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City Paper reports today what's been rumored for a for a few months now, that TaKorean will branch out from its food truck and Union Market stall to a fast-casual restaurant space in the under-construction Twelve12 apartment building
The 1,700-sq-ft restaurant will face 4th Street, SE, adjacent to the Sweetgreen at the corner of 4th and Tingey, in the building on the south end of the project that will also be home to the Vida Fitness/Penthouse Pool and Lounge/Bang Salon/Aura Spa empire. At the north end of the block will be Harris Teeter, and up above will be 220ish rental apartments.
According to City Paper, "the location will offer a few new options beyond Korean-style tacos, including rice bowls with all the same toppings. TaKorean will also continue to offer salad bowls."
Forest City, which only confirms tenant deals when leases are signed, hasn't piped up yet, but I'll update if/when they do.
UPDATE: Forest City has now made it official with their own press release, which says that the Twelve12 retail spaces are now 92 percent leased, and that residential leasing for Twelve12 will begin in the first quarter of 2014, with initial move-ins expected by June.
It also says that, at the Lumber Shed, Osteria Morini is expected to open "in mid-November" and Agua 301 in early 2014--but, well, let's give it a little cushion and just say they'll open when they open. And it gives a basic 2014 date for 100 Montaditos and Willie's Brew and 'Que at the Boilermaker Shops.
 

With Bluejacket Brewery and its Arsenal restaurant having now opened to the public (with a launch last night that would be the envy of most restaurant/bar operators), the Neighborhood Restaurant Group is now putting the finishing touches on sibling operation Buzz Bakery, next door to Bluejacket at the Boilermaker Shops at the Yards.
The original plans were to open this morning, but the bakery then tweeted that "there's still a little beautifying & final touches that need to happen," and a sign on the door now says that it will open Thursday at 7 am.
Buzz's web site doesn't yet have information on this location, {deleted}. UPDATE: Buzz Bakery has gotten in touch with me and said they don't know what their hours will be yet, but that they will be different from their other locations and so would I please remove the part of this post mentioning the publicly posted hours for their Ballston location. {shrug}
Buzz and Bluejacket are on the east end of the Boilermaker Shops, at 4th and Tingey streets, SE. They join Nando's Peri-Peri, Wells Cleaners, and GNC Nutrition in the building, with Willie's Brew and 'Que and 100 Montaditos slated to join them in the future.
 

At 1st and K SE, the neighborhood is getting a great demonstration of how quickly a just-started apartment building project can pop into view if the below-ground infrastructure is already completed.
Toll Brothers bought the site from the Cohen Companies last year, and because Cohen had originally planned a sister building to Velocity on the lot, it had gone ahead and built the garage and other underground necessities at the same time Velocity was built in 2007. But then, well, Phase 2 never actually happened, and the covered garage remained a Tetris-like landscape until Toll came along.
It was at the end of last month that nearby residents started seeing the first hints of work at the site, and now a few weeks later the ground floor of the building is already up, as you can see.
Toll is keeping details about the building pretty close to its vest--unless you're a Velocity resident. That group received a briefing in September and was told that the building will be called River Parc, will have 277 rental units, no retail, and is expected to start leasing next fall with completion in spring 2015.
And Velocity residents were even shown a rendering of the new building (thanks to Jake for grabbing a pic of the poster board, which I've straightened out a bit--UPDATE: and see below for two more).
This stretch of 1st Street between K and L used to be made up of small auto-related businesses, with the buildings facing K having a bit more tawdry offerings, such as the "In & Out Video 'and so much more'". All were demolished in Spring 2007, and now the vista looks a little different, not only on this block but elsewhere:
See my Toll Brothers page for more details and photos.
UPDATE: And now two additional renderings have fallen into my hands, showing the view that the Velocity folks will see across the courtyard (left), and the view coming up 1st Street from L (right):
 

The latest edition of the Capitol Riverfront BID's newsletter reports this evening that the Buccini/Pollin Group is planning to break ground by the end of the year on what I've referred to as the "L Hotel" on the northwest corner of 1st and N streets, just across from Nationals Park on Square 701.
It is going to be a 13-story, 168-room Hampton Inn and Suites, says the BID, and would be completed by spring 2015.
This all jibes with some guessing I did back in April when it was reported that PM Hospitality Strategies (an affiliated company to Buccini/Pollin) was close to a deal to manage a hotel "in Capitol Hill." BPG owns many properties throughout the mid-Atlantic, including the Madison Hotel.
Note that the hotel project does not include the two-story building it wraps around in the rendering above; that is anticipated to be a retail building and is part of Grosvenor's planned mixed-use project immediately to the north, which currently has no announced timetable for construction.
This would be the second hotel built in Near Southeast, along with the Courtyard by Marriott that has had the neighborhood to itself since 2006. There are plans on the boards for three other hotels, including on the same block as this Hampton Inn, in the aforementioned Grosvenor project, plus around the corner on Half Street in Monument's long-planned Half Street project, and perhaps even at 50 M Street, as was recently reported by WBJ.
As of now there is no approved building permit for this site, though there is an application currently working its way through DCRA with an address of 1299 1st Street SE, filed back in August. So, until a permit is approved, don't look for any action.
 

I was otherwise occupied on Sept. 7, the day of the big celebration on the now-completed 11th Street Local Bridge, but I finally wandered down to that neck of the woods a few days ago with my camera to capture the current state of affairs. And one might say that the landscape at 11th and O has changed a bit thanks to this project:
before
after
But there's more than just the newly wide open spaces at 11th and O. The girders for the new flyover that will carry traffic from the Southeast Freeway to the outbound I-695 bridge are all now in place; couple that with the demolition earlier this year of the old outbound flyover, and you have a very different vista at 11th and L than what's been there up to now:
before
after
(The low height of the flyovers above 11th does make that little stretch a bit claustrophobic, though, especially on foot.)
You also now have two-way traffic on 11th between O and M, so that vehicles coming across the local bridge from Anacostia can drive straight north on 11th.
And the dirt-fill-in work for Southeast Blvd. has progressed enough that the west side of 11th at the freeway no longer feels like an overpass, just the regular road.
Plus there's also work at 8th Street and Virginia Avenue to create a new on-ramp and also fashion the new exit to Southeast Blvd./11th Street.
If you don't feel like clicking on each of these photos, just head to my 11th Street Bridges and Southeast Blvd. pages to see them alongside a few other new shots. You may also want to dig into my photo archive to check out the before-and-afters at 11th and the freeway, 11th and L, 11th and M, 11th and N, and 11th and O. Though the photos don't quite seem to do the changes justice, especially if you're someone who has walked those blocks of 11th many times over the past few years.
 

For the two or three people who use it, I've done some cleaning up of the five million lines of code on my Near Southeast Transit Options page, and it should now be more or less functional again.
If you haven't seen it, this page gives you a quick look at the status of the neighborhood's five Bikeshare stations, including the two new ones at 3rd and Tingey & 8th and Potomac, along with other nearby stations of interest. It also shows upcoming arrival times for the Green line at Navy Yard-Ballpark, the Union Station-Navy Yard Circulator bus at New Jersey and M, and Metrobus lines at New Jersey and M.
You can access this page from the "Live Transit Info" link on the JDLand home page menu bar, or by clicking the little Metro icons on the home page map. It's also available via a link from the JDLand mobile home page at m.jdland.com.
 

According to an article just put up at washingtonpost.com, the long-awaited Bluejacket Brewery will officially open for business at 4 pm on Tuesday, Oct. 29, with dinner service beginning at 5:30 pm.
And there's this, which is interesting: "The restaurant and bar inside Bluejacket will go by another name, the Arsenal, a moniker that draws on the building's history. [...] Chef de cuisine Dan Hahndorf, formerly of Vermilion, will be running the kitchen. Bailey told me his menu will put a modern spin on beer-hall food, with an emphasis on Mid-Atlantic ingredients. He'll also be using the spent grains from the beer production to make pastas."
It means that Bluejacket is the brewery itself, "which has the capacity to produce 5,000 barrels a year, or roughly 10,000 kegs. Engert expects to sell about 60 percent of Bluejacket's production via retail, but as of now, the brewery does not have a distribution deal. Large-format bottles of Bluejacket beer will be available for take-away at the Navy Yard location. Bluejacket will not sell growlers."
There's some nice interior photos in the Post spread, which may have to do if you're unable or unwilling to brave what will probably be massive crowds at first.
It was announced way back in June of 2011 that the brewery--along with Buzz Bakery--would be coming to the Boilermaker Shops.
UPDATE: And here's another piece on the opening, from City Paper's Jessica Sidman.
UPDATE II: Here's the menu, via City Paper.
 

I guess Whole Foods figured that waiting another month for an official announcement after yesterday's flurry of news was a little unnecessary, because this morning there is an official release--and a new rendering, with all the appropriate signage (click to embiggen). The under-construction Park Chelsea is visible to the right, so this view is of the corner of New Jersey and H.
The William C. Smith release:
"Washington, DC - Developer WC Smith has signed Whole Foods Market to anchor the retail portion of its $443 million development in the District’s Capitol Riverfront neighborhood. The 36,000 square foot store will be located on the first floor of the second of three residential buildings the company has in development on New Jersey Avenue SE, two blocks from the Navy Yard Metro station.
"'We are delighted to welcome Whole Foods to the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood,' said Chris Smith, chairman and CEO of WC Smith. 'Their dedication to healthy living and commitment to community dovetails with our mission of creating green, sustainable communities for residents of the District of Columbia.'
"The first component of the new development, a 432-unit luxury apartment building known as Park Chelsea, is currently under construction with a projected fall 2014 delivery date. Construction on the second building is scheduled to begin early in 2014, with a 2017 opening of the Whole Foods Market and delivery of 336 residential units. The residential units will offer 10 foot ceilings and a commanding view of the Capitol and the monumental skyline. Completion of the third Class A residential building will bring the unit total to over 1,100 for the development.
"All of the buildings will provide on-site parking and will be highly amenitized with club rooms, rooftop pools, and exercise facilities. Additionally, each site will offer a unique amenity space for use by residents of all three buildings. Those amenities include an indoor lap pool, an all-purpose gymnasium, a demonstration kitchen, and a 15,000 square foot courtyard. The development is within walking distance of both the Navy Yard and Capitol South Metro stations and adjacent to newly created Canal Park with water features, ice skating rink, public art, programmed activities, and Park Tavern restaurant."
UPDATE: The separate joint release with Whole Foods is a little long to cut-and-paste, but there's this quote:
"'Washingtonians asked and we listened,” said Scott Allshouse, Whole Foods Market Mid-Atlantic regional president. “People who live and work in Southeast have been requesting a Whole Foods Market for some time. We are thrilled about finding the right fit given the combination of factors that go into deciding on a new location.'"
 

A mere 11 years after the notion was first floated, there is apparently finally a signed contract to bring a Whole Foods grocery store to 800 New Jersey Avenue SE. Though the chain isn't expected to make an official announcement until next month, a representative of WC Smith told Monday night's ANC 6D meeting of the news.
Note that the store won't be at the Park Chelsea, WC Smith's apartment building currently under construction at 880 New Jersey. This will be a new apartment building just to the north, running along the to-be-rebuilt H Street between New Jersey and 2nd, immediately south of the freeway. It's expected to have 330ish units and all the usual amenities. But with construction not currently expected to start until spring 2014, and the timeline of the buildouts of both the building and the interior work for the store, you probably won't be buying your quinoa there before 2017.
This is a deal that has started and stopped more than once, the last time around in 2011 when Smith looked for an $8 million tax break for the project, an idea which died a few months later.
The neighborhood's other grocery store, Harris Teeter, is currently under construction at the Twelve12 apartment project in the Yards, and is now expected to open in the fall of 2014.
 

In early 2011, the two-story multi-unit apartment building at 1010 3rd Street, SE (a little south of Cornercopia) was hit by an early-morning fire. Subsequently, a building permit was issued to add another floor, and after close to 18 months of work, the project is now mostly finished. What do you think of the change? (click the photos to enlarge)
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Construction at the 430ish-unit Park Chelsea apartment building at New Jersey and I is now poking out of the ground:
The skyline in this location will be changing quite dramatically over the next few months, but the ground-level view already has evolved a whole lot in eight-plus years, as evidenced when looking westward along the footprint of the can't-open-soon-enough new stretch of I Street between 2nd and New Jersey:
Or, you can look at the change at 2nd and I this way:
before
after
(Told you I was working on something new. More to come.)
See before-and-after photos and information about the project here.
 

Work is speeding along at Twelve12, the apartment-Harris Teeter-Vida Fitness project at 4th and M at the Yards:
The Teeter portion of the building is even getting some windows:
See before-and-after photos and information about the project here.
 

A sunny Sunday peek at new tenants GNC and Nando's Peri-Peri, which both opened in August in the Boilermaker Shops at the Yards:
Or, if you want to see them all in one long-lens shot:
Also in August, it was announced that fast-casual Spanish-small-sandwiches outlet 100 Montaditos will be coming to the Boilermaker Shops as well. And, who knows, maybe someday Bluejacket, Buzz Bakery, and Willie's Brew and 'Que may actually open.
See more new photos, as well as before-and-after photos and information about the project here.
 

Some work appears to be underway on the southwest corner of 1st and K, where Toll Brothers now has building permits for a 13-story, 250ish-unit apartment building. The Tetris-like boxes that have covered rebar and other infrastructure since work was completed on Velocity and the accompanying garage under what's now the Toll site are being removed:
This will allow Toll to begin work on their building more or less at ground level, rather than spending months on excavation and below-ground construction.
See more photos and information about the project here.
 

It's an intense morning in the neighborhood as a shooter has barricaded himself inside the Washington Navy Yard. There are updates being fed all over the web and Twitter for those wanting to keep up. But I did want to pop my head in to say that I am still on hiatus, so I won't be returning to the Near Southeast news feed as of now. (I may have some other content coming in the coming weeks, though, so don't desert me completely.) And thank you to everyone for all the kind thoughts over the past weeks.
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More posts: JDLand stuff
 

Since I talked about this a few months ago when I went on hiatus, I'd like to bring it full circle by posting here that my amazing, force-of-nature, full-of-life mother Shirley Rae Dupree died on Aug. 22, her body finally giving out after a valiant two-year fight against both frontotemporal dementia and ALS.
Here's the pseudo-official obituary, in its original form, before it gets mangled in various publications across the United States.
I'm not anywhere close to a point where I can wax poetic about any of this, except to say that it was a most cruel twist of fate to deprive my mother of the abilities to speak and eat, when there was never a person she didn't want to either talk to or feed (or both). Even in the very late stages of her illness, her smile and excitement when anyone arrived to see her lit up the room, in the same way she had lit up innumerable rooms over the years with her energy and enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, as her brain degenerated it lost any ability to send any signals other than GO-GO-GO, and her body finally gave out, like an engine that had run for way too long with no oil.
There is relief that she is now released from what these diseases did to her, but it is staggering to all of us who knew her that we are going to have to figure out a way to come to terms with the tremendous void she has left behind.
As for JDLand, I'm going to take some time to recover from these past months. I'll send up a flare when I decide what the next chapter will be.
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More posts: JDLand stuff
 

When I put out word of my "semi-retirement" since last August, I listed a lot of reasons for my wanting/needing to pull back from the blogging grind, but I only cryptically referred to what was the biggest driver of my decision: my mother's illness.
In early 2012, after a few months of noticing her having problems remembering words, she was diagnosed with a form of dementia (FTD) that has left her memory intact but very quickly stole her speech completely and caused other cognitive issues. This was devastating enough, but within a few months we also found her to be suffering from a form of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) that targeted her throat and mouth muscles, swiftly affecting her ability to chew and swallow food.
This has been such a body blow, not only to see this woman so full of life and energy be stolen away from us week by week, but to have known from the moment of diagnosis that there was absolutely not a thing we could do about it. It's like the entire family has been riding in a car with no hands on the steering wheel.
Because it's a rare combination, and because every patient with these diseases progresses differently, we've been very much on our own in terms of trying to care for her, with my father bearing the brunt of the exhausting day-to-day work while I turned my laser-like research abilities away from hyperlocal real estate and toward trying to come up with the best strategies for keeping Mom comfortable. All while nursing a desperately broken heart, alongside the shock that everyone who knows her has felt--this was not the anticipated ending of the story of this cowgirl from Wyoming who came to the big city at age 19 in 1959. (She was supposed to drop dead on a golf course at age 95, probably after a hole-in-one. And she was certainly supposed to outlive her cranky and lazy daughter.)
We are now seeing a crossroads ahead of us, as they say. So it's time for me to make sure that my focus is where it needs to be, and that I give myself permission to stop trying to keep up with other parts of my life that I just don't have the strength or interest to deal with right now. There's too much going on in the neighborhood now for me to just keep going with a hit-or-miss approach that only serves to make me feel like I'm doing less than my best.
I'll still be around on Twitter at my @jacdupree account, because I will always need an outlet for generalized snark and carping. But I really am ending the Near Southeast news service until the storm clouds clear, whenever that may be.
I'm not 100 percent sure that I'll come back to the same approach of JDLand's past 10 years, but I'll always have my camera in hand.
Thanks to all for your patience over the past few months, and for your readership for all these years. See you around....!
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More posts: JDLand stuff
 

There's a bit of news on one of my favorite buildings to rag on over the years, the all-but-windowless formerly armed encampment at 1st and M that housed the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and other spook-ish groups over the years before it was vacated in 2011.
You may have seen the holes punched into the side of the building recently, but if you're fearing that any work is a precursor to the brown-and-white structure being salvaged and redeveloped, don't worry your pretty little heads.
Yards developer Forest City has passed along word that after the current environmental remediation is finished late this summer, the former Building 213 will then be going off to meet its maker. It will cease to be. Bereft of life, it will rest in peace. (Sorry, I'm a bit punchy tonight.)
Demolition, once started, is expected to take about six months.
As the northwestern edge of the Yards, this prime corner spot just northeast of Nats Park will eventually see new construction, most likely an office building.
But that's a good ways off--in the meantime there will continue to be parking on the site, and Forest City is also looking at maybe putting in some grassy areas both as open space and possible special events uses, though their plans aren't firm as yet.
And it also will be a bit different to be able to see well into the Yards when standing at 1st and M instead of looking at the remnants of a cloak and dagger operation.
(And, for the record, I'm allowed to be snarky about this place. Back in 2005 the guards there called DC cops to chase me down on 1st Street when I was taking photos in the opposite direction of the building, never having once taken any shots of 213 itself. And I did get tired over the years of seeing them reach for their guns as I walked by their fence with camera in hand.)
 

Thanks to a tweet from Martin Austermuhle (back in March, but I've been busy), I've added a new batch of shots to my page of 1990s Photos of Near Southeast.
It's really just one photo taken at helicopter height from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive at the Library of Congress, but since it is available as a 72 MB .TIF, I was able to zoom in for some looks back into the years right before I started my own photo journey. Judging by the landscape, the best I can say is that it was taken sometime between 1992 and 1999.
Go to the page to see all of them (with explanations of what you're seeing), but see if you can figure out what you're looking at in these captionless sneak peeks:
They certainly trump the black and white overhead photos taken at about the same time that are also on my page, though at least those have some views that the trees obscure in these new ones.
Comments (3)
More posts: photos, Rearview Mirror
 

The showiest demolition in the neighborhood in years is coming to an end, and while I haven't been able to document it in the obsessive-compulsive way I would have liked, I did manage to make it to 11th Street this weekend to see the gator tail-like final remnants of the old flyover to the outbound 11th Street Bridges before it completely comes down.
At the same time, I was able to check out the progress on the filling-in of the sunken eastern portion of the Southeast Freeway to build Southeast Blvd., and dang if they haven't already piled the dirt up so that 11th Street is now level with the "land" just to its west.
Needless to say, I had to create a photo gallery of the remants and the progress, where you'll also see that work is speeding along on the new flyover to the outbound I-695 bridge.
But I wasn't just interested in the tearing down and filling in, so I continued down to O Street, where not only is the 11th Street Local Bridge inching ever closer to getting all of its lanes and pedestrian path opened, but the new asphalt Anacostia Riverwalk Trail path to the river has been laid, which also takes you to the spiffy new landing just completed by the riverside. And from that landing you can see the spiffy new overlooks that reach out onto the old bridge piers from the new local bridge. (For the record, I could have easily sidestepped the construction barrels and ventured onto the overlooks, but I am a good little citizen.)
Lots of images of the new trail, the landing, the bridge, and the surroundings are in a second new photo gallery.
If these two galleries aren't enough, you might take some time to browse my before-and-afters all the way down 11th Street, from the freeway to L to M to N to O to the river, as nearly four years of construction have altered the vistas from a maze of flyovers and embankments to, well, a completely different maze of flyovers and embankments. (But the new flyovers are a little lower on the horizon, at least.)
I also checked out the other projects that are in various stages these days, from Twelve12 to the Lumber Shed to the leafed-out and fountain-ed Canal Park to the hole in the ground that will be the Park Chelsea.
There's new pictures on each of those pages, but I also couldn't help myself and pulled together a third photo gallery, with photos from those spots and a few others that were particularly photogenic on a particularly photogenic day. (It even includes my very first visit to the footprint of one of the neighborhood's most central locations. Where might that be?)
[A postscript: I truly think Sunday was the most perfect day for taking pictures in the 10-plus years I've been wandering the neighborhood, with the achingly clear deep blue sky perfectly matched with the late-May sun strength and positions. I ended up walking more than eight miles in three separate treks, and came home with a smidge more than 1,000 photos, about 300 of which are now in my photo archive.]
 
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