The past decade has seen an aston­ish­ing uptick in pop­u­la­tion growth within the bound­aries of our Advi­sory Neigh­bor­hood Com­mis­sion (ANC) 2A, which includes both Foggy Bot­tom and West End. The results show that ANC 2A has gone from 12,000 to 17,213 res­i­dents, a 43 per­cent increase since 2000!

Three fac­tors drove this growth: the addi­tion of approx­i­mately 2,000 units of new res­i­den­tial hous­ing in the West End (e.g. Ritz-Carlton, Colum­bia, Atlas and 22 West), sub­stan­tial increases in GWU’s stu­dent pop­u­la­tion and an effort by DC gov­ern­ment to ensure col­lege and uni­ver­sity stu­dents were counted where they study and spend the major­ity of their time.

Per DC Statute, this means there will be sig­nif­i­cant adjust­ments to the Com­mis­sion area as part of DC’s cur­rent redis­trict­ing process, based on the 2010 US Cen­sus count. Each Sin­gle Mem­ber Dis­trict (SMD) of the ANC must rep­re­sent 2,000 res­i­dents (plus or minus 5 per­cent). As a result, the num­ber of SMDs in ANC 2A will increase from six to eight.

Coun­cilmem­ber Jack Evans assigned three cochairs to each task force of Ward 2 ANCs to man­age the redis­trict­ing process. For 2A, these are Rebecca Coder, Asher Cor­son and Bar­bara Kahlow. Addi­tion­ally, 2A res­i­dents were invited to join the work­ing group, which included Susana Baranano, Flo­rence Har­mon, Sara Mad­dux and John Williams. GWU’s com­mu­nity liai­son, Brit­tany Wad­dell, also participated.

At a Sep­tem­ber 12 pub­lic hear­ing held by the task force, the updated plan was pre­sented to ANC 2A res­i­dents. The draft future map can be viewed on the Commission’s Web­site at www.anc2a.org. The full DC Coun­cil will vote on ANC redis­trict­ing plans at a meet­ing in Octo­ber. —FBN