I choose a tighter review area for Capital Heights between just Government St to the north and Claycut Road to the south. Development started in Capital Heights in 1918 and filled in by the 1950s. The district experienced some deterioration in the 60s-80s but stabilized in the 1990s thanks to a strong civic organization and sense of pride in the neighborhood.
Capital Heights excels with attractive 1920s-1930s homes, convenient access to Dwtn, and typical suburban amenities like good schools, low crime, decent retail amenities and a pretty thick tree canopy. Unfortunately walkability isn’t great here due to a lack of sidewalks along residential streets, low density, mediocre public transit service, a quasi- autocentric commercial district along Government St. I’d obviously like to see a lot more density in the neighborhood. The logical place to start is to building mixed-use apartment buildings along Government St. It would take a drastic redesign of the community for it to become a quality urban area.
Click here to view my Capital Heights Album on Flickr
URBAN STRENGTHS:
* Solid access to Dwtn being only a 10 minute drive to Dwtn.
* Great street connectivity.
* Nice pair of dedicate bike lanes going west to east but not bike stations in Capital Heights.
* Great economic and generational diversity. Rather poor racial diversity as 90% of the neighborhood is White.
* No schools within Capital Heights but several quality schools in nearby Garden District and a couple to the north.
* Pretty good mix of moderate and more expensive for sale housing. Really only a few 1-beds but good # of 2-beds that sell anywhere btwn 135K-335K, 3 & 4 beds sell between 250K-700K
* Solid tree cover.
* Attractive 1930s & 1940 architecture.
* Decent cultural amenities including good # of restaurants, bars, and cafes along Government St. A couple art galleries, a couple live music venue.
* Decent retail amenities include a supermarket & a couple specialty grocers, a drug store, A YMCA, a couple gift shops and creative stores, a couple bakeries, a bike shop, a furniture store, a post office, and a couple churches.
URBAN WEAKNESSES:
* Pretty low density of an urban district.
* Sidewalks and ADA curbs only exist along Government St. No sidewalks in the residential streets.
* Government St has few urban spots in Capital Heights but generally is pretty auto centric.
* So so public transit access.
* Rentals a bit limited but generally moderately priced. 1-beds lease 1K, 2-beds btwn 1K-1.5K, 3-beds btwn 1.5-2.5.
* Only a couple pockets parks within Capital Heights itself. Playground and golf course a block to the south.
* Other than some attractive mid-century architecture modern in-fill is modestly crummy auto centric infill.
* A couple decent stretches of urban form along Government St but generally is very autocentric. Streetscaping is decent however.
* Missing retail including a public library, hospital, medical offices, banks
Evaluating our Urban Communities [with a focus on America] 