Special Message From MVT CID President & CEO Kenyattah Robinson
Friday March 3, 2023
Dear Friends of Mount Vernon Triangle –
Even a community as happening as Mount Vernon Triangle can have a slow news week from time to time. And so instead of packaging content that can be found on our website’s Events page or our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook feeds, we instead decided to make this week’s Triangle Times an open letter regarding a few broader topics related to the quality of your overall experience within our community.
As an organization, we’re committed to keeping Mount Vernon Triangle clean, safe, and welcoming. It’s a first principle for each of DC’s 11 Business Improvement Districts. And while not every circumstance, event, or outcome is in our control, what is in our control are decisions about where and how we prioritize our focus, activities, and investments toward creating conditions and environments that promote both perceived and actual feelings of safety and support for those who live, work, do business, and entertain in our community. These more significant investments include:
- Our Clean Team program that enhances our public spaces through services such as street cleaning, snow/ice removal, landscaping and leaf pick-up, and graffiti mitigation at a 97 percent annual uptime rate, with services not provided just 12 days out of the year.
- Our support of The h3 Project in its work to provide meaningful outreach and supportive services to individuals experiencing homelessness in Mount Vernon Triangle, with services provided six days per week.
- Our participation in MPD’s Reimbursable Detail Officer Program, an essential tool for providing supplemental foot patrols and visible police presence by off-duty officers during periods of heavier foot traffic.
Your input in our Neighborhood Perception Surveys continues to be invaluable to decisions regarding where our organization should invest its time and your valuable resources. We thank the nearly 1,100 of you who shared your important feedback this past January and will be following up to report our actions being taken in response. So please stay tuned.
But even as we continue to focus on the baseline activities that comprise our core day-to-day operations, we do so with a firm eye toward supporting our community’s ongoing growth and continued maturation as a vibrant, walkable, and inclusive downtown neighborhood. We look forward to soon welcoming The Cantata to Mount Vernon Triangle’s diverse residential portfolio—and watch as 300 K Street grows taller by week, 950 3rd Street NW nears groundbreaking, and 1001 6th Street NW advances toward delivering 550 new residential units atop one of downtown’s most prized development sites. And with the delivery of more hotel rooms within short walking distance to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, we continue to support the city’s comeback as a meeting and tourism destination for citywide, neighborhood scale, and major events including the Major League Soccer All-Star Game this July, The World Culture Festival in early fall, and World Pride 2025.
And while we continue to build up, we’re also keenly focused on improving your on-the-ground experience by:
- Advancing our community’s bold vision for a “re-imagined” 1.2-acre Cobb Park – now entering its final planning phase as it goes through city permitting prior to construction – to serve as an iconic open and artistic space, destination, and gateway into Mount Vernon Triangle and downtown DC.
- Related Link: Mount Vernon Triangle CID Comments on Draft DPR Ready2Play Master Plan 2022
- Fixing curbside management mistakes on the 400 block of K Street NW, which we thank Councilmember Allen for including in his FY 2024 budget priorities letter to Mayor Bowser.
- Providing an array of rich community programming such as concerts, movies, wellness events and activities – including our extremely popular FRESHFARM MVT Biergartens – alongside our increasingly popular weekly FRESHFARM MVT Markets we begin the transition from (sort of) winter to the more characteristically warmer spring and summer months.
Thank you for giving us this opportunity to update you on this extremely important and very valuable work that we do on your behalf. Our interest is fully vested and we do not take this privilege for granted. I look forward to highlighting these efforts and the many positive happenings in and around the Triangle with colleagues and partners on April 6. In the interim, never hesitate to reach out at info@mvtcid.org with questions or suggestions about how we can help make #LifeInMVT a more pleasant overall experience. And as always, stay safe and stay together.
With very best regards,
Kenyattah A. Robinson, President & CEO
Mount Vernon Triangle Community Improvement District
