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2025 – A Promising Year 

11th Street Bridge Park

As we wrap up 2024 (see my blog post here summing up the last 12 months!) I’m looking forward to the new year with great anticipation. Some of the highlights include solicitation of the Bridge Park’s general contractor, groundbreaking (!), establishing our seventh urban farm in SE DC and sharing lessons learned with colleagues across the country. Read on for why we are so excited about 2025! 

Ground Breaking – Finally! 

Two construction workers in safety gear operate machinery near a waterfront on a sunny day.

After more than a decade of working with the community at every step, we have submitted our 100% final design plans to the DC Department of Buildings for our construction permit. We should receive this final approval in early 2025 allowing the District Department of Transportation to solicit our general contractor. I’m told that we should have a builder selected by the summer when we can officially break ground on this community driven civic space. That means the 11th Street Bridge Park – the first elevated park in the nation’s capital – should open and welcome you in the second half of 2027. Wahoo!  

A Healthier and more Resilient SE DC 

Three women are jumping rope together outdoors, with one in a pink outfit and two assisting. They're smiling and in a park-like setting.

In 2014 we led over 200 meetings with local stakeholders to identify programming on the Bridge Park. One of the most requested ideas was urban agriculture to address the fact that there is only one full-service grocery store in Ward 8 serving 75,000 residents. To address this food injustice, we partnered with communities of faith and non-profits to open six urban farms in SE DC. In 2025, we’ll open our latest urban farm at the Washington View apartments – 250 affordable housing units just west of Suitland Parkway. In addition to building raised beds on site, we will partner with National Housing Trust, American Diabetes Association and Black Nurses Rock to stand up a pantry on site sourced by Black farmers in the DMV. This work builds on our Food & Farm Fridays program that we piloted at THEARC serving nearly 3,000 residents with locally sourced produce. This important program will return to THEARC in June, 2025.  

Next summer we will expand our health & wellness series bringing programming like yoga classes, forest bathing, double dutch and Zumba to Anacostia Park. We’ll have chefs demonstrations of healthy cooking recipes, distribute food samples and encourage folks to stay for the Late Night Skate events at the Roller Skating Pavillion. This completely FREE series will be geared for children to seniors and everyone in between.  

We are currently putting the final touches on our second mobile small business kiosk aka ”Bridge Spot” which means in 2025 we’ll be showing up at farmers markets, festivals and fairs supporting twice the number of east of the river entrepreneurs (thanks to Capital One, Accenture and Target for your support!) And in the spring we’ll kick off the third cohort of our Small Business Preservation Program providing 12 months of technical assistance and grants for ten businesses along Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. This successful program helping dozens of Black owned businesses thrive is a partnership between the Bridge Park, Booz Allen and the Anacostia BID.  

A man stands next to a window air conditioning unit, resting his hand on it, inside a room.

Finally, in 2025 we’ll expand our “Heat & Health” pilot providing dozens of energy efficient air conditioning units to Ward 8 families. This initiative addresses the disturbing fact that Ward 8 is on average 13 degrees warmer than Ward 3. Given the increased intensity and frequency of heat waves, having air conditioning units can be a literal life and death issue east of the river. 

A Model for the Country 

In 2020, the Bridge Park received a $2MM grant to continue construction training programs at our Skyland Workforce Center and similar work at like-minded parks in Dallas, Grand Rapids, San Francisco and Buffalo. In DC, we recently graduated our 36th constructing training class and have placed over 450 East of the River residents into construction jobs. A senior team from the Urban Institute evaluated these efforts and in partnership with the High Line Network, we will publish a new book Inspiration from the Field: Equitable Workforce Development in Disinvested Places along with a series of virtual programs. Stay tuned! And in 2025 we are looking to take our Community Leadership Empowerment Workshop (CLEW) to a national audience. CLEW is a 30-hour class providing training to the next generation of local leaders to enact impactful neighborhood change.  

You can see why are so excited about the coming year. We hope you will continue to join us on this journey, dance in Anacostia Park at our 11th annual Anacostia River Festival (save the date for May 17, 2025!), learn how to double dutch at our July and August Health & Wellness series or enjoy a sit down dinner with 500 neighbors at our October Taste of the Harvest Festival. And you’ll be one of the first to learn about our groundbreaking date next summer 😊 

Wishing you & your family a bright, cheery & healthy 2025. 

-Scott Kratz