NBC washington Blog Reports: Raise Your Kids in College Park!

College Park Tops With Families

City touted for good schools

By URIAH KISER

When it comes to raising children, College Park is the best place to do it in Maryland.

The city, which is home to University of Maryland, won over the runner-up city, Bel Air, for it’s good schools and proximity to the nation's capital. It’s also served by Metro, which helped the city earn high marks in Bloomberg Business Week’s survey of the best places to raise kids. The city boasts 26,167 people and has a median income of $83,749 and includes historic sites and the nation’s oldest continually operating airport.

In Virginia, the Ashland community -- about 30 minutes north of Richmond -- came in as tops for the state.

The area is home to Randolph Macon College, a small liberal arts college that hosts concerts and lectures offered to area residents. It has a smaller population of about 6,500 and a median income of $57,832.

More than 5,000 locations were surveyed nationwide, using real estate information from Onboard Informatics, a real estate company in New York.

First Published: Dec 18, 2010 2:02 PM EST 

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NBC washington Blog: Old Trolley Staging Area Beneath Dupont Circle. What to do with it now?

Dupont Goes Under

Is the former trolley system D.C.'s High Line?

 

One of the latest trends in urban development is to take a dilapidated urban structure and repurpose it entirely. The success of the High Line in New York has developers and municipalities across the nation looking toward elevated tracks and other unused infrastructure elements and thinking gardens, promenades and galleries.

The District Department of Transportation just released a comprehensive outline for its D.C. Streetcar Plan, which begins with the H Street/Benning Road Line in Northeast and the Anacostia Initial Line Segment in Southeast. Expect that project to suck up a lot of the oxygen about redeveloping old infrastructure -- as it did when outgoing Mayor Adrian Fenty and presumptive Mayor-elect Vincent Gray squared off on funding for the streetcar -- for years to come.

But another group is trying to take an old project in a new direction, more in the vein of a progressive repurposing like the High Line.  The Arts Coalition for Dupont Underground wants to take some 100,000 square feet of space underneath Dupont Circle and turn it into performance and exhibition space.

The former underground trolley facility is another relic of the streetcar system that went empty in 1962. One developer tried to revive the spot in 1995, with an underground food court project called "Dupont Down Under" that itself quickly went under.

On Wednesday, the Arts Coalition and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development will host a public reception to present their ideas for the program. The reception, which will take place at the Dupont Hotel at 1500 New Hampshire Ave. NW from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m., was promised at least a year ago -- and the idea itself is two years old.

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