Mixed Use

Dear Mixers:

Richard Layman, below, makes an interesting argument in favor of the administration’s land grab of library and school system properties. In the last issue of themail, I linked to an online article by Mark Jenkins, http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/citydesk/2006/10/libraries-mixed-use-messages.html, about a public meeting on the administration’s plan for the Benning Library. That article focused on the outrageous tactics that the Library Board of Trustees and the Williams administration are using to force their plan through without giving the affected community an adequate opportunity to have any say about it. This is reminiscent of how the Library Board attempted to dispose of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Central Library quickly, before the public became aware of it, and I’m sure that Richard doesn’t mean to defend these tactics. But setting aside this issue, and setting aside the question of favoritism and sweetheart deals in these land deals, the question remains: is there anything inherently wrong with mixed-use development of these properties, and, if not, why do many people in DC and I oppose giving these public properties to developers for mixed-use buildings that would incorporate public functions?

In most areas, mixed-use buildings and neighborhoods don’t make much sense. In suburbs, small towns, and rural areas, space is plentiful and people can travel easily by car among neighborhoods that are predominantly dedicated to residential, retail, industrial, or office uses. But mixed-use buildings are crucial for the vitality of downtown neighborhoods in populous congested cities, and they have been for thousands of years. (In the Roman Forum, the government and religious buildings were all dedicated to a single purpose, but the shopping mall at the other end of the street was mixed with residential uses.) In DC, downtown had been dead at night because it had been reduced to office buildings and a few types of retail businesses that could survive from the patronage of daytime office workers (coffee shops and lunch rooms, card and gift shops, cell phone stores, and a few dry cleaners). Now it is being slowly revitalized by reintroducing residential buildings and entertainment venues. Zoning requirements for the main shopping streets of other neighborhoods that require retail or arts uses on the first floors of new apartment and office buildings keep the street life of those neighborhoods vital.

However, not all buildings should be mixed use. As the Romans knew when they built the Forum, community centers of all types are better, for their communities and for their own purposes, if they’re dedicated to a single use. Schools, churches, and libraries are prime examples of uses that are better housed in stand-alone buildings. There, they are focal points for their neighborhoods, in the way that a residential, retail, office, or mixed-use building can never be. Only a serious money shortage, the complete financial inability to build or maintain them in their own buildings, should lead to subordinating them in a mixed-use building. DC isn’t that poor. Keeping schools, churches, and libraries in their own buildings is important symbolically. It is a statement of the importance we put on their uses, as a community or a congregation, a statement that they are the heart of our community, where we gather to be a community.

It is also important for practical reasons. If public schools and libraries are important to our government, it will maintain them much better than the owners of office or residential buildings who put a library or a school on one floor of their developments. It would be taking a needless risk to give up the public land on which schools and libraries are built, and then to trust private developers to maintain the buildings and the libraries and schools incorporated within them for decades in the future. Although the District government’s neglect of its schools and libraries would seem to argue against this, our city’s neglect of its public assets hasn’t resulted from a lack of funds. The District has been awash in ample tax money for the last decade. The neglect has resulted from mismanagement and skewed priorities. The past failure of the District government to maintain our most important public assets should not be an excuse for giving them away now.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Sunday Soccer
Clyde Howard, ceohoward@hotmail.com

On Sundays, soccer games are played on the grounds of Cardozo High School, with 90 percent of the attendees from Maryland and Virginia. The surrounding neighborhood is impacted by the number of cars driven by the attendees. They deprive the residents of curb space for parking if they should want to go out to breakfast, coffee, or to attend church. These soccer games are played all day into the late afternoon with attendees coming and going just to see their favorite teams play.

What is even more disturbing is that their teams tear up the sod on Cardozo’s football field, making the field unusable for Cardozo’s football team and for their opponents. This field was rebuilt by the Redskins football team, and to have these soccer games to tear up the field is unconscionable. Aside from the rental fee imposed by the Department of Parks and Recreation there has been no attempt to maintain the field by them. The maintenance of the field should not fall on the school or on the Board of Education, but on the Department of Parks and Recreation. However, judging how they take care of what they have under their control, why should we expect any better? Further, since most of the team members and the people who attend these games are from Maryland and Virginia, why don’t they hold their games in those jurisdictions and not on Cardozo’s football field? If mayor-elect Fenty wants to do something, he should take a hard look at the Department of Parks and Recreation, especially at the helm of the agency, and see if they are meeting their mission statement and how effectively the agency is managed. The Department of Parks and Recreation needs to be effectively reorganized starting at the top down to the last position in the agency.

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Libraries and Mixed-Use Building
Richard Layman, rlaymandc@yahoo.com

This [themail, October 8] is an instance where I have to say that I respectfully disagree. It makes sense to accomplish multiple objectives from public assets. A library little better than a FEMA-provided trailer isn’t the best library neighborhoods ought to have. And it’s reasonable to use the “air” above to accomplish other social and public policy objectives.

For example, I think it’s laudable that the H Street site proposes 100 percent affordable housing on floors above, as well as a better and expanded library. I can’t think of a much better use for the space above the ground floor (unless it were to be more library).

The Benning Library is the exact configuration of the library on H Street and is equally pathetic. I think residents of the city deserve, and can have, more. Instead of visceral opposition, why isn’t this considered a sound application of Jane Jacobs’ principle of mixed primary uses?

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Praise for Phil Mendelson’s Office and themail
Joan Eisenstodt, jeisen@aol.com

The noise at 6th and H Streets, NW, behind our building, lessened tremendously after Phil Mendelson’s office got on the case. The people who weren’t returning calls, called and took action. I shouldn’t put a curse on this in case it could get worse again; for now, all is quieter on the downtown front. Thanks to themail for being a method by which to air public grievances that aren’t getting attention. I am convinced that airing the issues here did more than the direct calls and letters.

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Even If You Lose, You Still Win
Jonathan R. Rees, jrrees2006@verizon.net

Nobody who ran in the DC City Council Ward 3 race was really a loser, if you follow what they faced after the primary. Just the mere fact that the nine candidates dared to run drew the attention of businesses and others. The word is going around that Bill Rice will be working for Fenty, as Tangherlini will bring him onboard in the office of chief of staff. Eric Goulet will be back working for Jack Evans. Erik Gaull has new contract work to keep him busy, and so does Robert Gordon. Paul Strauss is already busy preparing to run in 2010 to unseat Mary Cheh, and he has a watch dog group financed by labor that will accumulate all the mistakes Cheh makes to throw in her face.

As for yours truly, I have had several job offers that pay more than I am now getting, I have been invited to interviews for jobs in DC and New York City that pay more than I am now getting, and in each instance I was told these offers have come because I dared to run for DC city council although I did not win and because these possible employers liked what they saw in me. You may not win an election but the fact you tried does bring rewards. Voters fail to realize that being a politician is an exclusive club where nobody really loses. All the candidates win, but voters are so blind that they fail to see that the politicians gain public exposure by running, and that exposure good or bad comes with great rewards. Somebody out there will love you no matter what side of the fence you are on and offer you work.

Flaunt what you offer because America is so diverse there will be followers of any type of political figure. The more you speak ill of a political figure, the more you help line her or his pockets, as you are creating their popularity!

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Candidates’ Annoying Phone Calls and Junk Mail
Mike Livingston, mlivingston@greens.org

Paul Dionne asks a fair question [themail, October 8]. Campaigning isn’t easy, and it shouldn’t be. But the District is small enough to allow meaningful retail politics — ample opportunity for face-to-face contact with voters at countless forums, ANC meetings, block parties, neighborhood festivals, farmers’ markets, even busy street corners. Yes, that takes up a staggering amount of the candidate’s time. Isn’t that a fair part of the test?

More to Dionne’s point, it’s substantive. The recorded ads that a candidate’s autodialing machine leaves on your answering machine are hardly informative and do not help us "be an informed electorate." Junk mail is just as vapid, but also an irresponsible use of natural resources. And spam is not acceptable in any circumstance, as it places a burden on the recipient of unsolicited contact (and is still just as vapid and pointless as phone messages and junk mail). So the answer, while demanding, is simple: there is no shortcut. Candidates need to get out and actually talk to people. (Or, better yet, listen to them.) And those of us who do want to be part of an informed electorate need to do the same.

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Robocalls and Junk Mail
Ken Nellis, nellisks@verizon.net

[Paul Dionne, themail, October 8, wrote: “The alternative is to only get information from news media, which many argue are biased.”] What planet, dwarf or otherwise, is Paul Dionne from if he thinks recorded phone calls, junk mail, or spam coming directly from the candidates are not biased?

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Mail and Calls from Candidates
Joan Eisenstodt, jeisen@aol.com

In the October 8 issue of themail, Paul Dionne suggested that we are a more informed electorate by receiving the calls and mail from the candidates. I concur that some of the mail made us informed. The calls however were recorded messages that said basically “vote for me,” or “vote for [name],” and gave little information. The deluge this year was too much, and I was stunned at the amount of mail and calls. We stopped answering the phone. I wonder what zip codes were targeted — all? There have to be better ways than what happened this cycle for the primaries.

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Fenty Versus Kelly (and Williams)
Michael Bindner, mikeyb at yahoo dot com

The sour grapes division has been comparing former Mayor Kelly to Democratic nominee and mayor-in-waiting Adrian Fenty, highlighting instances where he might be as big a failure as she was. As someone who served in the following administration, which had to pick up the pieces (and working with our appointed Chief Financial Officer and the Control Board to do so), I can tell you why Sharon failed. 1) She had no council experience, unlike Mayors Washington, Barry and even Williams (who served on a city council when he was at Yale). Adrian does not have this problem. 2) Sharon faced an incipient financial crisis made inevitable by the pension liability foisted on the District as part of Civil Service Reform in 1978 (thank you, Jimmy Carter). Again, Adrian does not face such a crisis. 30 Sharon hired a bunch of idiots to work for her, most specifically Valerie Holt, who had no idea on how to do internal control on a budget when she was the Comptroller. Tony almost made that mistake by reappointing her because the Control Board wanted her. Luckily he fired her when she showed she could not do her assigned work.

When our administration left in 1999, I was worried about all of the former Kelly people attached to it. Luckily for Tony, he cycled through other folks. This is not to say Tony could not have done a better job (he abandoned an expensively prepared management reform plan that was beginning to show results and would have greatly improved services if he had carried it through). Some of his happy band of sycophants almost tanked his reelection, although he survived it, to his credit and due to his tenacity. Adrian does not seem to have this problem, although time will tell. His choice of Dan Taghlerini as prospective City Administrator is a good first choice.

There was a candidate who would have been very much like Mrs. Kelly, had she won the primary (which would have called for getting the Post endorsement, which is what really got Kelly elected): former phone company executive Marie Johns. Very similar background and resume as Sharon Pratt Kelly. I think DC dodged a bullet there.

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The Common Denominator Ceases Publication
Kathy Sinzinger, newsdc@aol.com

With much regret and great personal disappointment, I am sad to announce that I must discontinue publication of The Common Denominator. When I started this newspaper more than eight years ago, it was born of the idea for a “hometown paper” for all the people of the District of Columbia, with our residence here being what we hold in common. I wanted it to be the District’s “newspaper of record” — a place where readers could find the information that some local papers in other communities still provide. It would serve citizens across the city with reporting and opinion focused on local public policy and events, news about their neighborhoods and meaningful facts from the public record.

I also tried to build The Common Denominator into a self-sustaining and job-creating business — a locally owned community asset — with wide circulation and a strong base of local advertisers. From the start, it’s been a constant struggle, with frequent tangible setbacks outweighing the occasional intangible rewards. Operating a small business can be difficult under the best of circumstances. Being an independent, working-class entrepreneur in the newspaper field — a small fry in a sometimes predatory pond of Big Media — made it all more difficult.

But competing in the marketplace becomes nearly impossible when the playing field is uneven. At The Common Denominator, I realized how uneven it could be — in terms of limited capital access, usurious interest rates, restricted circulation opportunities and oft-demanded personal financial guarantees. While a supportive community of loyal readers offered much-appreciated encouragement and occasional monetary assistance over the years, the company’s debts continued to grow. My repeated attempts to secure long-term financing have proved unsuccessful. At this point, the financial burden — for The Common Denominator and myself — has become overwhelming.

I never expected this enterprise to be easy. But I certainly did underestimate the challenges of being an editor and publisher. While running a newsroom, I’ve also had to struggle all too frequently with landlords, banks, printers, circulation agents, creditors, government agencies and deadbeat advertisers. I’ve been detained by the US Capitol Police for taking photographs. I’ve been robbed outside my office. My car has been stolen; my tires have been slashed. The paper’s news boxes have been repeatedly vandalized, robbed or stolen outright.

But there also have been gratifying experiences. Though pride may be a sin, I can point with some satisfaction to what The Common Denominator has achieved, or aspired to, over the years: it has trained scores of young people in urban journalism, many of whom have gone on to careers in the field, and published the work of veteran DC writers who didn’t have a regular print outlet. It championed “sunshine” legislation and open-meeting policies to help the public know what their elected officials are doing. It went where others wouldn’t or didn’t go for stories and circulation. By shining a light on and giving voice to residents of low-income neighborhoods, it prompted competing news organizations to pay attention. It exposed the secretive business group known as the Federal City Council, which for decades has set a private agenda for public policy in the District. It won awards from the regional press association in every year of eligibility, including first place honors for investigative reporting, editorial cartoons and coverage of the closing of DC General Hospital. It helped the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife assemble its featured program on the District and participated in the festival’s public forums.

Though I’m now beyond broke, I hope to salvage something of this eight-year endeavor for the lasting benefit of the community at large. I continue to seek a way to ensure, at a minimum, the survival of The Common Denominator’s searchable online archives as a free resource. I also hope that the paper’s high school athletic awards programs, which recognize student achievement, can somehow carry on. Seeing The Common Denominator revived in print, perhaps under the wing of a local university, would be most satisfying.

The community’s need for local news and alternative ideas is great. The need for a local newspaper also remains great in a city where new electronic media are flourishing but many neighborhoods are still largely unplugged and highly dependent on the printed word for detailed coverage. In any democracy — but especially in the limited democracy we have here in the District — knowing how the government works is vital to the democratic process. This was the central driving force in my quest to create a “hometown newspaper.”

Many thanks to the loyal readers and advertisers who helped make The Common Denominator possible over the years. Thanks also to the educators and students who cooperated with the paper’s school programs, and to the sponsors of The CD’s awards programs. Special thanks to the many staff members, contributors, interns, and volunteers who helped produce The Common Denominator and get it onto the street. And heartfelt thanks to my longtime associate Lottie Hunter, a source of stability through tumultuous times.

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City Must Make Lerners Pay for All Post-Lease Changes to Ballpark Project
Ed Delaney, profeddel@yahoo.com

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/08/AR2006100801053.html: “Every few days, the Lerners call or visit city officials with their latest desire: an executive dining room, and in the luxury suites, individual bathrooms and a special window glaze. The Lerners defend their style of doing business, saying they stick to their agreements and expect the same of others. ‘We are people who honor the deal,’ said Robert Tanenbaum, Lerner’s son-in-law and a principal of Lerner Enterprises, in a rare interview with members of the family.” Given the effort from the Brigade to breach the supposedly rock-hard cost cap, it is ridiculous for the city to acquiesce as they have to continued ballpark demands from Major League Baseball and the Lerners (who threaten to sue if they‘re asked to pay over a dollar more in ballpark work) above and beyond the scope of the lease and the CAA that call for higher costs that the public is expected to cover — in this case, for stadium upgrades that only the well-connected, and not the public at large who are footing the bill, will ever see. These upgrades must be prohibited unless the Lerners pay for them out of pocket, and the Lerners should have no problem with this if they truly want to honor the original deal. In fact, a review of the ballpark plan must be conducted to see what post-lease and CAA changes have been made at the request of MLB and/or the Lerners, given their apparent propensity to change the terms so frequently and leave the cost of those changes at the feet of the public in violation of the existing agreement, especially since MLB and the Brigade protested so vehemently to changing any part of the existing agreement when the city had considered changing the one-sided nature of the lease terms.

“Recently, Lerner himself wanted to know precisely where the team’s souvenir store would be. When a city official described it, Lerner said he needed to see actual plans. ‘These are the guys who invented hardball,’ said Allen Y. Lew, chief executive of the DCSEC.” Lerner’s completely in the right as per the CAA and lease agreement, since the location of development on the ballpark project footprint determines which set of specific development and revenue rules will apply to each specific piece of the footprint. This late in the game (October 2006), it’s ridiculous that the DCSEC is actually trying to paint Lerner is some hardball nut and reacting with incredulity via leaks to the Post that the team owner and development partner in many instances simply wants to see “actual plans” concerning a major part of the ballpark development and its location, this after we’ve heard so much last week from Miller, Barry, and Cropp about the time sensitivity of the development and revenue rights that might sunset shortly. No wonder the costs keep spiraling out of control. With the incompetence of the DCSEC and its hostility to anyone’s demanding straightforward information and accountability from them, even the owner of the team for whom the DCSEC is constructing the cut-rate greenhouse! If the council and the new administration ever hope to resolve ballpark issues instead of having more and more being created on a weekly basis, they need to clean house of this continued joke of an organization in order to bring accountability and competence into this process.

“The Lerners don’t talk about their work in terms of leaving a broader civic legacy. Instead, they say, they simply aspire to build successful projects, with an eye to the bottom line and the long-term security of the family.” This is why it was incumbent on city officials and council members not to listen to the deception from the mayor and the baseball boosters and not to cave on the terms of the lease agreement. Doing so earlier this year gave MLB and the then-unnamed team owners the ability to control and shape many key parts of the ballpark project, to which the team was contributing no upfront construction money and a pittance of rent whose failure to pay would not result in stiff penalties as it would in the city’s side but have no consequence (which most have likely forgotten by now). MLB had already made substantial changes to the lease agreement, which both sides privately admitted significantly impacted the project budget, including a 7500 SF conference center and an entire concourse level of luxury suites and club seats. These changes make it even more urgent for the city not to approve the unworkable lease and CAA deals without proper changes. For those city officials who forged, fought for, and approved this horrible deal to now grouse that the approach that MLB and the Lerners have taken towards the ballpark and the city’s grander redevelopment plans is extremely hypocritical, since the city unnecessarily gave away most of the power they had to control the situation rather than stand up to MLB’s empty threats to move the team if the city chose to move the stadium site or enact any other lease changes that were needed to make this deal work for the city.

Williams and those in his administration, Gandhi, Ambrose, Cropp, Evans, Patterson, Orange, Brazil, Allen, Chavous, Brown, Schwartz, and Gray can thank themselves for every headache that they and those who follow them in city government on this issue. Some of these “public” servants deceived, obscured, bribed, and bullied others about the true nature of the project and lease agreement with a private monopoly to get their way and chase down their idea of a legacy at an unprecedented and unforgivable cost to the public. Others received favors from both the public and private sector to sell out, while the rest simply took what they thought was the easy way out for their careers and for their personal workloads. The current mess that’s yielding the cut-rate greenhouse at an unworkable site with hardly any time left for planning or design improvements (which of course could yield a product that is so unworkable and unappealing that it never makes the needed revenue projections) is the broader civic legacy that those “public” servants will be leaving.

“I’m really disappointed in their involvement. They’ve been exclusively focused on the stadium. At best they’ve been indifferent and at worst hostile,” said Adrian Washington of the Anacostia Waterfront Corp. “The whole point of the stadium was to anchor a great waterfront neighborhood [and] create opportunities in that area. I really don’t feel like they get it.” I guess when the AWC was created in a manner almost completely unaccountable from outside interference and oversight and designed to streamline past the objections of existing landowners, businesses, and residents, the schemers didn’t figure that the private interest driving the biggest project of the AWI would be the area of greatest resistance and concern! Contrary to Adrian Washington’s statement, the whole point of the stadium was never to anchor a great waterfront neighborhood and create opportunities in that area. The area in question was already being transformed and revitalized, as were every potential ballpark location except for the RFK Stadium site, with millions of square feet of office, retail, and residential development on the way thanks to existing projects. The whole point of the stadium was actually to win control of the luxury boxes for the team that was almost certainly coming to this region via the DCSEC and WBC, whose members overlapped as the process went along.

For a little perspective, we turn back to the May 14, 1999, City Paper: “The DCSEC spent its first year-and-a-half in business conspiring to lease a luxury box at the privately-funded MCI Center. When DC’s financial control board nixed the idea, the DCSEC’s Bill Hall and Paul Wolff (later of the WBC) were dispatched on diplomatic missions to the control board’s One Thomas Circle offices to revisit the issue. The board relented and approved a $625,000 five-year lease of a luxury suite at the arena. When word leaked out, it was Mayor Barry who took the blame for this extravagance amidst financial crisis. Lurid media accounts suggested that Barry and his cronies would watch the Wizards from climate-controlled, theater-style seats, dine on catered food, and avoid the rabble by using private johns, all on the city’s dime. The control board quickly withdrew approval for the lease, and the deal died.” The DCSEC bigwigs and city officials friendly to them did not want a repeat of the MCI Center and went after the brass ring of control and access to multiple luxury boxes, this time making sure the access was guaranteed for themselves and their pals at no personal or business cost but with the cost assigned to the public. (How stunning is it that the DCSEC was rightly viewed as extravagant for wanting to fork over $625,000 of public money for use of a luxury box, while the total cost to the public of the Brigade‘s desire to control as many luxury boxes and club seats as possible for the city‘ latest team is over one thousand times higher than the $625,000 figure, and that’s still not enough!)

We’ve seen for ourselves that the Brigade fought as hard and as dirtily as possible to win that brass ring (one that could‘ve been theirs with a little investment from the private sector, but who wants to pay for things when you can manipulate the political system to get them for free?) and put all other concerns on the back burner, e.g., choosing a site where the benefits of a ballpark’s presence would truly be maximized. Central to that fight was fighting to make sure nothing could possibly unravel the deal and the access to luxury boxes no matter how horribly constructed the deal was, which is why the Brigade’s mantra of upholding existing agreements despite MLB’s massive changes to them led the city to giving away critical decision-making powers to the team owners, which are adding to the already considerable problems at the current unworkable site. Any frustration on this matter needs to be directed not at the city for their actions and not the Lerners (until they start making Abe Pollin-like decisions that negatively affect the on-field product, that is).

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

Cleveland Park Library Book Sale, October 14-15
Jill Bogard, jill_bogard@ace.nche.edu

The Friends of the Cleveland Park Library will hold their annual fall book sale on Saturday and Sunday, October 14 and 15, at the Cleveland Park Library, 3310 Connecticut Avenue at Macomb Street, NW, from 12:00 noon to 4:00 p.m. each day (take red line to Cleveland Park; walk south one long block). We have literally thousands of almost new and “previously owned” books, most donated by our neighbors. They range from recent bestsellers to out-of-print treasures, fiction and nonfiction. Most books are priced at $1.00 for hardcovers, $.50 for paperbacks. Paperback mysteries, romances, and science fiction, as well as children’s paperbacks, foreign language books, and several other categories of paperbacks, will sell for $.10 each.

We also have many other special books — coffee table books, large format art books, etc. — that are individually priced. And we have CDs, tapes (music and books), and videos, as well as some sheet music. Sale proceeds go to benefit our branch library. Please note that we ask that no books be donated this coming week, before the sale. We’re busy setting up the sale and don’t have time to deal with new donations. For more information, contact Nathalie Black (nvblack@earthlink.net, or 362-3599).

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DC Public Library Events, October 14, 16, 28
Debra Truhart, debra.truhart@dc.gov

Saturdays, October 14 and 28, 10:30 a.m., Georgetown Neighborhood Library, 3260 R Street, NW. Exploring, Discovering and Activating Your Inner Potentials, a drama and acting workshop with London-trained actor Ron Dortch. For more information, call 282-0213. Adults.

Monday, October 16, 12:30 p.m., Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW, Auditorium A-5. Sarah Kennedy, outreach director of Sustainable Harvest International, will highlight some of the techniques that have led to the success of SHI program in Central America, as well as share stories from some of the farming families they serve. Her lecture will be followed by a walking tour of the exhibit Yo soy catracho with photographer Lara Solomon who recently spent two weeks documenting the SHI Honduras program. Adults. For more information, call 727-1186.

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NAMIC Diversity Luncheon, October 20
Dorinda White, dorindaw@aol.com

Please join NAMIC on Friday, October 20, for the NAMIC Mid-Atlantic second annual diversity luncheon and panel. The theme for the luncheon is “Marketing Your Cultural Message.” We’ve lined up some great panelists to share information and expertise with you and of course network. They include our moderator, Mitsy Wilson, SVP, Diversity Development, Fox Entertainment Group; and our esteemed panelists Allan Navarette, VP, Affiliate Division, US Hispanic Networks (VP elect of NAMIC Mid-Atlantic), Discovery Communications; Mauro Panzero, Senior Director of Multicultural Marketing, Comcast Cable Communications; and Rick Ramirez, VP, Emerging Markets, US African, Asian and Latino, Fox Entertainment Group. We hope to see you on Friday, October 20, from 12 noon-2 p.m. at Discovery Communications, 1 Discovery Place, Silver Spring, MD.

The admission fee is $35 for NAMIC members and $45 for nonmembers. We do, however, require advance registration by October 13. To register, go to https://web.memberclicks.com/mc/quickForm/viewForm.do?orgId=namic&formId=20575. For more information, E-mail NAMIC Mid-Atlantic President Dorinda White at dorindaw@aol.com.

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A Showcase of UDC Jazz Studies, The Legacy Continues, October 23
Michael Andrews, mandrews@udc.edu

Be a part of an evening of great jazz as the legacy continues with a showcase of the outstanding musicians and ensembles from the University of the District of Columbia Jazz Studies Program. On Monday, October 23, at 8:00 p.m., the UDC Jazz Ensembles under the direction of Allyn Johnson will continue to celebrate the legacy of Calvin Jones. Jones was director of the Jazz Studies Program from 1976-2004 and a legendary figure in the Washington, DC, community. The evening will feature the University’s powerhouse big band — always “in the pocket” as Jones would say — and introduce DC jazz lovers to UDC’s exciting resident group, the Calvin Jones Legacy Ensemble. Produced by the Jazz Studies Program and the Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives, the concert will kick off UDC Homecoming 2006 and this year’s Scholarship Benefit Series.

Tickets are $15, general; $10, senior; $5, student; and can be purchased in advance at the Music Program, Bldg. 46-West, UDC Van Ness Campus, 4200 Connecticut Avenue, NW. Tickets will also be available at the University Auditorium door on the night of the performance. The University Auditorium (Bldg. 46-East) is conveniently located on Metro’s Red Line at the Van Ness-UDC stop. Contact Judith Korey at 274-5803 or JazzAlive@udc.edu for more information.

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Get Moneywise for October, October 27
Michelle Phipps-Evans, michelle.phipps-evans@dc.gov

The DC Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking hosts DISB’s Moneywise: A Consumer Information Fair on Friday, October 27, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at One Judiciary Square, 441 4th Street, NW, in the Old Council Chambers, Lobby Level South. This free public event is your one-stop financial information fair that features mini-workshops, and more than twenty exhibitors from select nonprofits and government agencies that provide a range of resources for managing personal finances. Find out about your insurance needs, financial fraud, credit counseling, wise investing, and non-depository financial institutions. For more information, contact Lucy Drafton at 442-7775 and lucy.drafton@dc.gov, or visit DISB’s web site at http://www.disb.dc.gov under “Consumers.”

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Health Fair, October 28
Gwen Blackman, mizgwen@gmail.com

The Greater First Baptist Church Nurses Ministry sponsors its second annual Health Fair, Saturday, October 28, from 12 noon until 4:00 p.m. Screenings for hearing loss, glaucoma, diabetes, blood pressure, prostrate cancer, and more will be offered. An aerobics demonstration, diabetes education, door prizes, and refreshments are also included.

The Greater First Baptist Church, pastored by Rev. Winston C. Ridley, Jr., is located at 2701 13th Street, NW, on the corner of 13th and Fairmont Streets. For more information, please call 462-6127.

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CLASSIFIEDS — FOR SALE

Own a Piece of the Common Denominator
Kathy Sinzinger, newsdc@aol.com

The Common Denominator has ceased publication after more than eight years as DC’s hometown newspaper and must close its office. A public sale of office equipment and furnishings will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, October 14, at the newspaper’s office in the first-floor suite at 3609 Georgia Avenue, NW (two blocks south of New Hampshire Avenue and the Petworth Metro station; street parking available). Cash sales only. A limited number of copies of the newspaper’s final issue also remain available for purchase.

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Multifamily Yard Sale
Ron LeFrancois, nicmich at verizon dot net

Multifamily yard sale on Saturday, October 14, from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Toys, games, new window air conditioner, lawn furniture, camping equipment, filing cabinets, bric-a-brac, and more! Please, no early birds. 4300 block of Verplanck Place, NW, near Turtle Park and the reservoir, and close to Nebraska and Wisconsin Avenues.

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