12 Years of the Giant Debate Summed Up in One DCUrbanMom Thread

Just in case you have not been following the debate about the Giant's proposed redevelopment at Wisconsin Avenue and Newark Street, you can get up to speed with about ten or so minutes of reading the back-and-forth arguments on a recent thread on the popular local parenting blog, DC Urban Mom.

You can get started on the thread by clicking here.

One early poster gives a helpful chronology, although it contains a few arguable assertions about why certain snafus occurred along the years.

Follow-up posters nicely take up all sides of the issue, from "Just build it already--and while you're at it, replace all the boring old low-scale shops in Cleveland Park with projects of similar density," to "I like it the way it is, and anyone who wants a bigger shopping center can move to Bethesda." And between these two extremes, there are multiple posts for just about every point along the continuum.

Thrown into the mix is a sub-debate about the nature of Cleveland Park itself: Is it a vibrant "village in the city"? Or one big old folks home? Is it an attractive place for young families? Or are they leaving it in droves to get away from the fuddy-duddies who can't stand change?

Like most threads on DC Urban Mom, at some point the debate gets a bit bogged down on whether a previous poster has said something outrageous, or is mocking the sort of people who would say something outrageous -- but you can skim past all that to find a lot of meaty argument here -- about a dozen years' worth (since Giant unveiled its first big redevelopment proposal back in 1999.

Our main worry is that at this rate there could well be another twelve years of contention, which would put the groundbreaking at about this time in the year 2023!