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Please note that JDLand is no longer being updated.
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Near Southeast DC Past News Items: 225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I
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See JDLand's 225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I Project Page
for Photos, History, and Details |
- Full Neighborhood Development MapThere's a lot more than just the projects listed here. See the complete map of completed, underway, and proposed projects all across the neighborhood.
- What's New This YearA quick look at what's arrived or been announced since the end of the 2018 baseball season.
- Food Options, Now and Coming SoonThere's now plenty of food options in the neighborhood. Click to see what's here, and what's coming.
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- Anacostia RiverwalkA bridge between Teague and Yards Parks is part of the planned 20-mile Anacostia Riverwalk multi-use trail along the east and west banks of the Anacostia River.
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- Virginia Ave. Tunnel ExpansionConstruction underway in 2015 to expand the 106-year-old tunnel to allow for a second track and double-height cars. Expected completion 2018.
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- Rail and Bus Times
Get real time data for the Navy Yard subway, Circulator, Bikeshare, and bus lines, plus additional transit information. - Rail and Bus Times
Get real time data for the Navy Yard subway, Circulator, Bikeshare, and bus lines, plus additional transit information. - Canal ParkThree-block park on the site of the old Washington Canal. Construction begun in spring 2011, opened Nov. 16, 2012.
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- Nationals Park21-acre site, 41,000-seat ballpark, construction begun May 2006, Opening Day March 30, 2008.
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- Washington Navy YardHeadquarters of the Naval District Washington, established in 1799.
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- Yards Park5.5-acre park on the banks of the Anacostia. First phase completed September 2010.
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- Van Ness Elementary SchoolDC Public School, closed in 2006, but reopening in stages beginning in 2015.
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- Agora/Whole Foods336-unit apartment building at 800 New Jersey Ave., SE. Construction begun June 2014, move-ins underway early 2018. Whole Foods expected to open in late 2018.
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- New Douglass BridgeConstruction underway in early 2018 on the replacement for the current South Capitol Street Bridge. Completion expected in 2021.
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- 1221 Van290-unit residential building with 26,000 sf retail. Underway late 2015, completed early 2018.
- NAB HQ/AvidianNew headquarters for National Association of Broadcasters, along with a 163-unit condo building. Construction underway early 2017.
- Yards/Parcel O Residential ProjectsThe Bower, a 138-unit condo building by PN Hoffman, and The Guild, a 190-unit rental building by Forest City on the southeast corner of 4th and Tingey. Underway fall 2016, delivery 2018.
- New DC Water HQA wrap-around six-story addition to the existing O Street Pumping Station. Construction underway in 2016, with completion in 2018.
- The Harlow/Square 769N AptsMixed-income rental building with 176 units, including 36 public housing units. Underway early 2017, delivery 2019.
- West Half Residential420-unit project with 65,000 sf retail. Construction underway spring 2017.
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- Novel South Capitol/2 I St.530ish-unit apartment building in two phases, on old McDonald's site. Construction underway early 2017, completed summer 2019.
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- 1250 Half/Envy310 rental units at 1250, 123 condos at Envy, 60,000 square feet of retail. Underway spring 2017.
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- Parc Riverside Phase II314ish-unit residential building at 1010 Half St., SE, by Toll Bros. Construction underway summer 2017.
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- 99 M StreetA 224,000-square-foot office building by Skanska for the corner of 1st and M. Underway fall 2015, substantially complete summer 2018. Circa and an unnamed sibling restaurant announced tenants.
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- The Garrett375-unit rental building at 2nd and I with 13,000 sq ft retail. Construction underway late fall 2017.
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- Yards/The Estate Apts. and Thompson Hotel270-unit rental building and 227-room Thompson Hotel, with 20,000 sq ft retail total. Construction underway fall 2017.
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- Meridian on First275-unit residential building, by Paradigm. Construction underway early 2018.
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- The Maren/71 Potomac264-unit residential building with 12,500 sq ft retail, underway spring 2018. Phase 2 of RiverFront on the Anacostia development.
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- DC Crossing/Square 696Block bought in 2016 by Tishman Speyer, with plans for 800 apartment units and 44,000 square feet of retail in two phases. Digging underway April 2018.
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- One Hill South Phase 2300ish-unit unnamed sibling building at South Capitol and I. Work underway summer 2018.
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- New DDOT HQ/250 MNew headquarters for the District Department of Transportation. Underway early 2019.
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- 37 L Street Condos11-story, 74-unit condo building west of Half St. Underway early 2019.
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- CSX East Residential/Hotel225ish-unit AC Marriott and two residential buildings planned. Digging underway late summer 2019.
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- 1000 South Capitol Residential224-unit apartment building by Lerner. Underway fall 2019.
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- Capper Seniors 2.0Reconstruction of the 160-unit building for low-income seniors that was destroyed by fire in 2018.
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- Chemonics HQNew 285,000-sq-ft office building with 14,000 sq ft of retail. Expected delivery 2021.
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(h/t reader M.) Last week, the Congress for the New Urbanism named the winners of its 2009 Charter Awards, and one of them is the "House Office Buildings Facilities Plan and Preliminary South Capitol Area Plan." I won't go into too much detail, since the majority of the area that the plan looked at is north of the freeway, but it is worth noting that, while it's a very neat plan that looks forward to both 2025 and 2050 and takes into account the vision of the NCPC's Extending the Legacy (no more freeway!), the designers of the HOB facilities plan perhaps didn't do a lot of research as to the reality of the land ownership south of the freeway. If you look at the maps of their proposed 2025 and 2050 implementations, you see all sorts of new government buildings on the block now dominated by 70 and 100 I Street, as well as a big park at Second and H, which might come as a surprise to the William C. Smith Co., which owns the block and is planning a 1.1-million-square-foot mixed-use project on that square. And yet the Post Plant remains, 41 years in the future, which probably is not what city planners would consider an optimal solution. And the Capitol Power Plant is still there, too!
All this aside, if you live or work on the Hill, you might be interested in what the future could bring for the parking garages, House Office Buildings, and other structures that are part of the Capitol Complex. And, if I'm missing something about how this plan is approaching the privately owned land south of the freeway, I'd love clarification....
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225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I, jpi, WC Smith/Square 737
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A few items to catch up with from my lazy past few weeks:
* The Examiner looks (again) at the city still paying $500,000 a month in rent for 225 Virginia Avenue (aka the old Post Plant) even though there are no plans to use it, which apparently continues to drive Phil Mendelson nuts. The city requested expressions of interest from developers to take over the lease in the fall, but has yet to announce any deal. The Examiner piece frames the continued payments for an empty building against the District's budget shortfalls: "The last thing Fenty should do, Mendelson said, is 'dump the building below cost' just to escape the lease. 'It makes sense to me to use it,' he said." If you want the entire sordid past of the city's relationship with this building, browse through my 225 Virginia news items.
* Also from the Examiner, a story last week on how the murder of Diamond Teague remains unsolved: "Diamond Teague was 19 years old and going from the rough streets of D.C. on to college when he was gunned down on his Southeast Washington front stoop, and police are still looking for his killer. Teague had earned a scholarship to the University of the District of Columbia by helping with projects for the Earth Conservation Corps, a nonprofit organization for disadvantaged youth. Teague was the drummer at Galilee Baptist Church and an avid basketball player, and friends and family said he had managed to avoid the street life and violence that had marred his neighborhood." The park named in his honor is expected to open this spring.
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225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I, Earth Conservation Corps, Teague Park
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A bunch of items to start the week with:
* Remember that the west entrance to the Navy Yard Metro station at Half and M is closed every evening this week from 8 pm until closing, thanks to work on 55 M Street.
* On Monday (Nov. 13), the Zoning Commission gave final approval to moving 225 Virginia Avenue into the Capitol South Receiving Zone, which will allow any construction on the block to have greater height and density than the 6.5 FAR/90-ft-height currently allowed. This was approved with two caveats: that there is Zoning Commission review of the design of the portions of a building proposed to rise higher than 90 feet to confirm that the building will be sufficiently setback from the eastern building face, and that any structure will provide a suitable northern focal point for the Canal Blocks Park. Read my entry from the hearing a few weeks ago for more information.
* On Nov. 24 at 2 pm, the city council will be having a hearing about B17-0909, the "Taxation Without Representation Street Renaming Act of 2008," which would "designate the portion of South Capitol Street, SE that intersects with N Street SE and Potomac Avenue SE as 'Taxation Without Representation Street, SE." It just so happens that this is the portion of South Capitol Street that runs alongside Nationals Park, where the council was thwarted in earlier attempts to install an electronic tote board showing the federal taxes that DC residents pay while still having no voting representation in the US Congress.
* Tommy Wells is taking nominations for the Second Annual Livable, Walkable Awards.
* For weeks I've been meaning to post that Nationals Park made the list of Travel and Leisure Magazine's "Must-See Green American Landmarks," thanks to being the first LEED-certified professional sports facility.
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225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I, 55 M St., Canal Park, meetings, Metro/WMATA, Monument Valley/Half St., South Capitol St., Nationals Park, zoning
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(A little diversion while everyone's waiting for Tuesday.) Those few hardy souls who've scrolled down on my 225 Virginia page may recognize the photo at left, which is a picture of my brother on the swingset in Garfield Park in 1964, with 225 Virginia (then the Washington Star building) at rear, and with the Southeast Freeway under construction. In playing with the family movies this weekend (having gotten them transferred to DV tapes from Super 8 film), I found about a minute of footage from that same day, briefly showing the Star Plant along with the rest of Garfield Park.This led me to a few other clips I think some DC readers might get a kick out of--they're not of Near Southeast, but various streetscapes and parks pretty close by, on the south side of Capitol Hill. Here's three minutes showing both the 100 block of E Street, SE (where we lived) and Marion Park at Fourth and E in 1966 or 1967. You can clearly make out "Turtle Park" as well as the 1D1 police station at Fifth and E in the background. (It's *possible* that the E Street footage is from the January 1966 blizzard, but the Marion Park footage can't be from that storm, because the little blob in white is me, and I didn't come along until the summer of 1966. And yes, that makes me old.) Also note that at about the one-minute mark you see the original location of Weisfeld's Market at 131 E, before it moved to Fourth and E (and eventually became the Capitol Supreme Market).
Then there's my brother and I running around in Folger Park at Second and D on Easter, 1968. I like this footage because in the background is Brent Elementary at Third and North Carolina under construction, and a beautiful old school building on the same lot that's no longer there.
Finally, there's this clip from Second Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, in 1964, which back then was not the Madison Annex of the Library of Congress but was a wide-open park. This brief pan shows you the block where FedEx and Le Bon Cafe are now, along with the church at Second and C and the townhouses along there, around to the Cannon House Office Building, the Capitol and the Library of Congress. (Sorry the streaming quality isn't better.)
(These aren't *completely* outside of the JDLand mandate. They're befores, after all.)
UPDATE: And, amazingly, in my grandmother's home movies (which I've never seen before today), I found footage from 1969 of my parents playing tennis on the courts just south of the freeway on the west side of South Capitol, at I. A pretty neat (if brief) pan of the Southwest skyline (and the freeway, and the South Capitol ramp) from that spot.
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225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I
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On Monday night the Zoning Commission held a brief hearing on Case 06-32a, the request by the city to move the old Post Plant at 225 Virginia Avenue into the "Capitol South Receiving Zone," which would allow the block to receive transferable development rights, allowing greater height and density than the 6.5 FAR and 90-ft-height currently allowed.
When this was originally brought before the commission by developer Washington Telecom Associates for setdown two years ago, the Office of Planning indicated that they wouldn't support the request because of concerns about the added density on that block affecting both Canal Park to the south and Capper/Carrollsburg townhouses to the east (read the transcript for more details). Since that time, the city subleased the building (paying $500k a month in rent), but has decided not to use it to house police department functions and so is in the process of finding a developer to take over its sublease (which also has an option to buy).
In their pre-hearing report and during last night's session, OP said they are now prepared to support the move to the receiving zone, "provided that there is Zoning Commission review of the design of the portions of a building proposed to rise higher than 90' " which would confirm that the building "will be sufficiently setback from the eastern building face to avoid shadowing the lower buildings in Square 797 to the east" and that it "will provide a suitable northern focal point for the Canal Blocks Park." The OP report says that this lot would not be exempt from the city's inclusionary zoning requirements.
The three commissioners in attendance (Hood, May, and Turnbull) asked a few cursory questions, and noted that there was no report from ANC 6D nor any witnesses in support or opposition. The ZC will vote on this case at its Nov. 10 public meeting.
With the OPM page on the 225 Virginia Request for Expressions of Interest saying that notification was to have happened yesterday, I thought there was a possibility that this hearing would give us some hint as to who might be taking over the city's lease, but the Office of Planning said they didn't know who the developer might be.
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225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I, Canal Park, Capper, Capitol Quarter, meetings, zoning
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A few items to quickly get posted before I disappear back down the rabbit hole:
* As has already been mentioned in some places, the bill to approve a FiOS franchise agreement with Verizon has been introduced to the city council (the agreement itself was announced in early August). The city's press release says that "Verizon plans to begin designing and upgrading its network in the District to all fiber optics and could begin offering its fiber-optic-based FiOS TV service in the District within about a year"--the question is whether the neighborhood that a few months ago saw a sign proclaiming "1st Neighborhood in DC to Offer Verizon FiOS" will indeed be one of the first areas to get it. (The 70/100 I apartment buildings have said that they are pre-wired for FiOS.)
* Proposals to take over the city's lease at 225 Virginia (the old Post Plant) are due by no later than noon on Wednesday. The OPM page on the offering indicates that the winner will be notified by Oct. 27--it seems like a pretty swift decision timeline, but I'll note that Oct. 27 also happens to be the day of the Zoning Commission hearing on the proposed shift of the 225 lot to the Capitol South (or is it Capitol Gateway) Receiving Zone.
* I obliquely Tweeted this last week, but was remiss in not officially giving props to DC Metrocentric for the kind words in this Washingtonian Blogger Beat profile. (I'll leave it to you folks to react to his comments on the neighborhood itself.)
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225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I
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A recent wander past the Office of Property Management page on 225 Virginia (aka the old Post Plant) brings the news that the deadline for proposals from entities interested in taking over the city's $500,000-a-month sublease has been pushed back to Oct. 15. The page has also been updated with a few other items of note:
* One of the results of the case that's coming before the Zoning Commission on Oct. 27 that seeks to add the plant's block to the Capitol South Receiving Zone would be to allow the property to receive transferred development rights, which allows for increased density (i.e., add some floors on top), though the page notes that "[a]dditional height is expected to be subject to some design review by the Office of Planning."
* The building is not a historic building, and the city will not be seeking any historic landmark designation for it.
There's also this: "The trash transfer station located at 900 New Jersey Avenue, SE is expected to be relocated by September, 2009." I get asked a lot about What The Deal Is with the trash transfer station, so here's a bit of a roundup:
The city is working on moving the current DPW operations out of the building to other locations around the area, with that September 2009 mentioned above now being the official timetable (though perhaps some of the functions will be gone sooner than that). In the meantime, the city is still waiting for the little plot of land on the edge of the transfer station known as Reservation 17A to be transferred to District control from the Feds. (That land will then be transferred from the city to William C. Smith to round out the land that will be home to their 1.1-million-sq-ft 800 New Jersey Avenue project.) This transfer has been hung up for almost two years (it's part of the same transfer that would give Federal land at Poplar Point and in Hill East to the city), but there may be some movement soon.
The next step once DPW has left and the land transfer is settled would be for the city to start the infrastructure work, environmental cleanup, and demolition around the trash transfer site (including the new section of I Street to be built between New Jersey and Second), which will be paid for via another PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) plan that requires financing via the bond and credit markets--you know, those same bond and credit markets that are wheezing just a wee bit right now.
[All together now:] We shall see....
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225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I, Capper, Capper New Apt Bldgs, Trash Transfer Site/DPW, WC Smith/Square 737, zoning
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Did anyone see some people traipsing around the old Post Plant this morning? There apparently was a site visit was scheduled at 9:30 am as part of the city's move to unload its sublease of the building. The Office of Property Management now has a page devoted to 225 Virginia, with some additional overview documents and rough sketches of how the building could be re-adapted. It also mentions that the original Sept. 26 deadline for responses to the Request for Expressions of Interest is going to be extended, by not less than a week. UPDATE: The deadline is now set for October 3.
For those who haven't been following along, in late 2006 the city signed a sublease for the building with the intent of moving many functions of the police department there. But in the summer of 2007 OPM decided not to go forward with the move, leaving the building empty and the city paying over $500,000 a month in rent. They are looking for some developer to completely assume the sublease, that also contains an option to buy the building outright.
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225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I
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With thanks to reader J. for the tip, I can report that the cab garage on the northwest corner of First and K is getting demolished today. This is where the DRI/Transwestern Plaza on K may be getting underway this fall. (I'm posting this from my cell, so links will have to wait 'til later.) UPDATED with a link and a tiny before and after photos above. I've also added it as #153 in the Demolished Buildings gallery.
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225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I, Square 696 Residential
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It may have been late late on a Friday afternoon, but the city did what it said it would and released a Request for Expressions of Interest for 225 Virginia Avenue, looking for someone who wants to sublease (with an option to buy) the 421,000-square-foot building that was once the Washington Star printing plant, until it folded in the early 1980s. The Post used it as a printing plant until 1999, when it sold the building to the William C. Smith Company, who sublet it to Washington Telecom Associates, who sublet it to the city in 2006. (Got that?)
Quoting from the RFEI: "The District's primary goal, in issuing this RFEI, is to assign its leasehold interest, including the purchase option, in 225 Virginia Avenue, SE. The District's secondary goal is to enable the site to be used and redeveloped at its private sector highest and best use." The city currently leases the building for $6.5 million a year; the option to buy can be exercised for $80 million prior to the third lease year.
Proposals are due by noon on September 26, with October 13 listed as the notification date.
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225 Virginia/Old Post Plant/200 I
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