Gridskipper
You know your neighborhood is phony when it's perpetually followed by a definition: NoMa is a toponym that has yet to be printed or spoken without its paranthetical epithet (North of Massachusetts Avenue), nor without a false explanation that it's just like any of New York's groovy acronym'd 'hoods, e.g. SoHo, TriBeCa, and DUMBO. Actually, NoMa is Washington's latest and greatest gentrification un-success story, the unfinished fairy tale of one eager band of pocket-protected urban planners. The neighborhood was drawn up as everything north of Mass Avenue, east of 2nd Street, NW, west of 2nd Street NE, and south of New York Avenue. That's about 35 fill-in-the-blank city blocks which after more than a decade have yet to be referred to as "NoMa" by anyone who lives there. Sorry guys, but two mentions in the Washington Post does not a neighborhood make. We're still not buyin' it. (photo: Andrew Evans)
NoMan's land: The first thing you notice about NoMa is that there's absolutely nothing there. Wait, that's not true, CNN has some offices . . . and NPR is moving there; hey, GSA is already there. And then there's the new headquarters of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (who seem to be diversifying their portfolio), and a halfway house . . . and they're building a Holiday Inn, and OMG, there's gonna be a Harris Teeter grocery store. This will all follow with the boob job of the DC neighborhood makeover: exposed-concrete ceiling condos made for dual-income, childless couples as portrayed in this hilarious promotional video, which might as well star the Sims. Computer graphics and slogans aside, what does NoMa have? A wikipedia entry, a business improvement district, two godawful nightclubs, cheap all-day parking, and a whole lotta chain-link fences. What doesn't NoMa have: a soul, an identity, a tourist attraction, or an active place in DC's collective conscious.
FTG: Failure to Google: Brand "NoMa" was the bright idea of Dr. Marc A. Weiss, a Columbia University professor and Bill Clinton's adviser on urban planning in the 1990s. His Manhattanese vision for DC calls for hippifying the swath of vacant lots north of Mass Ave by use of a magic wand and a kewl name that he came to him while jogging on a treadmill. Alas, someone forgot to do their homework. Not only is NoMa already the National Organization of Minority Architects and the New Orleans Museum of Art, noma is the name of a horrific facial gangrene that most commonly affects poor, malnourished African children. Noma is preventable and treatable to a point, but poverty and lack of medical care mean it's still a big problem. A quick image search will break your heart faster than you can say due diligence.
It Takes a Coffee Shop:Artists and cool people and a sense of community all linger near coffee shops, right? Like a drop of bleach in bacteria-infested water, one brave little independent coffee shop will turn the ghetto into the Sesame Street of artists' colonies. NoMa's one and only Pound Coffee is yet to open, but when it does, I guarantee it'll be chock-a-block with undercover ATF agents on break. Silly city planners, Bohemia never blossomed from a bunch of caffeinated, gun-totin' bureaucrats! If you want a place to be artsy, make it illegal for anyone to live there and open a tattoo parlor. Give it a month and you'll have yourself a NoMa independent film festival, the annual NoMa fringe gathering and a slew of Midwestern twentysomethings all hitchhiking their way to NoMa with flowers in their longish hair. Alas, once they open an Au Bon Pain the neighborhood will surely go to hell. (photo)
Bring Back Swampoodle: While attempting to pull a hipster neighborhood out of a hat, the city is disappearing the quarter's actual history and thereby losing the one essential ingredient to "character." Before NoMa there was Swampoodle, the capital's very own shantytown populated by Irish immigrants dating back to the great potato famine of the 1850s. Swampoodle was the swampy and frequently-flooded district at the edge of Northeast, which is why waspy Northwest was always happy to let the Papists stay there. Of their many contributions is the Jesuit high school of Gonzaga and Kelly's Irish Times, one of the few authentic Irish pubs in DC. The do-gooder Catholics also helped put in place the Sursum Corda Cooperative, which has since evolved into one of the city's most violent housing projects. Even so, instead of erasing the ghetto and starting at Year Zero, why can't we resurrect Swampoodle? PR firms might be at a loss at sloganeering "Swampoodle," but at least it's real. (photo)
¡No Más NoMa! According to NoMa BID, Washingtonians should be clamoring to move to NoMa because "It's new, it's here, it's 24/7." Actually, NoMa won't get going until 2012, which gives you four years to save up for a house in another yet-to-be-renamed ghetto near you. There's already talk of SoFa (South of Florida Avenue), and you know that can't be too far away from MoFo. I'm praying this trend will end, but until it does, learn how to decipher PR-double speak: "multi-use" means soulless office/condo conglomerates like Rosslyn, "rapidly emerging" means give it ten years or so, "exciting" means not so much, and "community" means subsidized, dirty, and prone to panhandlers. Expect more rah-rah slogans and full page ads and friends telling you all about NoMa, (you know, North of Massachusetts Avenue, like SoHo, etc.). As for me, I've got my own slogan: "NoMa, it's just way too easy to mock".
Comments
Yeah, because it's in NYC it's "groovy" but in DC it's just stupid. Besides, if it wasn't "NoMa" it'd be some other retarded realtor acronym like "WeNoCa" for "West of North Capitol" or "CaHiWe" for "Capitol Hill West."
Agree about Swampoodle, though. Kickass name but I don't think Sloane and Tyler Vauxhaull-Dinwitty, (Esqs.) will shell out $1.2 mil for a condo in "Swampoodle." Same reason they don't call Dupont/Adams Morgan/U Street "DAM-U."
one thing that is in this area is the old DC coliseum, where the Beatles played their first U.S. show. it's being used as a parking lot. none of the plans for "NoMa" include doing anything with this building.
NoMa is dumb as hell, but at least it isn't SoChill (South of Capitol Hill). SoChill is proof that DC will always be the Gary to New York's Ace.
I always thought NoMa meant "No Man's Land" as in no (wo)man is ever going to live in this neighborhood.
No one, anywhere, should be calling any region or place or area or neighborhood in D.C. "NOMA," capital letters or not. It's just dumb. And the bottom line is this: There's nothing there. You could put 900 "coffee shops," 900 chain restaurants, 900 condos and 900 grocery stores there--and there will still be nothing there. Folks, it's just concrete, buildings, roads and dehumanization.
That area of DC is the WORST. I am shocked how people would be willing to pay near a million to live in a white-washed sterile "loft" in the middle of sterile loft-ville that is Mass. Ave. There is absolutely zero streetscape or nightlife, it's sad.
NoMa already has an Au Bon Pain (North Cap & G st.), which apparently isn't working. Also, don't forget that it's the home to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and a stretch of K st. well-populated by hookers after dark, which makes for great lobbyist jokes.
I agree that it's not the most desirable of places to live and, if it's finished according to the design in the video, it never will be. But as someone who's looking at buying a place in the area, it make sense as an investment. Sure, once the area is finished, it'll be as soulless as Reston, but people did buy houses there.
The thought is buy in NoMa in the next few months while the real estate market is down; hold it until 2012 when, as Andrew says, NOMA will get going and the housing market will have rebounded; and then sell it to one of the many people in the area with no taste.
Eventually DC is going to run out of hipsters with rich parents and rich baren couples in their 30s to gentrify the city...then who is going to live in all of the cookie cutter condo luxurious amenities of berber carpet in the bedroom, hardwood in the living room, cherry cabinets, Top Chef (C) quality kitchens featuring GE Profile appliances, and walk-in closets?
Alot of these "up and coming" areas are still going to be GHETTO in 5 years. A half-vacant "luxury" building is still half-vacant.
Loganmo, there will never, ever, be a shortage of hipsters with rich parents and wealthy baren couples in their 30s to gentrify the city. That is an infinitely renewable resource. With income disparity making more and more rich parents, chemicals making more and more people baren, and vastly lowering standards of style making more and more people hip, it is forever baby. Not to mention the fact that DC holds the world title belt in the most over-educated a-holes per capita with money to spend and a large chip on thier shoulder about growing up dorks- they will throw money at percieved cool. Wise to invest. I myself hold a lot of "baren-rich-hipster" stock, it is listed under "TFN" on the Dow, which stands for Trusafarian.
This reminds me of San Francisco where the Realtors[tm] are desperately trying to give every single block its own four-to-six-letter designation. It's not working.
I was one of the eager planners (not pocket-protected) who worked on the NoMa project about eight years ago. While our work may now be outdated or no longer feasible, a major focus of the design was the proximity to a new metro stop located just west of the Coliseum, south of the ATF building. I am not familiar enough with DC to know if that stop was built and how it is used, but the idea was to focus nodes of employment (tech research, I believe, was one use) around the transit -- a tried-and-true practice.
What do you mean NoMA has nothing? How about that giant neon sign on top of a self-storage warehouse that you can see lit up at night as you approach Union Station from the north, except that the initial S in SELF STORAGE is burned out (perhaps intentionally, the first sign of an ironic artists' co-op?!)
Comment on this post
Reply by EmailLogin with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?