Norton Gets New Federal Funds for D.C. Priorities (11/15/07)

Norton Gets New Federal Funds for D.C. Priorities
November 15, 2007

Washington, DC-Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) continued to work through her committees to win extra funding for important District priorities, as the House last night gave final approval and sent to the President the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations conference bill for the 2008 fiscal year with almost $3 million in new federal funding for D.C. The funds will support projects that encompass Norton priorities: preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS in the District, beefing up security at Union Station, sparking economic development ventures in Southeast Washington and other untapped business areas, and improving the South Capitol Street corridor. As a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Norton works closely with appropriators, especially Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), to get federal funding for D.C. projects beyond the separate District appropriation (pending in another bill).

Norton was able to get a half million dollars for the Union Station Intermodel Transportation Center (ITC). The ITC is the beginning of a redesign of Union Station that will add mixed uses through the utilization of air rights, shore up security, and modernize facilities, while providing benefits to the surrounding Capitol Hill community. A member of the Homeland Security Committee, Norton has worked for years to get security upgrades at Union Station, one of the busiest transportation centers in the nation. The THUD funding begins a public/private project that will include the construction of a new transfer concourse for Amtrak, WMATA, VRE and MARC trains, a new tour bus garage, a new Massachusetts Avenue/H Street connector road, and a pedestrian walkway to H Street.

THUD also sets aside $500,000 to help build road infrastructure at the Southeast Federal Center, the public/private development that grew out of Norton's bill allowing private construction on federal land for the first time anywhere in the country. Now known as The Yards, the 42-acre site along the Anacostia River will include affordable and market rate housing, and commercial, retail, cultural and recreational space near the new Nationals baseball stadium and the new Department of Transportation headquarters. The funds Norton got in this appropriation are needed for new roads that will give the community access to a new public waterfront park that will be a part of The Yards.

Norton worked especially hard this year for $150,000 to support the planning and acquisition of land for a new health care facility in Southeast that the Whitman-Walker HIV/AIDS Clinic will build. The clinic is part of Norton's efforts to fight the District's devastating HIV/AIDS rate, the highest in the country. Last Saturday she held a town hall meeting for teens, the fourth and last in a series of HIV/AIDS community meetings for teens, women, men, and the clergy. The new Whitman-Walker facility will provide not only HIV/AIDS services, but also general primary medical care, nutrition programs, dentistry, mental health, addiction and other services desperately needed in this part of the city.

Over several appropriation years, Norton has worked with Majority Leader Hoyer to get funding for the Frederick Douglass Bridge and South Capitol Street corridor. For FY 08, a half million dollars will go toward redesigning the interchanges at the Suitland Parkway, Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, and I-295 to improve traffic flow in all directions of this D.C.-Prince George's County gateway. Redesigning these interchanges has become more urgent considering the increased traffic that will come with the baseball stadium, the new Department of Homeland Security headquarters on the campus of St. Elizabeths and other federal construction Norton has sponsored for communities east of the river. Norton on the authorizing committee and Hoyer on appropriations have collaborated to secure almost $14 million for the South Capitol Street corridor over the past six years. Nearby this corridor, the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial will be built. Norton got $1 million in this appropriation for road construction around the monument, to be located southwest of the U.S. Capitol at Washington Avenue and 2nd Street. This property is part of the land swap between the District and federal governments that Norton's land transfer bill created, which also included Poplar Point and Reservation 13-the old site of D.C. General Hospital.