Washington Post: NoMa Receives $490,000 for Park Planning

Developers and planners of the District’s NoMa neighborhood, behind Union Station, are enjoying an incredible wave of construction but have long wrung their hands over the area’s lack of green space.

Officials from the District government and the NoMa Business Improvement District have looked for ways of accumulating enough land to build a large central park. But with so much of the neighborhood already pegged for development, the BID’s new president, Robin-Eve Jasper, decided to push for a network of smaller places for public gatherings, dog walks, relaxation, playgrounds and limited recreation.

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The District plans to spend nearly half a million dollars on the greening of NoMa, the constantly under-construction neighborhood that is long on new, glassy office towers, but short on recreational space.

Mayor Vince Gray announced $490,000 in public funding for a network of parks to be installed in NoMa over the coming years in a letter earlier this week to Robin-Eve Jasper, the president of the NoMa Business Improvement District. The D.C. funds will go toward developing the BID’s $50 million parks development plan, which envisions filling NoMa with a smattering of postage-stamp-size green spaces to complement the usual sights of construction cranes and corporate buildings.

http://dcist.com/2012/09/noma_gets_490000_from_district_for.php