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Dear Friends & Neighbors, Our names are Haley and Corey, and we are the new owners of alley house 210-REAR. We moved in a couple months ago and have since learned quite a lot about being the owners of a historic alley home. The most amazing thing we learned, however, was that we (as a block) have the opportunity to name our alley! Because there are a couple independent homes (210-REAR and 211-REAR) whose primary access is through the alley, we are able to petition the city to give our alley a name.* Not only would this be an amazing chance to cement our alley in D.C. history but also offer some practical benefits such as traffic control signs, GPS-discoverable/USPS-deliverable mailing addresses for all the alley homes, and increased property values. In pursuit of this opportunity, we reached out to our ANC Steve Holtzmann who kindly provided us a run-down of the actions we would have to take in order to gain his endorsement for this initiative: Step 1: Assess people¡¯s interest in naming the alley. Step 2: Attempt to reach all property owners to notify them of this initiative. Step 3: Put together a petition that is signed by a majority of property owners whose property abuts the alley. (There are 64 properties but 62 homeowners, so as of today, we would need 32 or more signatures.) After these steps are taken, the petition would go through various stages of procedural voting and eventually reach the Mayor for a final sign-off.** There are a couple fine-print details that we¡¯re still working out with Steve, but for the most part, that¡¯s it -- in a couple months, a signature on a petition is the only requirement we will need from you. However, to really forge ahead, we need your support. As we mentioned above, Step 1 is a general assessment of interest. Therefore, we¡¯ve created a Facebook Group for this Name Our Alley initiative: . Please join the Facebook Group if you are yea for a name! Or, feel free to call or text me at 678-523-4050, email me at haley.huang.0329@..., or respond to this thread to express your interest, convey your concerns, ask any questions, or offer your expertise. And of course, please spread the word! Although we will be doing our best to reach out to as many people as we can through emails, letters, and social media, we can only do so much on our own. Once we've established that there is significant interest in this initiative, we will move on to Step 2. We understand that we¡¯re still in the middle of a pandemic and therefore haven¡¯t had the chance to meet everyone face-to-face, but we still hope that this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to name a historical D.C. alley resonates with you as much as it does with us! Thank you all for your time. Sincerely, Haley & Corey * ** |
