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Thompson Hotel ('20)
West Half ('19)
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Yards/Guild Apts. ('19)
Capper/The Harlow ('19)
New DC Water HQ ('19)
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Virginia Ave. Tunnel ('19)
99 M ('18)
Agora ('18)
1221 Van ('18)
District Winery ('17)
Insignia on M ('17)
F1rst/Residence Inn ('17)
One Hill South ('17)
Homewood Suites ('16)
ORE 82 ('16)
The Bixby ('16)
Dock 79 ('16)
Community Center ('16)
The Brig ('16)
Park Chelsea ('16)
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Hampton Inn ('15)
Southeast Blvd. ('15)
11th St. Bridges ('15)
Parc Riverside ('14)
Twelve12/Yards ('14)
Lumber Shed ('13)
Boilermaker Shops ('13)
Camden South Cap. ('13)
Canal Park ('12)
Capitol Quarter ('12)
225 Virginia/200 I ('12)
Foundry Lofts ('12)
1015 Half Street ('10)
Yards Park ('10)
Velocity Condos ('09)
Teague Park ('09)
909 New Jersey Ave. ('09)
55 M ('09)
100 M ('08)
Onyx ('08)
70/100 I ('08)
Nationals Park ('08)
Seniors Bldg Demo ('07)
400 M ('07)
Douglass Bridge Fix ('07)
US DOT HQ ('07)
20 M ('07)
Capper Seniors 1 ('06)
Capitol Hill Tower ('06)
Courtyard/Marriott ('06)
Marine Barracks ('04)
 
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NatsFest at Nationals Park on January 25
A press release just sent out by the Nationals about their 2009 Winter Caravan announces that NatsFest will be held at Nationals Park for the first time: "NatsFest, which will be open to the public, will take place on Sunday, January 25 from 1:00pm - 5:00pm. Fans will have the opportunity to interact with Nationals players through autograph, photograph and question-and-answer sessions. Nationals executives will also take part in a Q and A with fans. All Nationals Season Ticket Holders are eligible for four complimentary tickets per account. Information on how to receive these tickets will be sent to Season Ticket Holders via an e-mail on Wednesday, December 17. All Nationals fans may purchase tickets beginning Wednesday, December 17 at 10:00am, online at www.nationals.com/natsfest, by calling 1-888-632-NATS (6287) or at the Nationals Park Main Box Office (Monday through Friday, 10:00am-5:00pm). The cost of the event is $10 for adults and $5 for children under the age of 12. The Nationals Park Box Office will be closed from Tuesday, December 23 through Sunday, January 4 while the Nationals Executive Offices are closed for the holidays. "
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More posts: Nationals Park
 

100 M Close to Being Sold; More Tenants Signed
Washington Business Journal passes along the latest on 100 M Street, Opus East's office building that's just about to open. Apparently the building is set to be purchased by Detroit-based MayfieldGentry Realty Advisors LLC on behalf of an unnamed fund they represent, though the financial climate is slowing down completion of the transaction. It's expected to be finalized in January.
Meanwhile, Parsons's transportation unit moves in January 1, occupying the top four floors (30 percent of the building's total square footage). Another 7,400 square feet has been leased by federal contractor Orbis Inc., and WBJ says that "Opus also has signed letters of intent with three more small tenants and has concluded final negotiations with them[...]. Those three leases will absorb an additional 20,000 square feet in the 240,000-square-foot building." SunTrust Bank is also still planning to occupy 3,600-sq-ft of ground-floor retail space.
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More posts: 100 M, Retail, Square 743N
 

Artomatic 2009: Not Yet Announced, But....
I mentioned last week that an ANC 6D commissioner said that Artomatic could be coming to Near Southeast in 2009; there's still no official announcement, but a message was just sent out to the Artomatic mailing list inviting people to a Dec. 20 party at Onyx on First: "Gear up with the Artomatic squad for the inside scoop on Artomatic 2009 and find out how you can be involved." The party is from 1 pm to 3 pm, and the e-mail also says that "after the volunteer party we'll head over to Axiom Lounge for the 1st annual Capitol Yards Chili Cook-off." (First I've heard of that event, so I don't have any particulars on it.) One might think it strange that they'd be doing these events in the neighborhood if it weren't going to be Artomatic's home in 2009.
The e-mail also mentions RSVP'ing for the Dec. 20 happy hour on Facebook (which requires you to be logged in)--however, if you visit the event page or the main Artomatic Facebook page and you're not logged in, much of the text appears to be in Norweigan or Finnish or some similar language. Or else I really need new glasses.
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Reminder: This Week's Flurry of Events
Though I'm ready to give a stern talking-to to the folks who thought jam-packing the time just before the holidays with so many events was a good idea, here's a reminder of all that's happening Near Southeast-wise this week:
* On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the BID is putting on a Holiday Market at 1100 New Jersey Avenue. It will run from 11:30 am to 6 pm, and will feature "local artisans selling handcrafted jewelry, pottery, crafts, watercolors, photography, and more."
* On Tuesday at 6:30 pm is a community meeting on the planning process for Boathouse Row, which I wrote about recently. It's at Watkins Elementary, 420 12th Street, SE, and is being held by the Office of Planning. There's a pile of information from the city on this Master Plan process, if you want more information.
* Also on Tuesday, the city council will be having its final vote on the Taxation Without Representation Street bill, along with a pile of other legislative items they'll be trying to get out of the way before the end of the year.
* On Wednesday at 6:30 pm the Anacostia Community Boathouse Association is having its annual Boathouse Lighting and Community Awards Ceremony. City Administrator Dan Tangherlini will be honored, and then will flip the switch to illuminate the boathouse's holiday lights. The boathouse is at 1115 O Street, SE (between the spans of the 11th Street Bridges).
* The Capitol Riverfront BID is having its Annual Meeting and "State of the Capitol Riverfront" at 11:30 am on Thursday.
* The group of urban planning students at the University of Maryland who have been studying the lower part of Eighth Street will be presenting their "Connect Barracks Row" findings at a public meeting on Thursday from 7:30 pm to 9 pm at the Navy Yard Car Barn, better known as the Blue Castle, at 770 M Street, SE. You can see the presentation from their Oct. 29 community meeting and read a little more about the project on their web site.
These are all listed on my Events Calendar. I wish I could live up to my normal obsessiveness and say that I'm going to be at every one of these, but real life is intervening all over the place.
 

New Streets Arriving at The Yards
Work is continuing on the infrastructure at The Yards, and there's now a lot of new pavement recently laid down. Fourth and Tingey is starting to look like a real four-cornered intersection, with Fourth now extended southward one block to the new Water Street that will be the northern boundary of the Park at the Yards. The paving of what will be a new section of Third Street south of Tingey (next to the Foundry Lofts) was completed last month (though it's hard to see in the photos I last took in November--the hassles I get from the USDOT security people lessen my enthusiasm for trudging to Third and Tingey very often). Plus, Tingey itself now has all of its lanes reopened as well. It's all still a construction zone, but it looks like traffic is now (or will be soon) routed into the surface parking lots at Third and Fourth via the new streets.
In many of these photos you can also see the progress on the two new floors on top of the Foundry Lofts building. It's scheduled to open in mid-2010.
 

City Paper on the 'Capitol Riverfront', and Other Links
Piling a bunch of stuff together, again:
* Just posted on its Housing Complex blog (and in this week's print edition), the City Paper takes a look at the "Capitol Riverfront," both in the attempts to brand the neighborhood and in how empty it currently is (the subhed for the piece says "Developing a Name for the Southeast Waterfront Is Easier Than Actually Developing It" ).
UPDATE: I should also mention that Housing Complex has also posted occupancy numbers for the new buildings in Near Southeast: 70 and 100 I are 18 and 14 percent leased, Onyx is at 8 percent, Capitol Hill Tower is at 75 percent, Capitol Quarter Phase I is sold out, and Velocity is 25 percent sold.
* Reader J. reported yesterday that interior work seems to have begun at the old dialysis building at 900 M Street. They're rehabbing the interior and the exterior to create three retail storefronts, though no tenants have been announced yet.
* The Douglass Bridge is having another early-Sunday-morning-closure on the 14th.
* Planners are trying to figure out where to put all the charter buses coming to town for the inauguration. I'm guessing that the surface parking lots all around Near Southeast are going to be pretty enticing.
* The WBJ picks up on what I reported last week about 810-816-820 Potomac Avenue going up for sale in a sealed bid.
* One more add: Dr. Gridlock reports that Metro will be testing more eight-car trains on the Green line.
 

First Tidbits on Akridge's 25 M Project at Half Street
It's been more than a year since WMATA first awarded the Southeastern Bus Garage property at Half and M to Akridge (and almost six months since the suit brought by Monument Realty over the bidding process was settled), and at Monday night's ANC 6D meeting there was a first public peek at the designs for this central site being called 25 M Street, on the block just north of Nationals Park bounded by Half, M, N, and Van. And clearly Akridge is taking this project very seriously, as they arrived at the meeting with an army of people, including heavy-hitter architects Bill Hellmuth of HOK (who designed the office portion), Philip Esocoff of Esocoff and Associates (designers of the residential portion), and Jon Eisen of StreetSense (the group working on the retail).
I don't have any renderings yet (hope to within a month or so), but the ones displayed showed buildings with what Hellmuth described as "much more active facades" that "are not like a K Street monolith." There will be three buildings: two office buildings totaling 363,000 square feet, and a 276-unit residential building at N Street with roof terraces from which residents can look into the ballpark and watch the games. The facades step "out" and "in" (far enough in some places to require a zoning special exception), including some spots in the M Street office building that will allow tenants to look south into the ballpark, too. The general feel is not unlike the Monument designs for the other side of Half. (And, with a raze permit already requested, none of this incorporates the existing bus garage building.)
There will also be 56,000 square feet of retail, with a mix of one-, two-, and 2 1/2-story spaces occupying 69 percent of the ground floor, which will require a special exception from the Capitol Gateway Zoning Overlay's requirement of 75 percent. They are expecting to have national retailers for the spaces along Half Street, but are planning to look for smaller local "service" retailers for the additional space along Van Street.
They are also creating what they call the "Via," a pedestrian-only "street" that runs from Half to Van between the two office buildings at the same spot in their block as "Monument Street" will be across the way (just south of 55 M). They are envisioning a "one-of-a-kind" DC destination: a marketplace with stalls and local vendors, where you could get fresh food, "quick-bite" carry-out, etc. (They mentioned Pittsburgh as an example, and I'm assuming they're referencing the Strip District.) The renderings also showed two glass-enclosed suspended walkways above the Via to connect the two office buildings.
The entire project will be LEED certified (as is now required in DC), though they aren't sure yet what level they'll be shooting for ("the goal is to get as high as we can"). Hellmuth said that HOK is not doing a single building in DC right now that isn't at least LEED Silver, and that all major tenants want to be in LEED buildings.
I didn't get the total number of underground parking spaces, but the residential will have three spaces for every four units. (Monument's project across the street, of similar size, would eventually have about 700 spaces.)
Akridge indicated that their "ideal start date" is January 2010, with construction of the entire 700,000-sq-ft project estimated at 22 months. But there is no firm commitment that it will start at that time (thanks to the Current Economic Situation), plus it could end up being built in phases.
The ANC commissioners seemed receptive to the plans (Bob Siegel said that it gave him a "nice, warm feeling"), though with the usual questions about employment for local residents and LSDBE considerations, and concerns about residents and tenants having to work around ballpark traffic.
Akridge was officially at the ANC to request its support for both the zoning overlay review and the special exceptions being requested. While some commissioners were ready to vote to give support immediately, others weren't, and so after a number of differing motions that all failed it was decided that representatives of both sides would work together to discuss "issues" so that the ANC can vote on the project at its Jan. 12 meeting. The Zoning Overlay Review hearing is on Jan. 29.
And, not that there's much to see yet, but I do know have an Akridge/25 M project page, mainly with views of the bus garage from various angles.
 

ANC 6D Doings, Part 1: Artomatic, Nats Express, and Capper PUD Modification Requests
Just got back from ANC 6D's meeting, and I'll leave you waiting until Tuesday for the first details on Akridge's Half Street plans (I don't want to give it short shrift) but here's the other Near Southeast items of the evening:
* Commissioner David Sobelsohn said an announcement is likely coming next week that the city's 2009 Artomatic festival will be held in ANC 6D, "most likely ANC 6D07" (which is Near Southeast). I know nothing more than that.
* Sobelsohn also introduced a resolution to send a letter to Tommy Wells, DDOT, and other officials expressing the ANC's support for the continuation of free parking at RFK and the Nats Express shuttle buses "to reduce the incidence of illegal on-street parking in ANC 6D by people attending events at Nationals Park." The resolution passed 6-0. A few weeks ago it was reported that Wells wants to discontinue the service.
* The DC Housing Authority came requesting the ANC's support for a series of zoning items having to do with the Capper PUD, including extending some deadlines and also expanding the number of residential units offered. (You can read all about them here; I'm too worn out to go into them all again tonight.) There wasn't much discussion of the request itself, because the commissioners were, shall we say, displeased that a huge packet of supporting materials arrived on their doorsteps just last Friday (6D07's Bob Siegel didn't receive his at all, and were unmoved when told it was basically the same information they had received in July.
There was also displeasure expressed about the request to delay the start date for the Community Center at 5th and K to 2012, with the commissioners wondering what level the DCHA would consider a "critical mass" of residents that would make the center viable. (Only 300 of the planned 1500 units have been built so far, so it would seem that the threshold might perhaps be a bit higher.) But the Housing Authority made clear that obtaining financing for the project is the larger hurdle. The support request will be brought up again at the ANC's January 12 meeting.
* I admit that I didn't stick around for the late-in-the-agenda item on the Capper trash enclosures. But DCHA mentioned that they had met with the city's Public Space Committee in advance of their monthly meeting, and were making progress on modifications to the design. ANC chair Moffatt asked if the enclosures still exist at all in the new design, and when he got the "yes" answer, that ended the discussion.
 

Tiny M Street Doings (Glass Panes and Medians)
On my way back from the ANC 6D meeting, I noticed a couple items worth mentioning:
* The glass has now been completely installed around the Half and M entrance to the Navy Yard Metro station, at 55 M Street. I know everyone just *loved* the cyclone fences that had been there, but time marches on. The plans approved by the Zoning Commission called for a special backlit treatment ("frit") of the glass--we'll see if that's still part of the design.
* There's a long row of construction barrels in the middle of M between Cushing and First. Perhaps someone who's seen the work can comment, but my uneducated guess is that they are preparing to rebuild the median there. The developers of 100 M were given permission to remove the existing median there and between First and New Jersey so that they could occupy the curb lane, as long as they agreed to reinstall the medians afterward. Given how close 100 M is to opening, and with the sidewalk now open, I imagine this is probably what's going on. And not a moment too soon--I need back my places to stand for middle-of-the-street photos!
 

Monday Mishmash: Framing at Capitol Quarter, BID Holiday Market, Third Street Doings, and More
* As Tweeted on Saturday night (after cheering my Gators onto victory), framing has indeed begun on Capitol Quarter v2.0. They're not exactly the most thrilling photos (it was some tough almost-winter lighting conditions), but if you need proof, here they are, with their befores.
* Yet another mid-month event announcement to pass along--on December 16th, 17th, and 18th, the BID is putting on a Holiday Market at 1100 New Jersey Avenue. It will run from 11:30 am to 6 pm, and will feature "local artisans selling handcrafted jewelry, pottery, crafts, watercolors, photography, and more."
* Looks like maybe the 3rd and K Market might be stirring. I haven't heard anything official (though we saw that "For Rent" sign in the door a few months back), but there's been a slew of permits and the concrete surrounding the building has been torn up to apparently do some re-pointing of the bricks near ground-level.
* Less pleasant news from the same block--looks like there was a fire just within the past few days in the second floor of one of the rowhouses on Third Street--the top-row windows are gone, and there's black soot across the upper part of the front of the house. Anyone know what happened?
* I finally gave the new camera its first Hood workout on Sunday morning, despite the 40-mph winds and "variably sunny" weather that provided some icky overcast shots followed seconds later by brilliant blue-sky vistas, though it must be said that this model does a much better job of handling backlit buildings than my previous one. (And it was too dang cold to think about sticking around waiting for clouds to clear.) I'll post them in separate entries over the next few days. Got to s-t-r-e-t-c-h out the decent content nowadays.
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More posts: Capper, Capitol Quarter
 

ANC 6D Meeting Monday (First Peek at 25 M)
The agenda for Monday's ANC 6D monthly meeting is out, and the most enticing item is Akridge looking for the commission's support in advance of its Jan. 29 Capitol Gateway zoning overlay review for its new 700,000-sq-ft mixed-use development at 25 M, on the site of the old WMATA Southeastern Bus Garage, in the block directly north of Nationals Park. At this point, little has been put forth publicly about the project other than it'll be a office/residential/retail mix, and is expected to get underway in early 2010.
Also on the agenda is a third go-round with the DC Housing Authority over the designs for some external trash enclosures for some of the units at Capitol Quarter. I wrote about the first discussion here, and the Hill Rag has the report on the second one. Will the third time be the charm, or will bad things come in threes? There will also be a status report about the Capper redevelopment in general.
There's also apparently a letter being brought by Commissioner Sobelsohn to express the ANC's support for retaining the Nats Express shuttle bus that brings stadium-goers to the neighborhood from the parking lots at RFK. I imagine that the ANC will be expressing some level of concern about increased traffic and parking problems if that shuttle service goes away (it was reported last month that Tommy Wells is in favor of ending it).
The ANC meeting is at 7 pm at St. Augustine's Church at Sixth and M streets, SW.
 

Capitol Quarter 2.0: Moving Forward
For those who haven't wandered by Fourth and L recently to check out what's happening at Capitol Quarter, I can report that new slabs have been poured, and vertical construction should get underway (again) next week. (If you haven't been following along, this is a second start for these townhouses, after the initial construction in August showed foundation problems and resulted in the demolition of the first units that were underway.)
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More posts: Capper, Capitol Quarter
 

Flurry of Mid-December Meetings and Events
I passed along word a few days ago about the Dec. 18 Connect Barracks Row information meeting, and now there's three other events scheduled for mid-month. So get your holiday shopping out of the way to clear calendar space:
* On Dec. 16 at 6:30 pm is a community meeting on the planning process for Boathouse Row, which I wrote about recently. It's at Watkins Elementary, 420 12th Street, SE, and is being held by the Office of Planning. There's a pile of information from the city on this Master Plan process, if you want more information.
* On Dec. 17 at 6:30 pm the Anacostia Community Boathouse Association is having its annual Boathouse Lighting and Community Awards Ceremony. City Administrator Dan Tangherlini will be honored, and then will flip the switch to illuminate the boathouse's holiday lights. The boathouse is at 1115 O Street, SE (between the spans of the 11th Street Bridges).
* The Capitol Riverfront BID is having its Annual Meeting and "State of the Capitol Riverfront" at 11:30 am on Dec. 18; I'm going to attend mainly so I can get my first peek inside 100 M Street, which will be hosting the luncheon.
These are all listed on my Events Calendar.
 

Sealed Bid Sale for Potomac Avenue Lots
The owners of the series of lots along Potomac Avenue between Eighth and Ninth have announced a Sealed Bid Sale for the properties, with a due date of March 15, 2009. The offering, which includes the building at Eighth and Potomac where the Quizno's is located, the boarded-up brown apartment building at Ninth and Potomac, and all the land in between (totaling .81 acre), is being handled by an affiliate of Lincoln Property Company. The current owners are the ICP Group, which purchased all these properties in early 2006 for $9 million, and had put them on the market earlier this year, apparently without success. ICP are also the folks who tried to get the Admiral Condo project off the ground at Eighth and Virginia, but are now disentangling themselves from that project (now an office development) as well.
 

Dec 4, 2008 10:38 AM
Mishmash: Liveable, Walkable Awards, Waiting on N22 News, Navy Yard Parking, Tweets
* Tonight (Thursday) is Tommy Wells's second Liveable, Walkable Community Awards, from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H Street, NE.
* Metro's live streaming of its board meetings seems to have been taking a lot of time off lately, so I can't yet tell you whether the Customer Serivce, Operations, and Safety Committee has approved at its meeting this morning the request to have a public hearing on discontinuing the N22 line. (Even if they have, the request still needs to be approved by the entire board at its Dec. 18 meeting.)
* Infosnack Headquarters reports on the changes in on-street parking near the Navy Yard to discourage free all-day parking. DDOT chose to use signage to prohibit rush-hour parking, instead of using meters to garner additional revenue, and Infosnack is displeased.
* The Nats will be ending their 2009 exhibition season on April 4 at Nationals Park against the Orioles, in what is apparently going to become a tradition.
Latest Tweets, chock full of goodness:
* '09 Nats home games added to my GCal. (You can add them to yours via the buttons at lower right)
* And I'm reminded that I haven't mentioned the Parsons sign up in the windows at 100 M--they're leasing 30% of the building.
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More posts: Metro/WMATA, Navy Yard
 

Dec 2, 2008 4:35 PM
Taxation Without Representation Street Passes First City Council Vote
Via a Kwame Brown press release, confirmation that today the DC city council gave preliminary approval to the plan to rename the portion of South Capitol Street that runs alongside Nationals Park as "Taxation Without Representation Street." The bill includes the requirement that buildings along that stretch of South Capitol officially be given the address "Taxation Without Representation Street," which will no doubt leave the Nationals tickled pink.
Kwame's press release also says that "the location was chosen not only because of the baseball stadium but also because it is on a direct route to Congress."
For more details, read my coverage of the hearing on the bill, as well as the bill itself. There still needs to be a second vote on the bill before it can become law.
No word on when the tea dumping starts....
 

Dec 1, 2008 11:06 PM
Post Surveys the Commercial Real Estate Slowdown Near the Ballpark and Elsewhere
The front page of Tuesday's Post has "Building Slowdown Turns Grand Visions into Vapor," a look at projects in the DC area that are on hold because of the slumping economy: "The economic boom of recent years promised to deliver gleaming homes and high-end retail to struggling and newly forming neighborhoods across the Washington region. But that quest is running headlong into a withering economic slowdown and paralyzed credit markets, bringing new construction to a virtual stop and fueling anxiety among those who dreamed that their neighborhoods were the next frontiers."
Among the examples in the article are three delayed projects near the ballpark--WC Smith's 250 M Street office building, the residential and hotel portion of Monument's Half Street project, and also the Corcoran's Randall School development at Half and I, SW (which Monument pulled out of recently): "Perhaps no area is more central to the District's long-term ambitions than the streets around Nationals Park. At every opportunity, Fenty talks of a cosmopolitan destination featuring new parks, offices, stylish apartments and restaurants, all of it along the Anacostia River. Yet, how soon that vision materializes is fraught with uncertainty."
(Full disclosure: I provided a bit of basic status on ballpark-area projects for the piece, hence the "contributed" line.)
Some additional perspective: Certainly there's a slowdown afoot. (It's almost like there's some sort of cycle of boom and bust in commercial real estate!) I've been joking that I should just put a "Gone Fishin'" sign up here at JDLand during 2009, and come back in 2010 to see what's cooking, because other than the first offerings at the Yards and perhaps Canal Park {cough}, I'm not expecting much to get underway in the next little while. On the other hand, Capitol Quarter is moving forward, 1015 Half Street is now out of the ground, Diamond Teague Park is expected to open in the spring, and 100 M and 55 M and 909 New Jersey and Velocity will all be opening their doors before long, and perhaps the lure of another season of baseball will get some retail into the empty ground-floor spaces of those buildings and 20 M.
So, it's not like tumbleweeds are blowing down M Street or vines are growing on buildings a la Logan's Run--and it would be hard to make the case that it's the neighborhood's fault or the stadium's fault when the entire region is feeling the pain. The expectation would be that when the market improves, development in Near Southeast should pick up again. But we'll all just have to wait and see, won't we?
 

Dec 1, 2008 10:22 AM
Post-Holiday Scraping-for-News Post (N22, Twitter)
With not much news afoot, and with the holiday weekend weather not meshing properly with my schedule of family shindigs to allow for any photo excursions (my new camera is crying out to be used!), I only have the smallest of tidbits to report.
* On Thursday (Dec. 4) the WMATA Customer Service, Operations and Safety Committee will be voting to approve a public hearing on the plan to end the N22 bus line that runs between Union Station, Eastern Market, and the Navy Yard station entrance at New Jersey and M. The District is planning to replace this bus line with a new Circulator route covering the same route, and also adding in a stop at the new US Capitol Visitors Center. If approved, the hearing would be held in January, and the expectation is that the Circulator route would be in place by Opening Day 2009. Read my previous posts on this change here and here.
And, here's two "Tweets" from Friday of terribly important breaking news items: (follow me on Twitter to get these as soon as I post them, or be sure to check the Twitter box at the upper right of the JDLand home page)
* Not sure when this happened, but the Capitol Skyline Hotel at South Cap & I isn't a Best Western anymore.
* Holiday snowflakes hung from the streetlights on M Street. Festive!
UPDATE: One more that I forgot: tomorrow (Tuesday), the Taxation Without Representation Street Renaming Act will get its first vote in front of the city council.
 

Nov 28, 2008 9:09 AM
Connect Barracks Row Presentation on Dec. 18
The group of urban planning students at the University of Maryland who have been studying the lower part of Eighth Street will be presenting their "Connect Barracks Row" findings at a public meeting on Dec. 18 from 7:30 pm to 9 pm at the Navy Yard Car Barn, better known as the Blue Castle, at 770 M Street, SE. You can see the presentation from their Oct. 29 community meeting and read a little more about the project on their web site.
The students' work also got a write-up in today's Washington Business Journal (subscribers only), which says: "Their findings so far come as no surprise: Walking beneath the noisy highway is undesirable, parking isn't easy to find and there is little reason to go to the site in the first place."
In describing lower Eighth Street, WBJ also says: "A developer had plans to turn one block into housing and residential space, but that plan apparently went nowhere." Sounds like a reference to the original plans for the Admiral at 801 Virginia, which as I've been writing over the past few weeks has been redesigned as an office building and received its Board of Zoning Adjustment approvals on Tuesday.
There's also mention of the hopes by Madison Marquette to turn the Blue Castle into a 99,000-sq-ft retail destination, but no progress has been announced.
 

Nov 25, 2008 11:06 PM
BZA Approves Revised 801 Virginia Design
This afternoon the city's Board of Zoning Adjustment approved unanimously two requested variances that will allow 801 Virginia Avenue to go forward as a 19,000-sq-ft office building with 3,000 feet of ground-floor retail. I admit to listening to the webcast with only about half an ear, but the bulk of the discussion seemed to be centered around the applicant's request to only have 17 underground parking spaces instead of the required 30 (17 is still four more than were allotted in the original condo-building design). As I wrote about a few weeks back, the developers say that groundwater levels and potential soil contamination issues would make it prohibitively expensive to dig two additional levels of parking (and having to have the garage entrance on L Street apparently doesn't help, either).
The 17 spaces will all be assigned to the office tenants, so there will be no parking for retail customers. (There was some discussion of creating overflow parking if necessary at 816 Potomac Avenue, another property owned by the same developer.) The applicant's traffic consultant also laid out the proximity of the site to Metro subway stations and bus lines, and with the request having the full support of the Office of Planning, ANC 6B, and the Capitol Hill Restoration Society, the board voted to approve the variances.
No word on when the project might get underway.
 
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