Georgetown University is in the process of becoming a very different place. The recently completed Southwest Quadrangle is only one part of a larger University expansion plan, one which will eventually give the campus such badly needed facilities as a performing arts center and an on-campus basketball arena. The plan also calls for new facilities for other, less-famed athletic programs, including an impressive new 35,000-square-foot boathouse for the men’s and women’s crew teams, which currently share space with other clubs at the Thompson Boat Center near Georgetown Harbor. The University needs this space to promote the development of the crew teams, especially as the Thompson Center’s capacity will soon be reduced by construction.
Even though the University is expanding the area of its facilities by building on open land on the Potomac-the kind of move that usually clashes with area residents-the school has been able to reach an understanding with Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E, along with other area authorities.
Opposition remains, however, from a coalition of local environmentalists and the Washington Canoe Club. The environmentalist groups don’t want the boathouse because it will sit on public parkland adjacent to the C&O Canal National Historic Park. The Canoe Club seems to not want the boathouse because it will be next door.
Neither argument is particularly strong. The University has engineered a swap with the National Park Service to get access to the land; in return, the University will turn over an acre of land further up river in the middle of the Capital Crescent Trail. The Park Service could have been confrontational and challenged the University to try to obtain permission on its original site, but the NPS instead decided to be accomodating and work with Georgetown. Regardless, building on the site won’t be a major loss for the park land in the area. The boathouse will sit on a cleared, unused parcel near the entrance to the trail.
The Canoe Club’s opposition to the boathouse, on the other hand, stems not from a sense of public stewardship, but instead from a not-in-my-backyard impulse to use any means possible to keep people away from your property. The Club itself is actually built on NPS land, just like the proposed boathouse.
Fortunately, none of these groups have direct control over the boathouse proposal’s approval. That now lies with the D.C. Zoning Commission, which will meet Monday and hopefully approve several necessary exemptions. The University has worked hard to raise funds for the boathouse, and is quite close to its goal of $10 million, a strong showing for a school with a notoriously low rate of alumni giving. Hopefully, the Zoning Commission will make the right decision and the University won’t have to tell its donors that their gifts have been in vain.
