Huffington Post talks Penn Quarter

F. Kaid Benfield, the Director of Sustainable Communities at the Natural Resources Defense Council was apparently at last week's Georgetown game with Bill Clinton.

That led him to write this piece in the Huffington Post about Penn Quarter and the Verizon Center's effect on the neighborhood.

"Heck, most people in the neighborhood now aren’t even there because of the arena, though it’s the arena that made the neighborhood what it has become," writes Benfield.  "For longtime DC residents (over 40 years for yours truly), the amazing thing is the contrast of Verizon Center with the area’s old sports arena, also built by [Abe] Pollin (in the early 1970s) in a completely unwalkable and transit-inaccessible suburban location surrounded by acres of asphalt parking lots, and notorious for hours-long traffic jams for people trying to go home after an event."

He also included this very interesting picture of 7th Street from the 1970's:



Credit: Anice Hoachlander for the Historic American Buildings Survey (From the Huffington Post)