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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

SNAPSHOTS FROM HOME: Square 54


UD’s daughter was born in George Washington University Hospital, a building vaporized by demolition crews shortly after that happy event. Despite its fame as the site where President Reagan was resuscitated, the hospital - a few hundred yards from UD’s English department office - was old and smallish and situated in the sort of dynamic urban environment that demands something spiffier.

For months now, UD has gazed from her sixth-floor windows at the white barriers surrounding the now-empty space that used to be the building in which she gave birth. Its chalky floor and roundish shape remind UD of a bullfight arena … but certainly, she reflects as she scans the expanse, George Washington University does not intend to use it for that purpose … and yet … what will it be?


“SQUARE 54 WILL GIVE ONE LOCAL DEVELOPER A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR,” headlines a story in the latest Washington Business Journal:




Square 54, the site of the old George Washington University Hospital on Washington Circle, is one residential-retail-university-use project that has four of the region's largest developers -- Boston Properties, CarrAmerica, Hines and The JBG Cos. -- holding their breath while the university decides who gets the ground lease. What the developers put in those proposals is one of Washington's best-kept secrets. The Staubach Co. is coordinating everything for the university. GW says its decision will come in the first quarter of 2005.



So UD will soon know what new glories await her as she steps out of the Foggy Bottom Metro … she figures, first of all, on at least two more Starbucks in there (she was just telling fellow blogger Fenster Moop, in a comment, that GW has a Starbucks in the student center and is about to open another one in the library) … does “residential” means dormitories? And “university use” must mean some offices and classrooms…. ?

Anyway, it’s nice to know the spot is so hotly contested, with the region’s largest developers holding their breath and all. Whatever plan wins, UD knows one thing: The result will be another postmodern paradise designed to pamper, please, and astound her.
Posted at: 1/05/2005 09:50:00 AM