Let's start by peeking through some fences to look at the digging portion, where excavation is now underway at New Jersey/Canal and N/Tingey on the first office building to come to the Yards, which will be the headquarters for Chemonics International. (Yes, it's the project that chased the Trapeze School down to 5th Street.) The other two digging locations are Lerner's residential building at 1000 South Capitol and the CSX East site on New Jersey Avenue just south of the freeway, where a hotel and 800 units of residential will be coming. In order:

Next, we have three buildings that are above ground but not yet topped out. We'll start with the reconstruction of the Capper Seniors building at 5th and Virginia, which started just a smidge more than one year after the fire. With the pad not needing to be redone and the concrete-encased stairwells still standing, it isn't taking long for the wood-based construction to look familiar. (It is an odd thing to be watching the same building go up twice, 14 years apart--the first photo below was taken on Nov. 28, 2005, then after the fire in Sept. 2018 and March 2019, and now ).

The other skeletons are the new headquarters of the District Department of Transportation at 3rd and M Streets, which at this time of year can only been seen in sunlight for about one hour, from the west.. A few blocks away, on L Street between South Capitol and Half, the neighborhood's first "sliver" residential building (condos!) at 37 L is now a few floors away from its roof.

Beyond that we have a mere, oh, 12 additional projects that are topped out but not finished. Three of them are getting their faces put on (DC Crossing, Meridian on First, and One Hill South Two):

The rest have long since stopped looking particularly different while they plod toward completion, but there are updated photos on their project pages if you wish to see some. And yes, I'm looking at you, Thompson hotel and Estate apartments, Parc Riverside Phase 2, NAB HQ, Avidian, The Kelvin, Envy, the Garrett, and the Maren.

Now I'll turn my attention finally getting caught up on sliders. Wheeeee!

CSX EAST: Readers with bird's-eye views of the former CSX land west of New Jersey Avenue have been sending photos showing the start of digging for what will be three buildings, according to a long-time reader who sent in a report from an August meeting about the project, dubbed CSX East for now: a 225-room AC Marriott at 861 New Jersey, and two additional buildings with about 800 units total of residential, and a substantial "co-working" space. There's no publicly released renderings, but here's a site plan of how the three buildings will fit between 70/100 Capitol Yards and ORE 82 and the freeway.

Amazingly enough, I finally created a project page, and added a star to the map. Yay me!

And a couple additional tidbits:

* CAPPER SENIORS: The permit to reconstruct the senior apartment building destroyed by fire last year has been approved. Bozzuto construction signs went up a few weeks ago, so work should probably be getting underway Any Minute Now. The base designs are the same as the original building, but I assume (hope?) there have been some updates in the infrastructure.

* NOVEL SOCAP: Novel South Capitol announced in August that the east tower has begun pre-leasing of its 184 units, with move-ins starting in October. This is along side the west tower's 355 units. See the official web site for more.

* BRIDGE VIDEO: Can't wait for the new Douglass Bridge to get here? Here's a new video on its progress.