Once The Salt Line and All-Purpose open in their spots next year, and baseball fans figure out that there's a spot to hang out on the stadium's southeastern side (with handy built-in tables to eat carryout pizza at), this may become a pretty activated location. Especially in comparison to what it looked like 11 years ago.

A new rendering accompanying the press release appears to show that Taylor, Chop't, and Chipotle will be in the three spaces on 1st immediately north of the residential entrance to F1rst.

Also speaking of F1rst, there is now a leasing center at the corner of 1st and N, nestled in the "L" of the Hampton Inn. Residences are also expected to be available in spring 2017.

It's getting hard to keep up with the 2017 lineup of offerings, so check out my Food Map to stay up to date.

The official web site is online, along with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, though right now the site's links are mainly for how to reserve the events space for your wedding or how to work for the winery.

Here's a few more images, along with recognition that I need to get my act together and create a project page, though in the meantime you can read my previous posts for more info.

Just to the winery's northeast, digging is well underway at Parcel O, where a joint project is underway that will beget a 138-unit condo building by PN Hoffman and a 190-unit rental building by Forest City. There are hints that the condo building will be called The Bower, though PN Hoffman's web site hasn't quite gotten there yet. Completion is expected in 2018.

Says Food writer Tim Carman, "Patterned after fast-casual powerhouses such as Sweetgreen and Cava Grill, Rasa will try to fill a gap that the owners identified in the Indian dining market. While there are refined Indian restaurants (think: Rasika, Passage to India and Masala Art, among others) and mom-and-pop joints (Indigo, Bethesda Curry Kitchen, Tiffin, etc.), there are few places to order chicken curry in a hurry (outside such counter-service operations as Merzi in Penn Quarter and Spice 6 in Hyattsville and Fairfax)."

The article says that the restaurant isn't expected to "tone down the spice blends" for non-Indian palates, and that it will "emphasize vegetables as much as meats."

Read the Post piece for more details, including the back story on the two owners, who are the sons of the co-owners of Indique in Cleveland Park and Bombay Bistro in Rockville.

Rasa joins previously announced offerings Taylor Gourmet and Chop't at F1rst, which is the middle building in the above not-quite-so-recently-taken photo. A Residence Inn is being built next door. My F1rst project page has more photos and details.

If you're having a hard time keeping track of what restaurants have been announced, my Food Map page shows them (especially if you scroll down to the "Announced, But Not Yet Open" section). Next year looks to have a lot of new arrivals, including a second outlet of All-Purpose, just named this week by the Post's Tom Sietsema as the #1 restaurant in the area. Also announced as coming to the neighborhood in 2017 and beyond are Shake Shack, Salt Line, Bethesda Bagels, Slipstream, District Winery, Circa/Open Road, and Due South "Dockside." And given how much retail space is in the pipeline, there's probably a lot more announcements to come.

(The photo is of Lough Tay, in County Wicklow, Ireland, part of the trip to Dublin and environs that Mr. JDLand and I snuck in last week thanks to an opening in the calendar. I thought this vista might provide some peace and calming on the morning after last night.)

GETTING THERE: If you are needing the latest news about getting to and from the ballpark for Friday and Saturday's games. Dr. Gridlock has put together this rundown. (You'd like to believe that those start times will prevent a Metro-closing-time-apocalypse, but some of us do remember the 2018-inning 2014 playoff game...)

WHERE TO EAT: My food map will help you if you haven't wandered around lately.

These are the special events I've heard about so far, but keep checking back, as I will update here when more information comes along:

YARDS PARK PEP RALLY: The Capitol Riverfront BID is hosting a free Playoffs Pep Rally at the Yards Park on Friday, from 3 pm to 5:30 pm, with live music from the Lloyd Dobler Effect, as well as games and activities. Food and beverages will be for sale from Bluejacket, Agua 301, Ice Cream Jubilee, and others.

FAIRGROUNDS DOINGS: The Bullpen will be fully operational on Friday and Saturday. Gates open at 1 pm on Friday and noon on Saturday, and admission is free. There will be live music before and after games, and if you don't have a ticket to get into the ballpark, the Bullpen will be airing the home games with sound on a 9'-12' LED screen. And a happy hour during innings 3 through 7 will offer all drinks for $5.

DUE SOUTH OFFERINGS: There will be a special "curated playoff menu" inside the restaurant at 301 Water St. SE, opening at 11 am every day, while the "outdoor bar and grill" will have draft beer and grab-and-go eats, starting three hours before first patch. And the Nats games will be shown on all TVs, with sound.

ALL THINGS GO FALL CLASSIC: Because the area right near the ballpark won't be hopping enough on Saturday, note that there will also be the All Things Go Fall Classic music festival underway at Spooky Park, aka the huge open space south of M and between 1st and New Jersey. It runs from 11:30 am to about 10:30 pm, and it ain't free. (I'll save my rant for the dubbing of the Spooky Park site as "Yards Park" for another day.)

This will be Bethesda Bagels' third location, alongside its shops in Bethesda (duh) and at Dupont Circle.

The Insignia building has approximately 11,000 square feet of ground-floor retail spaces that both face M Street as well as at the corner of New Jersey and L, and this is the first news of a tenant. (I *think* BB will be in one of the spaces along M, but I don't yet have confirmation of that.)

See Insignia's official web site for more details about the building, or check out my project page to be reminded of what this stretch of New Jersey looked like not all that long ago.

UPDATE: The weather has forced a postponement of the closure until likely next week, Oct. 3-7. UPDATE 2: And the intersection did finally close on Monday, Oct 3.

This means that drivers coming south on 4th Street SE from Capitol Hill will need to detour either to 3rd Street or 7th Street in order to cross under the freeway to the promised land.

Pedestrian access along this stretch of 4th will apparently be maintained during the closure, as will the 4th Street exit from the Capitol Quarter driveway.

This is the first of these sorts of closures and detours that will need to happen along all of the north-south streets that cross Virginia Avenue as work on the first phase of the tunnel wraps up and the decks need to be reestablished a smidge to the north to cross above the existing tunnel while it is rebuilt.

At right is the estimated timeline for these other closures as shown in the Sept. 21 Coffee with Chuck presentation slides (click to embiggen). Third Street's temporary closure for this work is on deck (so to speak) for mid-to-late October, 5th in mid-to-late December, and 7th and 8th sometime in 2017. (The deck work on 11th Street will happen without any full closure.)

The slides also say that Phase II pile driving is expected to begin near 4th Street in October.

The next quarterly open house for the project is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 20, and the next Coffee with Chuck will be on Wednesday, Nov. 16.

Original post from Aug. 22:

The biggest disruption to traffic flow so far* near the Southeast Freeway in connection with the Virginia Avenue Tunnel expansion is now on the horizon, with CSX's announcement on Friday that it expects to close the one remaining open eastbound portion of Virginia Avenue, between 6th and 8th Streets, SE, sometime in mid-September.

This closure is anticipated to last until the completion of the tunnel project in mid-2018.

During this closure, the stretch of Virginia between 6th and 8th on the north side of the freeway that is currently one-way westbound will become two-way traffic, as shown in my alarmingly nifty graphic below. Traffic coming off the 6th Street exit ramp will all turn left to go under the freeway and then have the option to turn right on Virginia to continue eastbound, or to turn westbound or to continue northward.

The streets that cross Virginia will remain open during this time, so north/south traffic will continue to move in its current configurations on 3rd, 7th, and 8th Streets, with 4th remaining a southbound-only crossing and 5th/6th a northbound crossing.

(It is expected that the 5th Street intersection that has been closed for the past few weeks to install the temporary decking will reopen this week, allowing traffic to once again come north on 5th from K and cross under the freeway.)

If you don't trust JDLand's high quality graphics, here's the announcement from CSX and its own map of the new traffic flows.

The most recent "Coffee with Chuck" meeting to update interested parties was on Aug. 17, and the presentation slides are here. The next Coffee with Chuck will be on Sept. 21, followed by the quarterly Open House on Oct. 20.

Residential tidbits:

* 1244 TO 1221: The JBG apartment project going up across N Street from Nats Park, known up to now as 1244 South Capitol, has been rechristened as 1221 Van Street (the little street on the building's east side, in case you think someone just made it up). There's now a web site to boot, announcing that leasing will begin in the summer of 2017, which is probably about when the building will be finished.

* NEW JERSEY SIDEWALKS: At some point in the recent past (I'm only just now seeing it), WC Smith built and opened the sidewalk along New Jersey in front of Agora, meaning that you can now walk not-in-the-street-or-behind-a-barrier from I Street all the way to the freeway on the east side of the street. Meanwhile, on the west side of New Jersey, the ORE82 sidewalk is looking close to being finished.

* ORE82 LEASING: Speaking of ORE82 (or ORE 82 or Ore82 or Ore 82 or 82 I or 801 New Jersey), it's now leasing, and even offering building tours. That official web site is here.

* JOULE: The 440-unit apartment building slated to be built upon the Half Street Hole just north of Nats Park is going to be called Joule, which I think I've mentioned before but shockingly people don't always remember every word I've written, so why not mention it again? That official web site is here, with the spiffy marketing brochure for the up-to-70,000-square-feet-of-retail here. Mention is made of a first phase delivering by summer 2018.

Non-residential tidbits:

* DC WATER HQ: The first permit for construction of the new DC Water headquarters on the banks of the Anacostia has been approved, for exvacation and site work.

* 250 M STILL WAITING: WC Smith, developers of the long-planned office building at 250 M Street, have filed with the Zoning Commission a request for another two-year extension to the building's approved PUD, noting that "most of the same factors and circumstances still exist in the Capitol Riverfront office submarket today" that were cited to receive extensions in 2010, 2012, and 2014, namely the tightness of the leasing market and the requirement that the building be 70 percent pre-leased in order to secure construction funding. (This is the building that would front M Street on the south end of the same block where DCHA is expecting to start soon on its next apartment building.) WC Smith appears to remain committed to this being an office building, citing the abundance of residential buildings and the need for the neighborhood to be a "truly mixed-use community."

I have been out of town, and so apologies for the pre-opening photo accompanying this post, but you can check out Chix's Facebook page (or this photo from JDLand reader @JRogers202) to make up for my failure. (And I hope to make up for it myself before too long.)

Here's the menu for your perusal. Hours have not yet been posted, but I have asked and will update this post whence they arrive. UPDATE: Per this tweet, hours are 11 am to 9 pm daily.

This is now the third restaurant right near the corner of Half and M SE, joining The Big Stick and the aforementioned BWW. The offering expected to arrive next at that central location is Shake Shack, which is targeting a spring 2017 opening in the ground floor of the Homewood Suites on the northeast corner of the intersection.

If you want to catch up with all of the nearby restaurant offerings (like Tom Boswell told you to!), the JDLand Food Map is at your service.

UPDATE, 24 HOURS LATER: For the historical record.

"I came back stunned. Washington has won. And it has won big."

His column for Thursday's print edition is a love letter to what the area around Nats Park has become in the eight-plus years since the ballpark opened.

"Economically, aesthetically and in quality of city life, the transformation of Southeast, which moved at a crawl during the Great Recession and often slipped from the public consciousness, has fulfilled and in some ways surpassed expectations. In fact, I'm probably a couple of years late to the party.

"But unless you live within walking or bicycling distance of Nationals Park, even if you go to Nationals games, there's an excellent chance that, like me, most of the success story is still a mystery to you."

I could keep quoting, but just give it a read, and tell me what you think.

And thanks for the shout-out, Tom! (Plus, everyone please know that "ridiculous" quote was said with love, of course.)

There had been chatter that the project (it's the one on the left side of the rendering) would get underway this summer, but alas, delays with permits and financing have pushed that date enough along the calendar that the DC Housing Authority had to file a request with the Zoning Commission for a six-month extension past what was already a two-year extension.

"Although financing has been secured for the project," the agency's letter to the ZC says, "the final building permit authorizing construction has not been issued yet, which is a condition to closing." There are also delays associated with the more wide-ranging reviews and coordination apparently inherent in being the first building to implement the shared stormwater management system that was designed as part of Canal Park.

The Zoning Commission granted the extension with almost no discussion on Monday night, probably at about the same time that ANC 6D was voting 6-0-0 to support the request. This means that Feb. 14, 2017 is now the date by which construction is required to begin.

The as-yet-unnamed building, which is currently referred to as the "Square 769N Residential project," will share the block with what is currently slated to be an office building by WC Smith. It will have 34 affordable units and about 4,000 square feet of retail that would face Canal Park and Il Parco.

This would be the fourth multi-unit building to be built as part of the Capper redevelopment, and I'll note that it is not the "Square 767" development that has had residents expressing concerns over a two-building (one condo, one affordable only) configuration. (There should be some zoning filings on that one coming Any Minute Now.)

If you are trying to envision exactly where Square 769N is, perhaps a graphic and/or sort-of-current-ish photo would be of some assistance.

The renderings show the building's frontage along 2nd Street (across from the old Post Plant/200 I), first looking north from I Street (see the Park Chelsea at far left and the freeway at far right to help orient yourself) and then the reverse view south down I from H, where the edge of Agora is in the frame at far right. The design gives 2nd Street the look of three different buildings, but it will all be one.

(If you're having a hard time with the location, perhaps this photo of the current view of the Garrett's footprint, a similar angle to the first rendering, will help. It also shows how Agora does not extend all the way to 2nd Street, but that the Garrett does become slimmer on its north end.)

The Garrett will have 375 units, and will also have over 13,000 square feet of ground-floor retail (perhaps taking advantage of the proximity to Canal Park and to the 200 I Street government office building). It will also have 5,000 square feet of shared work space, a 9,500-square-foot rooftop fitness club, and even basketball, outdoor tennis, and racquetball courts.

Plus, it will have access to all of the other amenities in both the Park Chelsea and Agora as part of the Collective's sharing configuration (not to mention being steps away from the Whole Foods that will be in the ground floor of Agora).

When the Garrett's construction marks the completion of The Collective, there will be more than 1,100 residential units on this block bounded by 2nd, H, I, and New Jersey. A little different than this:

* The first sign has been hoisted at the Homewood Suites at 50 M St., on the north side.

* Toll Brothers has put up fence signage announcing the second phase of Parc Riverside on Half between K and L, with a delivery date of 2018; We Shall See.

* WC Smith has put up a sign at 2nd and I that gives a first peek at The Garrett, the third apartment building that will fill out "The Collective," aka the block where the Park Chelsea already stands and where Agora (the Whole Foods building) is already under construction. (I don't have a project page for the Garrett yet--awaiting the results of my begging for an electronic version of the rendering on the sign.)

Also:

* I got to see the Insignia on M crane dismantled, though my attempts to get actual video with the new JDLand camera were unsuccessful (I need to RTFM, clearly).

* The Trapeze School building is now a little more decorated.

* Time is not being wasted on vertical construction of the apartment project at 1244 South Capitol, where the skeleton is now four stories high.

Finally, for the fun of it, here's photos of ORE 82 and Agora taken from the Southeast Freeway. Don't try this at home--leave it to those who are willing to lean out the passenger window of a car speeding down the road while holding a very expensive camera. Don't ever say I don't do nothing for you.

There's also updated photos of Insignia, F1rst and 909 Half, should you wish to peruse them.

And yet all of a sudden, here we are, with the first residents now moving into Dock 79, the development's first-phase 305-unit rental building. I'm getting verklempt!

The new JDLand camera got its first workout on Thursday with a tour of much of the building, and it should come as no surprise that this camera, as previous ones, was as interested in the views out of the windows as in the inside of the building itself. To the north, Nats Park fills the field of vision, while to the south (and east and southwest), the Anacostia River and its banks make for a vista that is not a standard Washington D.C. apartment building offering.

You'll want to browse the entire gallery of course to get better views of the model unit, the current state of the Riverwalk and new public plaza, and the common areas, but here are a few highlights:

Plus, there's this stitched-together panorama taken from one of the unit's balconies. Thank heavens it wasn't raining.

As for Dock 79's retail spaces, there are already announced plans for restaurants The Salt Line and All-Purpose Pizzeria to arrive in 2017, and I'm told that there should be announcements of additional tenants Any Minute Now.

For more specifics on the building, such as rents, floor plans, amenities, and all the stuff that normal people would be interested in, visit Dock79.com. For many more photos and details on the long road to this point, see my Florida Rock project page.

And with hardly a chance to catch our breath, Dock 79's forthcoming sibling next door is now in the early stages of its own trip through the Zoning Fun Factory.

There are also plans in the works to have after-school activities available while waiting for the operations bureaucracy to conclude, including basketball in the spiffy new gym. Keep an eye on the building's web site for additional details, or call 202-547-0581.

Although the building has been open for a number of weeks, the JDLand camera has only just now made a visit--and the resulting photo gallery is not only a trip through a rainbow of colors, but is also the swan song for JDLand Camera III, which is being retired after eight years of valiant service. (I had hoped it would be the debut of JDLand Camera IV, but the Postal Service was two hours too late.)

The full gallery is here. And here's a final before-and-after to wrap up my tracking of this project, from before the demolition of the old center's building in 2007 to the start of construction in spring 2014 to its completion:

And a close-up of its new M Street facade. The gymnasium is in the ground floor space.

The 2,800-square-foot space will of course be only about two blocks away from the neighborhood's other Shake Shack, but this new one will not require a ticket to a baseball game to get your fix of burgers, crinkle fries, shake-like concretes, and other delicacies.

The 6th Street exit ramp from eastbound I-695 will still be open during this closure, and traffic coming off the ramp will still be able to turn left to head north on 6th or continue straight on the one lane of Virginia Avenue open between 5th and 7th.

However, if you are south of Virginia Avenue and want to go north of the freeway, you will need to use either 3rd, 7th, 8th, or 11th Streets, SE. (The 7th Street intersection is expected to reopen from its own multi-week closure on Friday, July 29.)

Local traffic will still be allowed for the block of 5th Street north of K, including traffic to the Capper Seniors building.

See CSX's informational slides on this closure for additional details, or marvel at the wonder that is my own informational map above.

UPDATE, AUG. 2: The closure is officially underway.