas such opposition confined itself strictly with the stadium’s financing. Sure I contacted some of these people and left them literature, but I would never hear anything back nor have any influence- NONE would mention the stadium-linear park/mall conflict.
Throughout 2005. I started my web site. I notified dozens of area ‘environmentalists’ to no avail.
None would publicly even
mention the issue, despite my commissioning of this great little graphic:
On March --- 2006 the DC City Council would vote to deny the stadium agreement.
On March – 2006, mere hours after denying the stadium agreement, re-convene after mid-nite in a closed to the public meeting to reverse the vote and hence approve the stadium agreement- reportedly in response to frantic phone calls from un-named developers. Alas, Councilmember Carol Schwartz, who had voted no, changed her vote to a yes.
On March 29, 2006, I start my blog ‘South Capitol Street Frederick Douglass Mall’.
On July 21, 2006, I post that the D.C. City Council may eat crow for its shameful sell-out to MLB insistence upon jamming this stadium next to South Capitol Street
Friday, July 21, 2006March-April 2008 must be a historically important date
By yet another such indication, Major League Baseball Inc. insists that its blot upon the Extending the Legacy South Capitol Mall concept be completed in time for the opening of the 2008 season.
From Jacqueline Dupree:
MLB Says DC in Default on Lease Agreement(7/21 11:41 AM)
New from the Post: "Major League Baseball has declared the District government in default of the lease agreement for the new stadium, charging that the city has failed to meet several deadlines for turning over critical documents. In a letter to city officials Tuesday, Tom Ostertag, a lawyer for MLB, said the city had failed to meet 11 provisions called for in the construction administration agreement between the District and MLB."
What does this mean? "Some city officials interpreted the default notice as a legal maneuver meant to establish firm deadlines in case the stadium project ever ends up disputed in the courts." Quoth incoming Nats president Stan Kasten: "We're doing all we can to build this team and to excite the fans again about life at RFK. And we're having trouble getting the simplest things done. We keep getting foot-dragging. . . . It does weight us down as we try to move forward. And we keep getting silly roadblocks that stop us."
On the other side: "Mark H. Tuohey, chairman of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, said lawyers for the city's attorney general's office are working on finalizing more documents to give MLB and that most of the baseball's concerns would be resolved today."
UPDATE, 3:03 pm: Here's the official notice from MLB. UPDATE, 12:24 pm: Here's a nifty opinion piece by the Post's Steve Perlstein basically telling both sides to get a grip: "Less Hardball, More Humility." And here's the WashTimes story on the default.
Looks like that those D.C. City Councilpersons that voted in favor of this planning blot may get to eat crow. And to think that the D.C. City Council had voted to reject this blot, only to reconvene towards midnight to re-vote in favor of this blot.
Is it any wonder that the Councilpersons who ultimately voted to approve this blot are not too favorable of requirements that such meetings be open to the public; perhaps they would be embarrassed to be seen making such decisions with such little open discussion.
Perhaps their arms were twisted because some rather influential person somewhere in this story who has this blot as his or her dream, but who has some sort of incurable disease and hence the project deadline is in order for this person to see his or her's dream while he or she is still alive?
Someone who may not live to see 2009.
Who knows?
posted by Douglas A. Willinger @ 4:59 PM 2 comments
On
July 22, 2006, I post ‘Physical Realities’ about the ‘South Capitol Mall’s most significant physical barrier of the St Vincent DePaul Church, the question of the idea of its relocation eastward, and how that would be physically blocked by the construction of the 20 M Street Building by real estate developer Theodore Lerner, who would subsequently be ‘selected’ to have the privilege of purchasing the Washington Nationals MLB franchise in a sale that was no auction.
Physical Reality:The only structure along South Capitol Street likely to survive the re-development: St. Vincent de Paul Church, at the north-east corner of South Capitol's intersection with M Street, first opened to the public April 1904.
http://www.parishes.org/vincentdepaul.htmlhttp://www.adw.org/home.asphttp://www.adw.org/about/lead_bio_mccarrick.asp
http://www.jdland.com/dc/southcap.cfm (Jacqueline Dupree)
http://www.highwaysandcommunities.com/southcapitolstreet/South_Capitol_Str
eet_Stamps.htm (Douglas Willinger)
The third illustration shows St. Vincent de Paul Church relocated approximately 250 feet east to retain its historic position at the north east corner if the intersection of South Capitol and M Streets, with the intersection reconfigured to accommodate the green way.
This would not have been the first time that a historical religious structure was relocated for a public purpose. In 1969 this was done, with a far greater distance of relocation, with the Adas Israel Synagogue -- Washington, D.C.'s oldest extant synagogue that first opened in 1876 -- which was moved 4 blocks to accommodate WMATA subway construction.
In 1969 the Adas Israel Synagogue was lifted up from its historic location at the corner of 6th and G Street NW, for a 4 block trip to its current location at 3rd and G Street.
This relocation placed this Synagogue next to the portion of the below grade I-95 (I-395) Center Leg, constructed from the SW Freeway to Massachusetts Avenue NW (1966-1973). It is immediately at the southbound on-ramp to the freeway, where this ramp would not allow adding a continuous deck, being hidden from view from the ramp by a row of trees, which are visible to the left in the photo below.
Although the I-95 Center Leg is now known as the I-395 3rd Street Tunnel (having two cut and cover tunnel segments, one beneath the Mall as part of the 1966-1973 project; and a second segment northward from Massachusetts Avenue NW to K Street NW, in a latter 1978-1982 project), this segment is not a tunnel, and which lacks even cross over bridge for either G or F Streets NW.
The far shorter needed relocation of St. Vincent de Paul Church would avoid lifting it onto the streets, via an excavation to its rear allowing it to be moved laterally, with the excavation continuous to its new location at what is now Half Street SE. Such an excavation would have the added benefit of creating new underground space for parking facilities, and for a portion of a parallel vehicular tunnel, saving millions of dollars.
Illustration: http://www.jdland.com/dc/20m.cfm (Jacqueline Dupree)
This blogger is not aware of any formal consideration given to this idea, nor any media references at all to the St. Vincent de Paul Church/South Capitol Mall issue, nor anything about negotiations between D.C. and U.S. government and Roman Catholic Church officials.
However, that pit, which is directly behind St. Vincent de Paul Church, is the substructure for a new office building -- 20 M Street -- which started construction about September 2005. This new building, the first to be built within the one block to either side of South Capitol Street, is perfectly situated to block the idea of this easiest relocation. Note the rear of St. Vincent de Paul Church to the left in this rendering.
20 M Street web site:http://www.20mstreetse.com/Lerner Enterprises web site:http://www.lernerenterprises.com/
20 M Street is a project owned by Lerner Enterprises, which is headed by Theodore Lerner, born in 1925 in Washington, D.C. On May 4, 2006 it was publicly announced that he had been "chosen" to purchase the Nationals baseball team franchise that will run the new Nationals Stadium that will be built on this same -- east -- side of South Capitol Street, directly 2 blocks to the south.
Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, Ph.D., D.D.Archbishop of Washington Dioceses, which runs St. Vincent de Paul Church.
McCarrick, born July 7, 1930 in New York City, was installed as Archbishop of Washington on January 2, 2001, and held that position until May 16, 2006. He is listed as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. NE at: http://publicaffairs.cua.edu/factbook/trustees.htm
Biography at: http://www.adw.org/about/lead_bio_mccarrick.asp
Illustration: crop from 2002 D.C. Baseball stadium study with St. Vincent de Paul Church shown as the sole surviving existing building along South Capitol Street's east side.
posted by Douglas A. Willinger @ 11:11 AM 0 comments
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Nationals MLB Franchise Owners:The Lerner Group
May 3, 2006: Mark D. Lerner, Theodore N. Lerner, Stan Kasten, Robert K. Tanenbaum, Faye Fields and Rodney E. Slater, members of the Lerner Group, at a press conference at the Fairmont Hotel in the District, announcing their selection by MLB' Selig, culminating a months long competition for the privilege to purchase this Washington Nationals baseball team franchise for the $450 million price set by Major League Baseball's member teams. Illustration from (The Washington Post)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/03/AR2006050301121.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/02/AR2006050202006.html
July 2006: The Lerner Group's purchase of this Washington Nationals MLB team franchise is formally finalized.The Washington Nationals today announced the official transfer of ownership from Major League Baseball to an ownership group headed by Washington developer Theodore N. Lerner, his son Mark D. Lerner, sons-in-law Edward L. Cohen, and Robert K. Tanenbaum, and their families. Ted Lerner will be the Managing Principal Owner of the team and Mark Lerner, Cohen and Tanenbaum will be Principal owners of the team. All major decisions will be made together as a board with team President Stan Kasten. In addition, the members of the minority ownership group each have deep ties to Washington, DC and a shared commitment with the Lerner family to make the Nationals a long-term successful franchise in Washington.
"It has long been my dream to bring the national pastime back to my hometown, the nation's capital," said Ted Lerner, Managing Principal Owner. "Now that it's been realized, I plan on doing everything I can to make sure that this franchise becomes an international jewel for MLB, D.C. and the nation."
Founding Partners in the Lerner group are Paxton K. Baker, President of BET Event Productions and Executive Vice President and General Manager of BET Digital Networks for Black Entertainment Television (BET); James T. Brown, newly-named host of the CBS Television Network's NFL pre-game show, The NFL Today, and the play-by-play announcer for the Network's coverage of college basketball; Faye F. Fields, President and CEO of Integrated Resource Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of management support services and information management services to government agencies; Alphonso Maldon, Jr., Senior Vice President, Corporate Banking for PNC Bank and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Management and Policy; B. Doyle Mitchell, Jr., President and CEO of Industrial Bank N.A., the largest minority-owned commercial bank in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area; Raul R. Romero, President and CEO of Alliance Consulting Group, LLC, a marketing consulting group to public and private organizations headquartered in the District of Columbia; Rodney E. Slater, partner at Patton Boggs, LLP and former U.S. Secretary of Transportation; and Jarvis C. Stewart, Chairman and Managing Partner of Stewart Partners, LLC, a government and Public Affairs Firm headquartered in Washington, D.C.http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/press_releases/press_release.jsp?ymd=20060724&content_id=1572870&vkey=pr_was&fext=.jsp&c_id=was
The Lerner's Washington Nationals ownership group's principle members include:
http://www.lernerenterprises.com/newsArchives/natsLernerFamily.htmlhttp://www.lernerenterprises.com/newsArchives/natsAdBios.html
Mark D. Lerner is a principal of Lerner Enterprises, which was founded more than 50 years ago by his father, Ted Lerner. The company's development activity is mainly concentrated in the D.C. metropolitan area and includes numerous major office, retail, hotel and residential projects. Currently he is a member of the Board of Directors of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md., and also serves on the several other boards. He is vice president of The Annette M. and
Theodore N. Lerner Family Foundation, which provides support to many worthwhile organizations.http://www.washingtoncaps.com/team/lerner.asp
Theodore N. Lerner, father of Mark D. is a founding partner of Lerner Enterprises, a real estate development entity, who has long expressed interest in owning a professional sports team:Balancing vision and innovation with experience and integrity, Lerner Enterprises has been a respected leader in Washington area development. Its founding partner, Theodore N. Lerner, established principles early in his career which he and his family have maintained in guiding the family-owned and operated organization.
Well known for its involvement in high-profile properties such as White Flint, Tysons II, White Flint North, Washington Square, Dulles Town Center and Tysons Corner Center, Lerner Enterprises develops and their affiliate Lerner Corporation leases and manages large scale office buildings, office and business parks, regional malls and shopping centers, hotels, residential communities, mixed-use facilities and land development projects. More than 20 million square feet of commercial and retail space, as well as more than 22,000 private homes and 6,000 apartment homes, comprise an impressive portfolio, a portfolio which illustrates the diverse capabilities of Lerner Enterprises to plan, develop, and construct well-designed and high-quality properties to their greatest potential.http://www.lernerenterprises.com/corporate.htmlWhen Theodore N. Lerner was a young man growing up on Fifth Street in Northwest, he would walk several blocks to Griffith Stadium, where the future real estate mogul took a job as an usher because he couldn't afford to buy a ticket to watch the Senators.
"I didn't have the money for admission in those days -- I think it was less than 50 cents a ticket -- so I took a job as an usher to get in," Lerner said. "My dream was some day to be the owner of the team." After three decades of failed attempts to buy a Major League Baseball team, Lerner, 79, is now the closest he has ever been to fulfilling his dream. He and his close-knit family, who operate a vast real estate empire in the Washington region, are among the leading contenders of the eight bidders for the Washington Nationals.
"After the heartbreak of seeing our Senators leave the city twice, I never thought that I'd ever see big league baseball return to D.C. in my lifetime," Lerner said. "Now that it is back, I am deeply committed to assuring that it remains here, is played in a first-class facility which people can enjoy, and is operated in a way that brings the community a common source of pride and joy that serves as a community bond. I hope this will be a lasting legacy I can leave to my family and to the community where I was born and raised."http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/03/AR2005110302067.html
A legacy of stopping the extension of another legacy.
Stan Kasten, an Atlanta, Georgia professional sports executive, was selected to be the President of the Washington Nationals.
http://www.businessofbaseball.com/kasten_interview.htmhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/18/AR2006041800959.htmlnt/article/2006/04/18/AR2006041800959.htmlhttp://www.harrywalker.com/speakers_template.cfm?spea_id=779http://bobnebel.tripod.com/kastenprofile.html
Robert K. Tanenbaum, is one of Theodore Lerner's son-in-laws.Robert K. Tanenbaum, who has lived in the Washington, D.C. area for more then 35 years, is a Principal of Lerner Enterprises, the largest private real estate developer in the Washington, D.C. area. He is also a Principal Owner of the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team. He is a graduate of Union College and The George Washington University National Law Center. Mr. Tanenbaum is on the Board of Imagination Stage, a local theater arts center that nurtures young people of all abilities through participation in professional theater arts education experiences. He and his wife are also involved in a variety of other educational, political and community activities.http://www.lernerenterprises.com/newsArchives/natsLernerFamily.html
Edward L. Cohen, is also one of Theodore Lerner's son-in-laws. Edward L. Cohen, who has lived in Washington, D.C. for almost 40 years, is a Principal of Lerner Enterprises, the largest private real estate developer in the Washington, D.C. area. He is also a Principal Owner of the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and from Georgetown University Law Center. Mr. Cohen has been a member of various corporate, charitable, and educational boards. He presently serves on the Board of Directors of The Weizmann Institute of Science and on the Board and Executive Committee of Junior Achievement of the Greater Washington Area.
http://www.lernerenterprises.com/newsArchives/natsLernerFamily.html
The Lerner’s Washington Nationals ownership group’s other members include:
Paxton K. Baker, President of BET Event Productions and Executive Vice President and General Manager of BET Digital Networks for Black Entertainment Television (BET)
James T. Brown, newly-named host of the CBS Television Network's NFL pre-game show, The NFL Today, and the play-by-play announcer for the Network's coverage of college basketball
Faye Fields, President and CEO of Integrated Resource Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of management support services and information management services to government agencies:She has 30 years of corporate organization development and management experience with 20 years experience managing Federal Government contracts from start-up to completion for military and civilian organizations. She formed IRT in 1986 growing from $200,000 in 1998 to over $10 million in revenue in 2004. The company grew over 40%per year from 2000-2004. She holds a BS and MS from the University of Cincinnati, and completed all of the course work for a PhD in Business Administration at the University of Cincinnati. http://www.irti.com/
Alphonso Maldon, Jr., Senior Vice President, Corporate Banking for PNC Bank and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Management and Policy;
B. Doyle Mitchell, Jr., President and CEO of Industrial Bank N.A., the largest minority-owned commercial bank in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area;
Raul R. Romero, President and CEO of Alliance Consulting Group, LLC, a marketing consulting group to public and private organizations headquartered in the District of Columbia;
Rodney E. Slater, former Administrator of the U.S. Federal Highway Authority (1993-1997), and the U.S .Department of Transportation (1997-2001), who is currently an attorney at the Washington, D.C. law firm Patton and Boggs, specializing in:Transportation and Infrastructure Public Policy and Lobbying Defense and National Security
Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney E. Slater helps clients integrate their interests in the overall vision for the transportation system of the 21st Century—a vision he set as transportation secretary to promote a safer, more efficient, environmentally sound and sustainable worldwide transportation infrastructure. Mr. Slater also helps state and local government clients address the vexing challenge of closing the gap between transportation demand and capacity by employing public/private strategies and innovative financing solutions. Mr. Slater's practice focuses on many of the policy and transportation objectives that were set under his leadership, including aviation competition and congestion mitigation, maritime initiatives, high-speed rail corridor development, and overall transportation safety and funding. He continues to embrace the framework he established as secretary for making transportation decisions that called for more open, collaborative and flexible decision making across the transportation enterprise here and abroad.
Mr. Slater’s bipartisan and inclusive approach to problem solving has earned him tremendous respect and admiration on both sides of the aisle, enabling him to have one of the best relationships with the White House, Congress, and business, labor and political leaders worldwide in the history of the Department of Transportation (DOT). His work at DOT forever altered America’s and the world’s appreciation of transportation as more than just concrete, asphalt and steel. Mr. Slater brings the same strategic, results-oriented and collaborative approach to his public policy practice.
As secretary of transportation under President Bill Clinton, Mr. Slater passed several historic legislative initiatives over his tenure, including the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), which guaranteed a record $200 billion in surface transportation investment though 2003, and the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment Reform Act for the 21st Century (AIR-21), which provides a record $46 billion to improve the safety and security of the nation’s aviation system. Under his leadership, the federal transportation budget doubled and in the department’s "best in government" strategic and performance plans, the scope and definition of transportation was expanded to include a focus on safety, mobility and access, economic development and trade, the environment and national security.
Previous to his tenure as transportation secretary, Mr. Slater served as director of the Federal Highway Administration, where—as the agency’s first African-American Administrator in its century-long history—he oversaw the development of an innovative financing program that resulted in hundreds of transportation projects being completed two to three years ahead of schedule with greater cost efficiencies. Over that time, the federal transportation budget increased an unprecedented 104 percent. Additionally, the department’s FY2001 budget of nearly $60 billion is the largest ever.
Professional Affiliations:
Former Secretary of Transportation Former Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration Former Director of Government Relations, Arkansas State University Former Special Assistant for Economic and Community Programs to then-Governor Bill Clinton Former Executive Assistant for Community and Minority Affairs to then-Governor Bill Clinton Former Assistant Attorney General, Litigation Division of the Arkansas State Attorney General’s Office
Former Secretary-Treasurer, Arkansas Bar Association Special Liaison, Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday Commission Arkansas State Highway Commission, (1987-1992)
Rodney E. Slater was named Secretary of Transportation on February 14, 1997. He is the 13th Secretary in the 30-year history of the Department, and only the third Arkansan in American history to ever hold a position in the President's cabinet.
President Clinton said in nominating Slater: "he has built bridges both of steel and of goodwill to bring people closer together." As Secretary, Slater is working to build the President's bridge to the 21st century as well as the nation's airports, highways, railroads, mass transit, and maritime resources. The Department, which has 100,000 employees and a budget of more than $40 billion, also includes the United States Coast Guard.
As Secretary, Slater likes to say: "I believe that transportation is about more than concrete, asphalt, and steel. It is truly about people and providing them the opportunity to be successful and responsible individuals."
Under his leadership, the Department developed a strategic plan that Congress rated the best among all federal agencies. He also worked with Congress to increase investments in infrastructure by 12 percent in fiscal 1998, to the highest levels of any Secretary in history.
So, what is Slater's position on the South Capitol Street corridor's vehicular tunnel that was proposed in the 2003 NCPC and DCDOP reports, but which gets sidelined by the November 2003 Urban Land Institute Advisory Services Panel Report in favor of expedited real estate development?
Likewise, what's his position on placing the new Nationals Stadium so close to a future planned RR? The site is within 1/3 of a mile of the existing through D.C. heavy RR, which is roughly the distance between RFK to the RR further east. But it's within only 250' or so of where that RR is planned to be relocated into a new RR tunnel, for a RR that might allow HAZMATs including chlorine, of which a terrorists' derailment could kill 60,000 people in and around Capitol Hill, with this stadium potentially upping that figure by 41,000 to just over 100,000. Would this tunnel be able to contain such chemicals?
This is of course assuming that the authorities adopt the alternative proposal of routing freight into this new north south tunnel. [* SINCE 2006, the railroad plans have changed]Future D.C. rail tunnelfrom "Extending the Legacy: Planning America's Capital for the 21st Century"
Jarvis C. Stewart, Chairman and Managing Partner of Stewart Partners, LLC, a government and Public Affairs Firm headquartered in Washington, D.C.
This blogger is not aware if this list of investors is necessarily all inclusive.
SP-Owners Photos by Michael Williamson 5/03/06 -- New Nationals owners and wives pose for a group shot.From left to right (back row) Mark Lerner, James T. Brown, Edward L. Cohen, Jarvis C. Stewart, George Munoz, Paxton K. Baker, Theodore Lerner, Rodney E. Slater, Raul R. Romero, Stan Kasten and Robert Tanenbaum. From left to right (front row) Judy Lerner (Mark Lerner's wife) Debra Cohen (Edward L. Cohen's wife), Annette Lerner (Ted Lerner's wife) Marla Tanenbaum (Wife of Robert Tanenbaum) Faye F. Fields and B. Doyle Mitchell Jr.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/03/AR2006050301121.html?referrer=email
posted by Douglas A. Willinger @ 3:28 PM 2 comments
As far as I know, these men involved were baseball enthusiasts not necessarily involved with the stadium location decision, chosen for placing the desired face upon the Washington Nationals franchise
On
July 30, 2006 I post my speculation about the March 2008 completion for the sake of some high up individual with this stadium as his dream wanting it done before he died:
The Constructural Rough Edge(or Achilles Heel) of the stadium jammed along South Capitol Street within that Spring 2008 deadline
Note that the construction's consumption of its emergency contingency fund so far.
Note the rainy season... and the soil permeability ... and that concrete curing is a science ... and that moisture is a factor ...
Note that deadline... the start of the 2008 baseball season in early April...
Will this all conspire in some way or another to produce a compromised product?
If so, it sends a message that satisfying the dream of some well-connected person who may perhaps not live past 2008 is more important than a long life product that would endure.
posted by Douglas A. Willinger @ 3:07 AM 0 comments
On
August 6, 2006 I was ambushed via a false pretext search and seizure by an array of 23 police officers, mixed Federal and local (the latter, placing into the court record that they had me targeted upon information from an individual earlier that day).
Such is facilitated by the Commonwealth of Virginia’s ongoing use of boilerplate testi-lying facilitated via constitutionally subversive courts guilty of routinely accepting self-sustaining police perjury such as their video was
‘just grey static’, federal-local law enforcement ‘fusion’ centers, and illegal domestic surveillance via real time tracking via cell phone in violation of the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, for purpose of subverting the 1st Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and religion. I was carrying one at the time under a 2 year contract in my name with Verizon – which has been sued for assisting this illegal wiretapping enabled, with the CEO of Verizon Wireless connected with Jesuit Order via his position as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Jesuit Canasius College.
Days later things looked good in the media: MSNBC’s Keith Oberman does a show spotlighting the US Department of Homeland Security’s Massive Warrantless Surveillance made possible via further advances in computer use under the US PATRIOT Act enacted as the response to 911 yet crafted previously by a Georgetown University Law professor.
And a few days later, the warrantless surveillance program
was declared unconstitutional by a judge.
But then, all of this would be effectively squashed by the totally media hyped story of what turned out to be the fictitious confession to the killing of a child beauty star – Jon Ramsey: a total BS fluff story beat to death through the MSM for the next several weeks serving as an effective distraction.
Predictably, the issue of warrantless surveillance and its potential abuse just somehow never rises up in media interest to monitor for possible stories where individuals were targeted for what they wrote in the internet, particularly with the explosion in popularity of blogs and their potential, as independents, to cover stories considered taboo by the inter-connected MSM.
A good thing to do would be for stockholders in media organizations to fire without pension the executives responsible for puffing the John Mark Karr story in 2006.Since I had selected a pretty major taboo planning story – the suppression of what would have been the U.S. Capital City’s future South Capitol Mall – and because of my circumstances resulting from the Commonwealth of Virginia’s mode of policing in subversion of the U.S. Constitution’s 4th Amendment that facilitate, together with such things as FUSION centers connecting local and Federal police with access to U.S. Homeland Security era warrantless surveillance made feasible by newer technologies.
LINK-
Verizon Wireless CEO is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Jesuit Canisius College
Jesuit Subversive, Verizon CEO Strigl
I’ll continue to write about this. The U.S. Constitution 1st Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech: use it or loose it!
Through 2006, 2007 and early 2008 the stadium is constructed.
Indeed, what a look out for the “king of the World’s” site of parties.
Visible in background is the reconstructed approach to the South Capitol Street Bridge (which had previously extended further inland before touching down)- a reconstruction project costing a reported $117 million and expected to have a life of 5 to 10 years, as this bridge is scheduled to be entirely placed in that amount of time.
Replacement bridge shown in yellow
Interesting how such a project, with such a short life, done for the strictly aesthetic desire to avoid having the view of the new stadium totally escaped the condemnation heaped on a $200 million bridge in Alaska, presumably with a lifespan of 75 years, linking a town wedged up against the side of a mountain to expand onto an island where its airport is located.
This is what was clearly wanted by the big shots.
Note this club houses’ triangular shape (at the lower right).
The stadium opens in March, 2008.
Days later it opens with its 1st Washington Nationals game of the season, with President Bush throwing the 1st ball – something which he refrained from doing in 2007 in the final year of the Washington National’s temporary use of RFK Stadium (at East Capitol Street)
Bush at the 2005 1st Washington Nationals game at their temporary home at RFK Stadium
It gets to be called W stadium- double meaning referring to both the Washington Nationals and to a ‘kick-name’ of then U.S. President Bush.
Guess who would be Nationals Ballpark Stadium 1st biggest VIP- with Pope Benedict holding a huge outdoor mass on April 17, 2008 at that very stadium.
The April 14, 2008 Time magazine reporting on Benedict’s upcoming 1st papal visit, would juxtaposition his face with various U.S. monuments.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 Pope Benedict to Hold Mass at Washington Nationals Stadium: Expect the "... King of the World!!!"
The Pope will tentatively hold Mass next April at Washington Nationals Stadium, days after its opening day.
In describing this stadium's clubhouse, Jacqueline Dupree uses the term "I'm King of the World".
I think that's a plausible description of someone who will be there next April.
With the Douglass Bridge viaduct now demolished, the views looking north on South Capitol Street easily encompass both the ballpark and the Capitol dome. The Administration building at right is now topped out. (10/21/07)Above photo and caption by Washington Post real estate reporter Jacqueline Dupree
http://www.jdland.com/dc/stadium.cfm?tab=no2 Note the knife-edged clubhouse to the right.
Looking across the roof of the under-construction admin building (or, as I call it, the bow of the S.S. Nationals), toward South Capitol Street and points south, including the new intersection at South Capitol and Potomac. I'm King of the World!!! (9/1/07) above photo and caption Washington Post real estate reporter Jacqueline Dupree
http://www.jdland.com/dc/stadium.cfm?tab=no3
Jacqueline Dupree said it. That's the stature of someone who will be standing near that "bow" next April!
More...Labels: Pope Benedict
posted by Douglas A. Willinger @ 6:48 PM 0 comments
I think that JD hit the nail on the head with that caption of the view from the upper areas of that triangular shaped clubhouse with the phrase she selected “King of the World”
She furthermore made a great analogy of it as the ‘bow of the S.S. Nationals’ and in the context of an event filled with VIPs in April- a clear allusion to me of the political arrogance this structure reflects, as roughly analogous to the part of the Titanic that hit the iceberg.
It would be interesting to know who attended.
With all of these Vatican connections, within a city planning deeply influenced by Romish-Masonry, and a stadium deal approved only in a closed door post mid-night reversal of a D.C. City Council that MSM and such ‘muckracking’ writers as Neil DeMause of Fields would dare not spotlight, one must ask about the role that any such ‘orders’ – such as perhaps the SMOM – that many such VIPs, including politicians and owners of MLB franchises belong to – play, but also their broader mission of mass distraction and dumbing down to induce ignorance of Rome’s true influence, with professional sports: the Jesuit Order.
Peter Kolvenbach, S.J. born November 30, 1928;
29th Superior General of the Jesuit Order, 'retired' 2008
IIRC, Kolvenbach was in Maryland, which is next to Washington, D.C., something like a day or two prior to the April 17, 2008 Papal Mass.
Is the pose above, which comes from Jesuit sources, selected to convey that the apostate to extending the legacy stadium was his idea?
JD photo
LINK-
The Telling Behavior of Neil DeMause 'Field of Schemes'Appendum- April 17, 2010
But who exactly made the decision to kill U.S. NCPC’s Extending the Legacy ‘South Capitol Mall’?
And why, considering the circumstances making it more obvious that authority was way more centralized then popularly perceived?
Imagine something like the McMillan Plan being shown to the public, and after thousands of people saw the model, it gets squashed, with no visible public discussion nor controversy.
The 1995 through 1997 NCPC documents show numerous illustration of the future ‘Mall’, which is the single most significant future addition here proposed in ‘Extending the Legacy’.
“With the expressway removed, South Capitol Street can become another Pennsylvania Avenue with an enticing mix of shops, housing and museums”
“This dramatic site where South Capitol Street meets the water is ideal for a major civic building, such as the Supreme Court”
However this is without any mentioning of the term “Mall” nor even greenway, nor linear park.
Instead the terminology is boulevard and gateway. These are terms all the more vague and less useful for informing people, but more useful for confusing them, as any such plan would have ‘boulevard’[s] as part of a gateway, though not necessarily accompanied by any sort of broad linear park, as that shown on the very cover of Extending the Legacy Planning America’s Capital for the 21st Century. Apparently, the whole South Capitol Mall concept was developed through U.S. NCPC prior to the decision from top of the political pyramid to kill it, given the numerous illustrations but the utter lack of appropriately descriptive text.
Indeed, at a public gathering in Washington, D.C. in 1997, internet writer Richard Layman told me that Extending the Legacy had originally planned to extend further, namely in re-crafting the enormous open rail yards and railroad corridors extending northward from the rear side of Washington, D.C.’s Union Station, covering and perhaps even lowering these corridors. Under this idea, the railroad corridors would be reconstructed with vast new linear parks built atop, better connecting the area locally, and even regionally by expanding this railroad- as well as the idea un-mentioned by Layman of including a new set of cut and cover highway tunnels providing D.C. its now missing set of northern and eastern express highway routes.
The decision to kill the South Capitol Mall apparently occurred by the time of the publication of the Extending the Legacy, given the lacking terminology.
The decision to kill the idea addressing the railroad corridors was apparently made earlier, given its utter exclusion from Extending the Legacy.
That these decisions were apparently made at different times – IOW why was not the ‘South Capitol Mall’ deleted from the illustrations as was the ‘Metropolitan Branch [the name of the railroad] Mall’ – may suggest something about the political hierarchy’s different levels.
USNCPC Plan- Addresses South Capitol, ignores things further north
Here’s Union Station. Note how it’s southern end culminates in ‘Columbus Circle’ – a half circle really formed by the segment of Massachusetts Avenue that was so curved as part of the McMillan Plan which created Union Station as a replacement for the earlier railroad station located directly upon the National Mall.
I’ve long wondered why that area to its north had to look so comparatively unsightly.
It is as if those running things, including such entities as a law firm co-founded by a railroad industry attorney, and a group founded after the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial (brought about without such organizations), ostensibly to promote such planning, were instead really about stifling such planning. To me this deception would no more clear than with that tightly lipped deceitful ‘Committee of 100 on the Federal City’, and also its various spin off organizations as ‘Save the Mall.’
Questioning Reality
That things where not what they were popularly presented as being was something I began thinking about in 1972, at the age of 9, traveling with my family by automobile to Washington, D.C., and first encounter this paradox with regard to the I-95 ‘stumps’.
Supposedly, I-95 was stopped at the Beltway as a ‘white mans roads through black mans’ homes’.
Yet clearly juxtapositioned with this stopped highway is its physically clear existing right of way of a 250 foot wide power line right of way pointing towards this Union Station’s northern B&O Metropolitan Branch railroad industrial corridor.
I-95 ‘stub’ roadways just inside the Beltway, alongside parallel PEPCO right of way.
That was some ‘white mans road through black man’s home’ with its wide open 250 foot wide PEPCO power line right of way extending to some 1600 feet from the DC line at New Hampshire Avenue, before continuing another 1600 feet to connect with the B&O Railroad route.
Un-built inside the Beltway & D.C. I-95 via the PEPCO-B&O RR Route,
National Archives II at right
This is THE logical route for inside the Beltway I-95, for its use of existing right of way and for its proximity to New Hampshire Avenue and by extension the east west Missouri Avenue providing superior serviceability into northern Washington, D.C..
As planned by 1973, this route for inside the Beltway I-95 would have taken about 0 dwellings in Maryland, and clusters of 23 and 5 near the north side of New Hampshire Avenue, just inside D.C. flanking the open field of the Masonic Eastern Star Home at 6000 New Hampshire Avenue, and then another 34 at the western edge of Brookland.
The numbers are so low because of the extensive re-use of existing corridors and right of ways- namely the PEPCO right of way and the B&O Metropolitan Brach RR corridor with its lightly developed industrial strip providing the space to grade an 8 lane freeway, with little need to displace residential dwellings- with that for the I-95 segment of the B&O North Central Freeway limited to 34, as per a 1970 DCDPW design revision reducing it from the 69 of the 1966 design.
Completing I-95 all the way from its ‘stumps’ at the Beltway to New York Avenue, as designed by 1973 would have displaced a total of some 57 dwellings- a figure comparable to that taken for constructing the – mile long Inter Counter Connector – miles to the north in Maryland, or the reconstruction of the I-95/I-495 Beltway interchange in Virginia – while serving some 220,000 vehicles of people daily (the 1960 design meanwhile would have displaced some 1,095 alone).
Completing its continuations to the portions of the Washington, D.C. that were built – the I-95 North Leg East connecting to the I-95 Center Leg, and the I-295 East Leg connecting to the SE Freeway – as designed by 1971 would have respectively displaced 600+ and 172 dwellings.
This is where the most dwellings would have been torn down (and replaced with new housing).
Yet the biggest protests against “white mans roads through black mans homes” occurred at the site of the proposed I-266 Three Sisters Bridge alongside Georgetown University (that would have displaced 0 dwellings), and at the area of the B&O Route I-95 North Central Freeway in Brookland alongside Catholic University of America, that would have displaced 34 as per the 1970s and later planning, or 69 as per the 1966 plan.
Meanwhile, such issues of mitigation as the increasing use of the existing corridors – earlier planning took far more of a lets cut an all new swath through dwellings and parklands – and that of cut and cover tunneling, containing noise and pollution while reclaiming surface land for other uses, were oddly “forgotten.” (As a historian of the planning of Washington, D.C.’s – discuss matter of finding nothing about the 1966 plan’s proposal to cover the I-95 North Central Freeway alongside the main campus of Catholic University of America, nor any objection when the cover was deleted.)
Things took on a clearly Hegelian dialectics turn by the mid 1960s with the political undermining of the B&O route that had been proposed by the November 1, 1962 Kennedy Administration report.
1959 proposal with 3 separate northern radial freeways
1962 Kennedy Administration proposed Washington, D.C. interstate highway system with 2 into 1 “Y” route along the B&O RR
Initial North Central Freeway study: 1963-1964- making a mockery of JFK’s B&O Route NCF
John F, Kennedy letter June 1, 1963
“…I noted that certain portions of the highway network within the District of Columbia required further study. The guidelines which I believe should be followed in this re-examination are as follows:
The re-examination should focus upon the sections of the highway plans which have from the beginning been the most uncertain and the most controversial- the North Leg of the Inner Loop and the Three Sisters Bridge, both of which involve the manner in which necessarily involve a re-study of those additional portions of the plan which are directly affected by the conclusions reached in the re-examination…”
“ the very large part of the highway program which is not under study can go forward as scheduled.”- John F. Kennedy letter June 1, 1963
Not included in the list of the controversial sections of the highway plans, and thus amongst those which 'can go forward as scheduled' would include the B&O Route North Central Freeway.
LINK-
the subversion of JFK’s B&O North Central Freeway LINK- North Central Freeway Most Needed Most Botched
LINK- North Central Freeway 1964 Highway Routing Mystery
Illustrations: Sam Abbott 1964
The 1964 ‘recommended route’ (Railroad East-Sligo) would have displaced 471 such houses within Takoma Park, Maryland; this town was established by a developer Benjamin Franklin Gilbert in 1883 along the then recently constructed B&O Metropolitan Branch RR into northern Washington. D.C.; the 1.1 mile segment of this 1964 plan had it deviate ¼ of a mile away from said RR upon a longer more out of the way route then simply following the RR: far more invasive then necessary for creating the North Central Freeway.
The negative popular response that would subside with the subsequent supplementary North Central Freeway engineering study released in November 1966 (that essentially followed the 1962 Kennedy plan), would be re-kindled by various officials waffeling between the 1966 and 1964 designs, as late as 1968; included in that was the supposed highway 'advocacy' of the Federal City Council with its highly questionable prioritization against delaying highway construction, hence meaning supporting the 1964 plan over the 1966 plan in order to start construction a few months sooner. That amount of time, would be sufficient to reverse the official positions of the U.S. National Capital Planning Commission, and the D.C. City Council.
Letter to Maryland Governor Agnew, 1967 on how waffling on North Central Freeway planning was inciting opposition.
Citizens of Takoma Park and Silver Spring had reason for their demonstrations of bitter dissatisfaction with the highway authorities of your predecessor's administration. After we had been given reason to believe that the causes of our protests had been in at least some part overcome, the matter now threatens to break into renewed bitterness. I am sure you will wish to avoid this as much as many of us.
We showed that the methods of traffic projections which were claimed to justify the North Central were fallacious, the results in error by as much as 400 percent. Our contention was tacitly admitted in "re-studied" versions of the proposal made public last year, sharply reducing the original plan of 5 lanes each way.
The re-studied proposal also tacitly admitted that the route first proposed was needlessly, even carelessly if not ruthlessly, destructive of our communities. The new version hugged both sides of the existing Baltimore and Ohio railway, thus avoiding a new swath of destruction to divide our communities and sharply reducing the number of homes to be taken.
The reduced, re-routed proposal was made public last year with endorsement of D.C. And Maryland highway authorities. The D.C. Portion was forced through the National Capital Planning Commission by votes of representatives of the D.C. Highway Department and of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. From this we concluded, reasonably enough, that the highway authorities of the two jurisdictions (Maryland and D.C.) had reached a firm understanding with the Bureau of Public Roads.
Many of us were therefore astonished and aroused to preparations for renewed protests when Washington newspapers recently reported that the Bureau has acted to open it all up again. We have not found the Bureau forthcoming with candid information, but the press articles intimate an intention to force Maryland to accept modifications of route or design ostensibly "cheaper."
The result is that the whole controversy, which had been somewhat quiescent, is beginning to agitate the communities again. I can assure you this is so, for although I recently resigned chairmanship of the Metropolitan Citizens Council for Rapid Transit and write this simply as an individual citizen who wishes your administration well, I do remain in close touch with neighborhood sentiment on transportation-related issues.
As Governor of our State, you are in position better than we as private citizens to require straightforward answers from the Bureau of Public Roads. You can also insure that the Maryland State Roads Commission refuses to go along with divisive proposals which these communities will regard as cause for new protests.
You can make yourself even better appreciated here by doing both, and by supporting the earliest and most extensive development of rail rapid transit. Will you do so?
Of course, expect such a mis-mangement of the highway program when the route is along the railroad passing alongside Catholic University of America, and with the most logical connecting segment to the power line right of way -- the PEPCO route officially unconsidered until 1971 and only adopted for a few months in 1973 prior to the extension's outright cancellation that July -- running through the Masonic Eastern Star property at 6000 New Hampshire Avenue NE.)
LINK- RR Industry law firm Covington & Burling paid ECTC to riot at DC City Council
The only place along the route where I am aware of a solitary tree standing in the middle of the route is that within the field of the Masonic Eastern Star Home at 6000 New Hampshire Avenue NE
Forgotten in all of the group ‘think’ regarding doctrinaire hatred of urban freeways and love of urban railway REGARDLESS OF DESIGN*, is the latent monumental beauty expressed by Union Station as the headpiece of a northeastern linear park atop a set of railway and highway tunnels literally pointed at the head of the beast
(*aka the existing status quo that an underground highway with parkland atop is bad but placing the traffic simply upon the surface streets or way out on the Beltway is good, along with that of splitting the poorer areas of DC apart by surface railways, along with a disproportionate amount of the traffic through SE of the Anacostia River.)
I call it ‘Grand Arc’
Alas, the political pyramid favors blotting this potential majestic thrust in favor of apparently piece-meal appearing projects, for this helps obscure comprehending JD’s ‘King of the world’, by creating the illusion that the government is too weak to organize its Capital City. Note not only the new buildings atop, but also alongside, particularly at the picture’s bottom.
Given organized Masonry’s long involvement with Washington, D.C., what about a look at its designated organization head- an expressed student of Washington, D.C. planning?
C. Fred Kleinknecht, 33 degree, Sovereign Grand Commander, The Supreme Council, 33 degree (Mother Council of the World), Southern Jurisdiction, U.S.A., Washington. D.C. (1985 to 2001); from the book "Valley of the Craftsman"
http://www.ksa-mcalesterok.com/product_info.php?cPath=41_71&:
“The Scottish Rite, nearly as old as the United States, is now entering its third century. Through peace and war, abundance and want, expansion and restraint, both the fraternity and the country where it had its start survive and prosper. HANDSHAKE By the time Fred Kleinknecht assumed leadership in 1985, he had served leadership in 1985, he served under four of the six prior Sovereign Grand Commanders in the twentieth century. No other leader in the history of the Scottish Rite could claim a comparable advantage of continuity with his predecessors. And few could claim a better understanding of the values, strengths and motives of the institution and its membership. HANDSHAKE. At the heart of American Scottish Rite Freemasonry, a powerful spirit of generosity is driven by a centuries-old tradition of meeting social need, and philanthropic programs have been an important part of activities in the Southern Jurisdiction for decades. Today, under the leadership of Grand Commander Kleinknecht, the same spirit and tradition are served in new and creative ways. As it has done with unparalleled success for two hundred years, the fraternity combines the best parts of the past with the unprecedented resources and opportunities of the present, to carve the building blocks for its exciting future. The metaphor of the double-headed eagle, with one face toward history and the other looking ahead has never been more timely”.
This chapter about the 1985-2001 service of Sovereign Grand Commander Kleinknecht makes a notable choice of title: “Extending the Legacy”
The U.S. NCPC "Extending the Legacy" program came about under during the 1990s under the leadership of Harvey B. Gantt and Reginald W. Griffith.
Extending the Legacy is a framework for change. We use the term, framework literally, to mean outline or armature. Legacy is not a comprehensive master plan, as that term is used by planners and lawyers. It does not impose land use and development controls. Rather it is a basic guide for long term growth.
The vision presented here protects the capital for those who follow us, yet also embraces the future with confidence and optimism. As a preeminent world city and the seat of a great democracy, Washington demands a vision of beauty, nobility and power. Extending the Legacy is such a vision.
Harvey B. Gantt, FAIA Chairman NCPC ( -1999)
Biographical info: http://www.scafricanamericanhistory.com/currenthonoree.asp?month=2&year=1994
Extending the Legacy is a dramatic departure from past federal plans tha directed facilities and investments to the Mall and adjacent ceremonial corridors. Legacy recenters monumental Washington on the Capital, creating opportunities for new museums, memorials and offices in all quadrants of the city. It expands the reach of public transit and eliminates obsolete freeways, bridges and railroad tracks that fragment the city. It reclaims the capital’s historic waterfront and reverses decades of environmental neglect. Using federal resources to generate local investment, Legacy will spur community revitalization and infrastructure rebuilding well into the next century.
Reginald W. Griffith, AICP, AIA, Executive Director NCPC (1979-2001)
Biographical info: http://www.opm.gov/ses/dea98ncpc.asp
EXTENDING THE LEGACY represents the third act in a continuous planning drama that began over 200 years ago, when President George Washington commissioned Pierre L’Enfant to lay out the new Capital. Like the L’Enfant and McMillan plans it looks ahead 50 to 100 years. And like them, it offers a framework for future development.
Extending the Legacy: Planning America's Capital for the 21st Century, at page 5
Gantt ended his position as NCPC Chairman in 1999, while Griffith ended his position as Executive Director in 2001- the final year that the Extending the Legacy South Capitol Mall concept appears in a USNCPC publication (Memorials and Museums released September 2001).
Apparently there were some issues between Masonry and the Vatican.
According to a Masonic web site reporting on a video honoring Kleinknecht, he had personal conferences with high Vatican officials in Rome and in Washington, D.C. about ‘misunderstandings’, though about what, it does not say.
http://www.srmason-sj.org/web/journal-files/Issues/nov03/kleinknecht.htm“Similarly, Fred took unprecedented steps to heal misunderstandings between Freemasonry and the Roman Catholic Church. Through personal conferences with high Vatican officials in Rome and in Washington, he set the cornerstone for building cordial relations between the two great institutions."
Just look at his expression- he looks disappointed, like something was taken away from him.
There’s no elaboration of what Kleinknecht and the Vatican discussed, nor any explanation for his disappointed look chosen to face his video.
Yet perhaps Kleinknecht points to a reason behind this via writing the forward to the book ‘The Secret Architecture of our Nation’s Capital: The Masons and the Building of Washington, D.C.”, by David Ovason:
“As above, so below.” These words, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, lie at the heart of the Western esoteric tradition. In brief, they mean that the universe and all it contains is reflected in some manner not only on Earth, but also in man ad his works. The chief quest of all ages has been man’s attempt to understand the mystery of existence and to find his place in it. He keenly observed the movement of the stars, as we read in Genesis 1:14, “for signs, and for seasons.” Not only have the stars guided the traveler on the earth and seas, but their constellations are archetypes that have been viewed as guides for the lives of men and nations. In this fascinating and well-researched book, David Ovason presents the remarkable thesis that Washington, D.C., is a city of the stars. He demonstrates that there are over 30 zodiacs in the city, and that the majority of them are orientated in a meaningful way. Even more astonishing is to learn that these zodiacs were designed to point to the actual heavens- this marrying the Capital City with the stars. This discovery parallels the recent finding in Egypt that the three Great Pyramids correspond with the three stars in Orion’s belt, while the Nile River occupies the same relative position as the Milky Way. [Emphasis added] It is still debated whether this was intentional, yet the correlation is undeniable. Similarly, the assignment, position and meaning of Washington, D.C.’s zodiacs bespeak a relationship between heaven and earth. Recent scholarship, such as Steven C. Bullock’s Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840 (University of North Carolina Press, 1996), demonstrates the undeniable influence Freemasonry exerted on the American system of government and lifestyle.
Aware of these influences, David Ovason discovered what may be Masonic influences in the architecture and the layout of the city. He does not assert that all of his correspondences or discovered secrets were laid down by Masons, but there is some support for his argument in documents preserved by Masons, but there is support for his arguments preserved in the Achieves and Library of the Supreme Council, 33rd degree, Southern Jurisdiction. As in other Scottish Rite Blue Lodge (“Symbolic” or “Craft”) rituals, Albert Pike’s Book of the Lodge contains recommendations for decorating the lodge ceilings with constellations and planets. The star map, which is painted on the ceiling, is replete with Masonic symbolism that was influenced by French designs in the early 19th century. The astonishing thing is that Pike’s ceiling design reflects precisely the same mysteries observed by David Ovason in this book. These mysteries relate to the constellation Virgo. Pike’s map is entirely schematic- which is to say that it does not reflect the actual position of the stars in the heavens. (Leo could in no way be represented as following Ursa Majoris, for example). [Emphasis added]. Even so, Pike is very clear in allocating his symbolic placing of planets and stars. For example he places the full Moon between the constellations Scorpio and Virgo. This means that the full Moon between the constellations Libra, and the star Spica is just above the lunar crescent. What does that mean to us? The star Spica happens to be the one that David Ovason has shown to be the symbolically linked with both Washington, D.C. and the United States as a whole. As the reader will learn, Ovason also suggests that this star may be the origin of the five-pointed star that adorns the American flag. He also suggests that Spica may have been the origin of the Blazing (or Flaming) Star of Freemasonry. Certainly, it would be far fetched to draw too many conclusions for a schematic map, but it is evident that Pike visualized his star map as marking the setting of Virgi, along with the constellation of Bootes, to the north. This is precisely the cosmic setting that David Ovason suggests represents the secret star plan of Washington, D.C.. While Pike engineered a schematic time for his star map, Ovason shows that it relates to a number of days centering upon August 10 of each year. The significance of this and other “mysteries” is fully explored in this work. In view of the meanings that may be traced in Albert Pike’s map, we can only wonder if he observed the same correspondences of the city, noted by Ovason, yet for reasons of his own never divulged them. In any case, David Ovason presents us with a fascinating work that will be sure to captivate and entertain readers interested in architecture, esotericism, Freemasonry, and our nation’s capital. His thesis may be controversial, but it is well thought out and presented.
This ‘zodiac’ concept could be a ‘why’ behind the refusal to relocate the St Vincent DePaul Church, and/or the placement of the stadium, with its jutting to the south clubhouse.
Starting with St. Vincent de Paul Church , note its three clearly defined points with its trio of crosses, with one each upon its shorter northern and taller southern towers, flanking a middle cross at its roof’s peak.
It can be said to look somewhat Masonic from the front with its pyramid shaped peak above that ‘eye’ of a window.
The zodiac of the Virgo appears relevant to this St Vincent DePaul Church at the northeast quadrant of the intersection of Washington, D.C.’s South Capitol Street and M Street.
(Come to think of it, I’ve noticed this zodiac design feature on numerous churches, including ‘protestant’- could this be an allusion to stars?)
From these different illustrations within Ovason’s Kleinknecht forwarded book, it’s apparent that these exact angles may vary But why should that matter with the idea of moving the church a few hundred feet east?
It would still face due west, with its intact zodiac simply offset say 250 feet east.
Avles Beluskes provides a plausible explanation:
http://wwwsouthcapitolstreet.blogspot.com/2009/01/romish-contrasts-catholic-church.html#comments
Hey Doug, are you realizing that the work of L'Enfant-Carrol is not finished? Is this the reason for which that church could be the "angular stone" of a bigger, much bigger 'celestial' design on the ground?.....
A work in progress, near to be finished, but not YET finished...
You will be not surprised to know that the stars and constellation are shaping other cities in the world, all important for the Romish Novo Ordo Seclorum... Think: the Romish churches as 'angular-masonic stones' of an urban, invisible, but material net...
(More to come)
Kleinknecht:’s introduction points to Albert Pike’s doing things in a schematic way – that is, independently of the scale between star groups. So, this does not necessarily limit us to a simple, consistent astrological reference showing Articula, Spica and Refulus within a far larger star field to find anything relevant to the South Capitol Street area (or anywhere else). Does the St Vincent DePaul zodiac fit as part of a larger pattern, relevant to the new stadium?
And what about the triangular shaped clubhouse?
With the stadium following the church, what was the church positioning so tied to?
The various axis of the street grid, ley lines, or strictly the concept alluded to by Kleinknecht in Ovason’s book?
That they would oppose a due east relation may suggest a relationship with some sort of diagonal line.
If the street grid, say something as Rhode Island Avenue, New York Avenue and Maryland Avenue, and/or Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia Avenues, or even from the northeast, Louisiana Avenue emanating from the Union Station ‘headpiece’.
Note that some of these particularly Pennsylvania and Virginia Avenue are upon broken axis.
And if something, perhaps, say, as a ley line- well does not Washington, D.C. sit upon a giant line extending through Philadelphia, New York City and Boston?
Ovason’s book makes a big deal about the concept of zodiacs in architecture, regarding that area of the Capitol, the White Hose and the Washington Monument, known as the “Federal Triangle”
The interesting thing is that this stellar triangle was evidently intended to remain invisible.
It is a stellar figure that we know is there, yet which remains hidden from our sight. Below on the earth, its equivalent form, the Federal Triangle, is plainly visible, with Pennsylvania Avenue as its longest side. Since the Constitution Avenue line of the Federal Triangle represents the ecliptic, the implication is that Pennsylvania Avenue was intended by L’Enfant and Ellicott as a sacred route, with its celestial equivalent as invisible pathway in the skies.
Perhaps it is clear now why the symbol makers and architects of Washington, D.C. concentrated their efforts on zodiacal symbols which reflect so deeply the arcane nature of the stellar Virgin?
Perhaps it is clear now why the idea of an earthly triangle – encapsulated in the phrase Federal Triangle – should reflect this stellar form on the earth plane? From the very beginning, the city was intended to celebrate the mystery of Virgo – of the Egyptian Isis, the Grecian Ceres and the Christian Virgin.
This truth – and this truth alone – explains the structure of the city, and the enormous power of its stellar symbolism. Washington, D.C., is far more then a city of zodiacs – it’s a city which was built to celebrate a massive cosmic symbolism, expressed in stars. Its the main buildings – Capitol, White House and Washington Monument – mark on the Earth the annual renewal of that magical pyrotechnic display in the skys, which occurs on the days around August 10. (page 344)
From whatever direction one approaches the history of Washington, D.C., the processional avenue of L’Enfant seems always to find its way into the story, and the tale is usually linked with Masons. If we glance at the history of the capital from the viewpoint of, say, sculpture, we find a seamless fabric which joins together generations of artists through almost two centuries.
And, this is a fabric woven in the vicinity of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Today, the Old Post Office is set back from Pennsylvania Avenue, oriented to the squares drawn on the original map along D Street, as though some planner had forgotten about what L’Enfant had indicated on his map.
Across the road is the beaux arts building that once housed the most influential newspapers in the city, the Washington Evening Star, its façade still looking down onto the statute of Benjamin Franklin, who occupies the triangular-shaped declivity in Pennsylvania Avenue.
It is entirely fitting that this building, so intimately linked with a setting star, should look onto one of the most influential of early American Masons, one who had knowledge of the stars and was a keen astronomer.
The sculpture, commissioned of Jacques Jouvenal as a gift to the city by the newspaper proprietor Stilson Hutchins, was designed to look onto Pennsylvania Avenue from 10th Street [note. It sits on the south-eastern corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street], because in those days the avenue was flanked by printers and newspapers: within a stones throw was the largest litho printer in the United States.
Now the printers and newspaper have fled in the wake of threatened and actual development, leaving Franklin, displaced from his original symbolism, raising his right hand as though astonished in their disappearance.
Nonetheless, there seems to be a destiny even in accidents, and this placing of a Mason on one side, and a building named after an evening star, is propitious. The Evening Star departed its famous building in 1955, leaving only its stellar name in metallic and lapidary inscriptions overlooking the Pennsylvania frontage. The reception hall of the newspaper has been revamped in modern times, but it is possible that a meaningful symbolism has survived from earlier days. In its marble floor is a huge sunburst, or starburst pattern. The five splendid radiants throw their beams out toward this magical avenue, as though he were part of the profound secret of Washington, D.C. [emphasis added] (pp 311-312)
Does the state of Franklin, on its pedestal below the campanile, hold up its hand in amazement of this solar wonder? (page 344)
This is the same Benjamin Franklin statute that faces diagonally across the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue NW and 12th Street NW to the building at 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Ovason discusses The Evening Star building that sits to Ben’s right (3’o clock); but he altogether ignores the identity of the building that Ben directly faces. 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue is the Covington & Burling building.
This is the Covington & Burling involved with crafting the stadium deal, and long involved with Washington, D.C. as a frequent ally of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City founded by Frederic Adrian Delano, brother in law via marriage to a pair of sisters to railroad industry attorney Edward Burling, the firm’s co-founder with F.H. Covington, a Maryland, eastern shore U.S. Representative who later became a judge and then a law professor at Georgetown University- which through its ‘Georgetown Law Center’ has been a frequent ally with Covington & Burling and groups as the Committee of 100 on the Federal City.
There’s a definite Masonic symbolism with this law firm’s choice of a site- a law firm co-founded by F.H. Covington, Grand Master of his Romish-Masonic fraternity.
LINK-
College Frats Satanic Romish Masonry & Covington & Burling
Until sometime after I made the following post, this fraternal order’s web site featured an animation of a red ball traveling from Italy to Virginia- representing its founding in 1867.
Beyond keeping St Vincent DePaul Church in the exact same position, and erecting that stadium with that jutting clubhouse -- the overlook no doubt of the powerfully clustered people bringing this stadium about -- the South Capitol saga was about killing the South Mall linear park concept; this is indicated by the failure to consider a ‘west’ version of the 2003 option ‘c’ linear park option, suggestive of a guiding hand with a broader agenda- one particularly suspect since the envisioned re-development would displace most if not all of the buildings as would have the proposed linear park.
Illustration: Why Not Build the West Side of the South Capitol Mall?
LINK-
reply of Judy Feldman (of Save the Mall, the Mall Conservatory and the Committee of 100 on the Federal City)
Beyond simply about keeping St Vincent de Paul Church in its exact same location, and beyond extending that building line southwards with that stadium with its southward jutting clubhouse, it was about a preference against any sort of broad linear park and instead for a narrow street as the downhill vista from the important building at the top of the hill.
I have a suspicion.
The Jesuit Order is the Vatican’s military-strategic wing- its ‘Pentagon’.
Take a look at the Jesuit Order’s founding family and their 'pentagon’
Villa Farnese
The Jesuit Order Mother Church, the Gesu, in Lazio, Rome, with the name of the family sufficiently instrumental to the Jesuit Order’s creation to merit placement on the Gesu’s very face: the family Farnese.
Jesuit Order 'Gesu' Church
It is the Farnes name that appears on the tomb of Ignatius Loyola.
And it is this family which has long expressed an interest in Washington D.C. planning as evidenced by their Villa Farnese- known as the ‘original pentagon’.
Note the treatment of the corridor extending down the hill from Villa Farnese of a narrow street (in what appears in the lower photo to be triangular in shape).
Naturally the following from the UK based The Un-Hived Mind caught my eye:
I have just concluded a trip to the Villa Farnese which was the ORIGINAL 'Pentagon' in Caprarola. What is amazing is that they arrogantly and proudly admit to controlling Washington D.C. and that the building was the original prototype. It was created as a secret and hidden meeting place for Cardinals to command their legions in Germany to counter the reformation and to plan the 30 years war. In its map room, we you can visit as a tourist, there are 5 maps of the United States dated to before the American Revolution 1600s. One of these includes a future capital where washington is today.
THESE PEOPLE DESIGNED AMERICA!
THEY LAID OUT WHERE EVERYTHING WOULD BE BEFORE IT CAME!
......Then, the brainwashed tour guide told us that: "Oh my, it's a very strange coincidence that the future capital would be positioned there 'between Maryland and Virginia' and that the Pentagon is on the map too. The Farnese might have been psychic. After all they were popes"
Psychic, MY ASS --- They built Washington! and its even got the Washington Monument on the same map!
check this out; Washington D.C. is between VIRGIN (ia) & MARY (land)
These Jesuits admit to EVERYTHING! We are the stupid ones, in that we just don't care. They get away with everything. Look at the inscription on Ignatius Loyola's tomb: What does it read: ' CARDINAL ALEXANDER F A R N E S E '
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Farnese_%28cardinal%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Farnese#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Paul_III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon
ANYBODY WHO THINKS THE JESUITS DON'T CONTROL WASHINGTON ARE SIMPLY RETARDED PERIOD!!!
THE FARNESE RAN THE JESUIT ORDER AND STILL DO TODAY!
That would be some decision, to so reveal the scope of one’s political infiltration power. They must have perceived some sort of good reason for so displaying the extent of their power.
If anyone has another suspect, I would like to hear that.
St Vincent DePaul Roman Catholic Church of the Zodiac of Virgo
