Reporter's Notebook

Underway at the Bottom of the Beltway

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After years at a hilltop hotel complex in Washington’s Woodley Park neighborhood – near some excellent Thai and Indian restaurants, by the way – the Navy League’s crown jewel trade show has moved. This year Sea Air Space is underway at the Gaylord National hotel in suburban Maryland, a gleaming behemoth that sprawls along the Potomac River just south of Washington’s infamous Beltway. The Gaylord, in turn, is part of a New Urbanist complex of streets and restaurants and parking garages called National Harbor, a “neighborhood” that feels like aliens sliced off a section of Arlington, Va., and planted it here in the marsh.

So far the new venue has gotten mixed reviews from military and defense-contractor attendees. The Gaylord itself is a marvel — foot-thick carpets; chandeliers in every conference room; an entire pretend town under a glass awning. But the location, just beyond Washington’s psychological frontier with the outside world, has thrown some people for a loop. One Navy captain complained to another attendee that the resort wasn’t on the Metro, and Marine Corps Times reporter Amy McCullough, like thousands of other motorists, sped past National Harbor on the Beltway as she was driving here. You have to take the “local” lanes to get here, not “thru lanes,” although only one sign tells you so.

But even though it’s tricky to find the place, National Harbor is still a harbor, of sorts, and so unlike previous Sea Air Spaces, attendees can walk to water and get on a boat. There are several small craft tied up at one of the docks on the river, and at any minute now, the Navy’s first littoral combat ship, Freedom, is expected to pass the complex on its way to tie up on the Virginia side of the river, in Alexandria. I’ll be taking a ride on one of those small boats tomorrow morning, and then visiting the Freedom the day after that – watch this space for much, much more.