* BANFIELD: The sign is now up, and "early 2015" looks on track for the Banfield Pet Hospital at Twelve12 on Tingey Street in the Yards.

* 82 I: The lot has been cleared of cars, a new fence has been put up and construction-related signage ("Hard Hats Required") has appeared on the northwest corner of New Jersey and I, where Graystar's 234-unit residential building appears to be ready to get underway the second its shoring/excavation permit comes through.

* FLORIDA ROCKIN': Excavation permits for the first phase of Florida Rock's redevelopment were approved a few weeks ago (hence the beginning of earth-moving), and as of Friday there's now an approved permit for the nine-story apartment building itself. The project's ceremonial groundbreaking is scheduled for tomorrow morning (Dec. 9) at 10 am--in a tent, thank heavens. Given that it took more than a decade to get this project to the digging phase, you can't blame developers MRP Realty and Florida Rock Properties for going beyond the normal speeches and ornate shovels: they are having a pig roast as well, after the ceremony until about 3 pm.

* 100 MONTADITOS: It looked very very close to opening last week, but there appears to have been some sort of fly in the ointment (or a Spaniard in the Works, if you will). The Yards tweeted this morning that it is opening this Thursday. Mr. JDLand is monitoring the situation closely. UPDATE: A missive from the Montaditos folks confirms the Thursday opening, with a "Dollarmania" promotion through Sunday, Dec. 14, with all Montaditos sandwiches selling for $1. There will also be $2 beers and sangria and $3 premium beer and wine for the eatery's first 100 days.

* WILLIE'S: Now offering brunch on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 am to 3 pm.

* OSTERIA MORINI: "Morini Mondays" begin tonight, with $10 pasta dishes.

There hasn't been any official statement about the purchase from the church, but recently its lead pastor, Mark Batterson, agreed to reply by e-mail to a list of questions I sent his way about how this move came about and what the church may be envisioning for the landmark building. (Hyperlinks added by me.)

MB: Our team had been actively seeking ways to build out our Virginia Ave property, but we’ve been in a holding pattern because of the CSX project. When we heard that the Blue Castle was for sale, it made sense. We just had to make the math work. After quite extensive research with a development team, we came to the conclusion that it will be easier, faster, and perhaps less expensive, to build on top of the castle than it would be to build on Virginia Avenue.

We feel very fortunate to have gotten the contract. We know this is an incredibly iconic building that is interwoven into our city's history. We hope to steward it well.

MB: We plan to develop the Blue Castle property by building what NCC needs on the roof deck of the existing structure. The key components of the build-out are a multi-purpose performance space with 1500-2000 seats, as well as a central location for our staff. The performance space will be designed for seven day a week use as a music venue and/or theater space. We will assess community needs to make sure the castle serves the best and highest use. We have some preliminary ideas that we think the community will be excited about, but we need to get a little further down the planning road. One thing we know for sure is that we’d like to build out another Ebenezer’s Coffeehouse, like our coffeehouse at 201 F Street, NE.

MB: The existing tenants have a lease through July of 2018. We have not made any decisions beyond that, but our goal is for the space to serve community needs. Part of our process will be listening to the needs and goals of neighbors, as well as figuring out what best compliments NCC. We will explore a wide variety of uses, along with current uses; in determining it's future.

MB: Until the architectural designs are completed, we can't estimate an accurate timeline. But we have already initiated some conceptual design work. So the wheels are turning. National Community Church continues to outgrow our spaces, so we need it as soon as possible. We also know that there is a timeline and protocol to follow. This is an iconic building, and we want to make sure we get it right.

MB: We view the Blue Castle as a better path forward in addressing spacing needs because development of the property is not directly impacted by CSX. The building is also three times larger than Virginia Avenue. This will help us move toward our 2020 vision of 20 expressions of NCC by 2020.

Ultimately, our goal is to master plan both the Blue Castle and Virginia Avenue. Because we own both properties, it positions us to have a more coordinated development.

MB: Honestly, we hope that someday the Blue Castle will just be the Castle. Of course, we have to factor in the financial impact. And we'l obviously need to work with DCRA and HPRB to make a determination on any changes to the exterior of the Blue Castle.

Mr. JDLand has been keeping close tabs on the progress of this latest offering, and provided this photo of the sandwich board (literally!) out front of the space last week.

That Montaditos is close to opening is also referenced in an end-of-year press release from Forest City that details the rather blockbuster year they've had at the Yards, with the openings of Twelve12, Teeter, VIDA, Sweetgreen, TaKorean, Ice Cream Jubilee, Unleashed, Willie's.....

The release also says that Banfield Pet Hospital is expected to open in the first quarter of 2015 in Twelve12's last retail space on Tingey Street, and that the Navy Yard Oyster Company and Due South restaurants are both expected to open in the Lumber Shed in the spring. Also coming in the spring should be the landscaping of the no-longer-Spooky Parcel A lot, with both a temporary park and parking lot. (No mention of the Trapeze School move, though.)

On the residential side of things, "late 2015" is given both as the completion date for the 327-unit Arris building next to the Foundry Lofts and also the planned start of the 135-unit PN Hoffman condo building at the southeast corner of 4th and Tingey.

If you see action at Montaditos, let me know. And let @TheSlot know, too.

Let's start with the holes in the ground. First are the two newest ones, with the initial hints of the foundation at the Capper Community Center Building House (left), and the more substantial digging underway at the 1111 New Jersey/Gallery at Capitol Riverfront apartment building.

Meanwhile, up at 800 New Jersey, the hole, it is deep. (And, as an aside, this poor project desperately needs a name, other than "that building that's going to have the Whole Foods." Even the signage looks a little forlorn.)

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the three topped-out buildings in various stages: at left is the Hampton Inn, which just reached this milestone within the past few weeks, then there's the Park Chelsea residential building, which may someday see the completion of its exterior masonry work, and finally the Parc Riverside apartment building, which is probably about to graduate out of my project updates given that the first units are expected to open in December.

You can see the first floor along Water Street, which is the south end of Arris, Forest City's 327-unit apartment building at the Yards--and here's What It Shall Be from the same angle (albeit overhead):

In other words, get ready for that block to look and feel really different when the building is completed, probably in early 2016. And yes, there's ground-floor retail--about 20,000 square feet of it.

Meanwhile, the Lofts at Capitol Quarter, the 195-unit mixed-income apartment building at 7th and L is on quite a hill, so the west end (left) is starting at ground level while the east end (right) is just now coming out of the ground. And these two photos, which don't make it easy to discern exactly what's going on with the construction, do at least give an indication of the length of the building.

Both my Arris and Lofts at CQ project pages have more photos, renderings, etc.

Also, I hope everyone enjoys the Lofts photos taken from Nats Lot W, because when I left there and walked across M at Hull to take pictures TO THE NORTH of the construction TO THE NORTH, a Navy Yard guard approached me and asked to see my photos, to ensure that I was up to nothing nefarious. This even though I had never pointed my camera anywhere close to the direction of the Navy Yard gate--I had even very theatrically held up my camera with its lens clearly pointing in the opposite direction as I crossed M--and even if I had taken photos of the gate, I was on public property the entire time.

"We have to ask, ma'am," he said; "No, you don't," I replied, so really it's a wonder I didn't end up getting thrown into the back of a Suburban and detained. But there's always next time--I told him that they'd better get used to me being there. At least this time they didn't call the DC cops and have one chase me down a few blocks away like they did a few years back.

#PhotographyIsNotaCrime

So let's compare the site as seen back in June, and then yesterday (click to enlarge, as always):

Or, heck, let's go from an ugly day in December 2005 to June 2014 to November 2014 to what it should look like when built:

(And now you know why I try to always wait for the most glorious of sunny days to take photos. Also, thank heavens for the Teague pier vantage point, allowing me to shoot northward-facing photos instead of just ones from Potomac Avenue.)

Ground was definitely being moved on Saturday, as you can see in these not-really-full-of-action action photos:

Construction of this first phase is expected to take about two years. And it should include a plaza and ground-floor retail alongside Diamond Teague Park. You can actually see in the pattern of the digging in the photo at top right the building footprint versus the plaza footprint--the project was required to keep the view from the ballpark's grand staircase out to the river.

Plus, if you stand in the middle of the south end of the block these days, you get one heck of a panoramic view of the new Near Southeast, as evidenced by the eight (!) photos stitched together to create this image.

From this spot, you can see almost so many of the buildings that have gone up in the neighborhood since 2000--the now-topped-out Hampton Inn, 55 M, 1015 Half, 80 M, Velocity, 100 M, the almost-bricked Park Chelsea, Capitol Hill Tower/Courtyard by Marriott, 1100 New Jersey, USDOT, the Boilermaker Shops, Twelve12, the Foundry Lofts, and even the tower crane for the soon-to-sprout Arris. (I'm kicking myself for not swinging enough to get some portion of the ballpark.)

Before long, the interim phase of this location should start to appear--a public park on the north end, a parking lot in the southwest corner, and a spot in the southeast corner at New Jersey and Tingey for the Trapeze School, if they desire it.

Now, for my next item--anyone who accuses me of going overboard on minutiae probably should stop reading here. But for the rest of you, here's a little item from the intersection of 4th and Tingey, where street signs have recently appeared (left). But, then look a little more closely.....

Are we supposed to be voting? Or perhaps it's like A/B testing for web sites, with DDOT trying to determine which one will leave drivers less bewildered as to their location....

Snark aside, my photo archive indicates that the west-side "Fourth" sign was put up sometime in late summer, with the east-side "4" sign appearing within the past month or so. The numeric version is in fact DDOT's current style (ick), so perhaps this was a corrective measure of sorts.

(And, be forewarned, I took a lot of photos on Saturday. Much more to come.)

Madison Marquette, the current owners of the Blue Castle, put it on the market about a year ago, after purchasing it in 2007 from PREI, which had bought it in 2005.

WBJ reports that the sale price is expected to be between $25 million and $35 million, with the church benefitting from a $4.5 million donation to help fund the purchase, along with income from existing leases for the Castle's remaining tenants to help cover the $1.5 million-a-year mortgage.

As you may recall, NCC went on a Lower 8th buying spree back in 2010 and 2011, snapping up 10 lots on the block bounded by Virginia, 7th, 8th, and K, including the old Miles Glass building at 8th and Virginia, which was demolished in 2012. (Their holdings do not include the lot on the corner of 8th and L, where "The Brig" beergarden is going to go.) The church also owns and operates out of the former People's Church a few blocks to the north, on Barracks Row.

When making the Square 906 purchases in 2010 and 2011, it was with an eye toward perhaps some combination of coffee house, performance space, and church offices, though no designs or plans have ever publicly begun moving forward.

The church's Virginia Avenue lots are also right on the front lines of the CSX Virginia Avenue Tunnel project--and back in August the Post quoted NCC head Mark Batterson as saying, "It’s been difficult to take the first step because we don’t know exactly what or when CSX will build and how that will affect us." Which, alongside today's news, does make one wonder about the NCC-related future of those properties.

WBJ says that Batterson told his congregation that the church "hopes to tack on several new floors" to the building--though I have no doubt that that will be a festive trip through the historic preservation review process, along with the Navy giving the stink-eye from across M Street.

The $65 million construction loan for the project was announced on Oct. 8, as was an expected delivery date of September 2016. I've been told there will be an official groundbreaking in the next few months.

It should also be noted that this is the first residential project in the neighborhood actually being built right on the west bank of the Anacostia River.

This building is now part of a frighteningly long list of apartment projects underway: the Park Chelsea (430 units), River Parc (277), Arris at the Yards (325ish), the Lofts at Capitol Quarter (195), 800 New Jersey/Whole Foods (336), and the Gallery at Capitol Riverfront (aka 1111 New Jersey, 324 units).

That's a smidge over 2,230 units in all, and close to 2,450 if you add the recently completed 220-unit Twelve12.

And that tally of non-single-family residential units begun since 2012 is a bit more than double the 2,340 units that were built in the neighborhood between 2004 and 2011. So get ready for a lot of new high-rise neighbors!

Having written more than 100 posts on Florida Rock over the years, I think I'll skip yet another full rundown other than to say that the entire project is designed as a four-building 1.1-million-sq-ft residential/office/hotel/retail project, with no timeline as yet for the rest of the development.

The construction now underway will also expand the plaza by Diamond Teague Park directly across from the grand staircase at Nationals Park, adding ground-floor retail there and along an extension of the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail that will eventually run all the way to the new Douglass Bridge.

All of which looks a little different from these views of the Florida Rock footprint, seen first in August 2005 before the construction of Nationals Park (left) and in January 2012 (right), after the concrete operations were removed and demolished:

It's been a long time coming. And I can't wait for all the steps I'll get trudging down there to take pictures.

More photos through the years and drawings are on my Florida Rock project page.

UPDATED 11/2 with what appears to finally be a definitive unit-count for the building--321 units in a 9-story building . There will also be 18,650 square feet of retail and 286 parking spaces on two below-ground levels. And the amenities will include "grand lobby with onsite leasing presence, ground floor level club/game room with billiards, bar area, and gaming, state of the art health club, rooftop swimming pool, Wi-Fi service and storefront business lounge, conditioned storage, bike storage, 24 hour front desk service and fully access controlled building." All of these tidbits from the MRP Realty page for "The Riverfront."

The proposal apparently is to exchange both the L Street building and its land for various streetscape and construction improvements to be performed by the District along of Martin Luther King Avenue adjacent to St. Elizabeths. "In return, the District would own 49 L Street SE in fee simple with full rights and ownership over the property."

Quoting the quote from the EHN release: " 'This exchange takes GSA further with work necessary to complete the DHS headquarters,' Norton said. 'In the process of moving a DHS priority, GSA has found a way to dispose of the long-underutilized 49 L Street SE by exchanging it for construction services from the District.' "

This is the building that residents have eyed as possibly becoming the Half Street Market, envisioning the building as a "public venue for a food market, restaurant, and flexible community space." (The group recently posted a new video rendering of their reimagining.)

As the release says, this is still in the negotiations stage, and even if the city does get the building there will then be I imagine a process about how to handle the site, but it's the first sign of movement since the flurry of activity about the building and the market idea back in 2013.