* EMBLEM: There's one obvious new sprout on lower 8th, and that is the nearly-topped-out construction of a new condo building on the southeast corner of 8th and Virginia. It's officially known as the Emblem at Barracks Row, a 20-unit building being built and run by Bozzuto. Every unit has a unique layout, according to the web site, and there will be six penthouse units, most with outdoor terraces. (And since it's only four stories tall, it's a sticks-and-bricks building, which we don't see many of in these parts.) There will also be 3,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space. Sales on the units should begin this year. (I do not know the price ranges.) A rendering of the finished product can be peeked at here.

* LA MEDITERRA: A new restaurant has opened south of L, next door to Las Placitas in the space once occupied by Ziaffat. It's La Mediterra Fusion Grill, serving kabobs, shwarma, and other Mediterranean offerings (and wings!), and it is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week. Here's a peek at the menu, if you have your x-ray specs handy.

* NAILS!: I think it's been there a few months, but Navy Nails and Spa is now in the ground floor of the gray building on the northeast corner of 8th and M.

* POTOMAC AVENUE DOINGS: Meanwhile, around the corner on Potomac Avenue between 8th and 9th, the long-vacant apartment building at 816 Potomac is now undergoing renovations to be a rental building with what now is targeted to be 19 units, if designs are approved. As for the empty lot next to that building at the corner of 9th and Potomac, the Board of Zoning Adjustment voted in December to approve plans for a four-story, 49-unit building at 818 Potomac, which would also be notable for plans to have a "parking elevator" garage that would allow 43 cars to be parked/stacked on one level. Both projects are being developed by the Murillo Malnati Group.

The Brig is located on the northwest corner of 8th and L Streets, SE (1007 8th for your GPS). See my project page for photos and links to posts on the long and winding road to this milestone. And see you all there for a JDLand Happy Hour at some point in the relative near future.

UPDATE, 6/17: Yup.

* PARC RIVERSIDE PHASE 2: These are "studies", with materials and colors subject to change, but the architects for the second phase of Toll Brothers' Parc Riverside apartments at Half and K passed along to ANC 6D02 commissioner Stacy Cloyd some images of what the building could look like. (And now you see why when I mentioned them in another post recently I said that Phase 2 doesn't look very different from Phase 1.) The middle image, as seen from Half and I, shows the two Parc Riversideseseses as one long facade, albeit with slightly altered treatments. The other two are views from Half and L.

* REHAB CENTER PROPOSED ON LOWER 8TH: Capitol Hill Corner reports on a proposal to the Bureau of Prisons for a 300-bed resident rehabilitation center (aka "halfway house") to be located at 810 Potomac Ave., SE, across the street from both the Blue Castle and the historic Latrobe Gate to the Navy Yard. Council member Charles Allen and ANC 6B both have weighed in with strong opposition, listing all manner of reasons that this building at the corner of 8th and Potomac (and 8th and M, for that matter) "is not the right site," with 6B commissioner Kirsten Oldenburg quoted as saying, "This is an egregious thing to do to lower 8th, which is transitioning from being under-developed into a residential neighborhood." UPDATE: ANC 6D commissioner Meredith Fascett has posted on Facebook that she is opposing this as well, and says that MPD, Barracks Row Main Street, and the Capitol Riverfront BID are also in opposition.

* COFFEE WITH CHUCK SLIDES: If you want the latest update from the Virginia Avenue Tunnel, here's the slides from the May 18th neighborhood session. There's lots of photos of sections the new tunnel, including some that bloggers would probably be shot on sight for trying to get.

* AKRIDGE SELLING: WBJ says that Akridge is putting on the market its holdings along the east side of 1st Street between K and L, across from Velocity and the Parc Riverside and home until 2011 to the Market Deli and a slew of other now-gone buildings.

"the brig is on track to open in 30-60 days.

"Pavers are going in as are the 40 taps.

"More info and probably a big story after JD reads this.

"Bring your well behaved dogs here too.

"1007 8th Street SE at the corner of 8th and L."

And lo and behold, as my pictures from mere minutes ago attest, pavers are indeed going in, and temporary signage has appeared, and a new iron fence (currently still behind the existing cyclone fence).

There is still work to be done on the inside of the building, and then certificates of occupancy and health department approval, so I wouldn't carve any date in stone just yet, but the homestretch does appear to be in view.

The road to this point began all the way back in late 2010 with plans for a combination restaurant/beer garden in a new building right on the corner. It spent most of 2011 in historic preservation review, then returned in 2013 with a simplified design that eventually was approved, and a building permit was issued in November 2014, with construction getting underway in early 2015. The work proceeded, shall we say, slowly, with the service building's exterior looking complete in November, but by then it was, well, winter.

When it does open, perhaps it will be a good spot for the next JDLand Happy Hour.

Both Urban Turf and Capitol Hill Corner have reported on the plans by Northfield Development, which include 16 one-bedroom units, three studios, and three two-bedroom units, along with 11 ground-floor parking spaces tucked in behind the ground floor. Both the parking entrance and the resident entrance will be on L Street.

Developers apparently told a supportive ANC 6B that they anticipate breaking ground in March 2016, making it a busy time for that stretch of Virginia, which is currently closed for the Virginia Avenue Tunnel reconstruction.

In late October the Historic Preservation Review Board found the plans to be "generally compatible" with the Capitol Hill Historic District, though the developers are being asked to "refine the design so that it has more of the character of Capitol Hill, including a weightier base, an attention to details and materials, [...] and more substantial corners."

If one takes a long stroll through the JDLand archives, one can read about how the land was bought in the summer of 2005 (not a typo) for $2.5 million with plans for a mixed residential/office/retail building advertised in 2007 as "The Admiral." The former gas station seen here that stood on the site was demolished in early 2006 (#34 in the Demolished Buildings gallery), but the lot remained unbuilt. Then in the fall of 2008 it reappeared as a planned office building, which actually got BZA approval before also not moving forward. Then the land was purchased by Northfield in July, for what property records say is $1.825 million.

While for a few years the tunnel construction will be yet another hurdle (literally) to getting visitors at the main section of Barracks Row to cross under the freeway, the opening of Ziaafat Grill as well as the arrivals Any Minute Now of Las Placitas and the Brig at 8th and L plus potential plans by the National Community Church for the Blue Castle could perhaps be the first tugs southward that Lower Barracks Row has been looking for. We Shall See.

As for the condo lineup in the neighborhood, the list of potential projects is finally starting to grow, with PN Hoffman's 140-unit building at 4th and Tingey (Yards "Parcel O") looking to be the first out of the gate with construction expected to start next year. The Jair Lynch Companies have said that a portion of his project to fill in the Half Street Hole will be condos, and of course there's the possibility of a condo building on Square 767 in the Capper redevelopment footprint. And 10 Van Street is being "contemplated" as condos, as is the MRP building slated for the Navy Yard Metro station Chiller Plant site at Half and L. It will be interesting to see what comes to fruition.... (If you are keeping track at home, the last [well, only] condo building to be built in the neighborhood was Velocity, which opened in 2009. The co-ops at Capitol Hill Tower opened in 2006.)

* 'CAPERS: Excerpts from the one-woman play "'Capers," about how residents of Capper/Carrollsburg dealt with the housing project's demolition, is being performed tonight (Oct. 15) at 7 pm at 400 M St. SE, hosted by the Arthur Capper Carollsburg Community Village. You can also catch the entire play four nights next week at the Forum Theatre in Silver Spring.

* DSS BARRY CEREMONY: The Display Ship Barry isn't actually leaving just yet, but on Saturday Oct. 17 the Navy is holding a departure ceremony at 10 am inside the fences of the Navy Yard. See the announcement for details, including how to get into the base if you wish to attend. It was announced in February that the ship will be dismantled and removed from its home along the Anacostia Riverwalk.

* WATCH. BOX.: A "watch box" (guard shack) that stood as part of the sentry post at the Navy Yard's 8th Street entrance from 1853ish until 1905ish and was passed through by Abraham Lincoln just hours before his assassination has been restored and formally ribbon-cut on Oct. 8 after its return earlier this year from a 110-year stay at Indian Head. (Though unfortunately it's on display on a portion of the grounds that most of us will never see.)

* SODOSOPA: South Park took on gentrification last week, with the new neighborhood of SoDoSoPa, the Lofts at SoDoSoPa, and the Residences at the Lofts at SoDoSoPa. And there was this: "What this town needs is a Whole Foods. It will instantly validate us as a town that cares about stuff." (And yet you people still refuse to adopt my new name for this neighborhood, Near Capitol Ballpark River Yards, #NeCaBaRY.)

* BRIDGE BEFORE AND AFTER: DDOT's historic photos Tumblr recently included a shot from 1966 of the early construction of the downriver 11th Street Bridge span. And I realized I have a photo taken from a very similar location as the span was dismantled in 2012 and its offspring was built. (The piers remain in the water, though, as the potential underpinnings of the 11th Street Bridge Park.)

The menu shows a lineup of Indian food, with a buffet at all times as well as chicken tikka, kabobs, lamp chops, biryani, and karahi. And nan, of course.

I do not know the hours (not seeing a phone number to call on the menu posted in the window), so if anyone feels like heading over there for lunch and coming back with a report, you'll get a JDLand Gold Star. UPDATE: The BID says the hours are 10 am to 10 pm daily.

(I'll update here as I get more info, but didn't want this dish to be served cold, as it were. Also, the "Muy Pronto" sign in the Las Placitas window is pretty funny.)

If you never went to Levi's, you may not know that it's not exactly a spacious interior, so be prepared for more of a carryout option than fine sit-down dining.

And if I had just walked on that side of the street during a long photo-taking excursion on Sunday that included multiple shots at 8th and L, I would have seen the signs in the window, but at least the high resolution of my camera can now confirm that the signs were/are there.

This spot is one block south of the freeway, and let's call it three blocks south of Las Placitas's existing home, which will eventually become expansion space for Matchbox.

"Very happy that Las Placitas is staying on Barracks Row! They'll move this fall to the old Quiznos space at 8th and M on lower 8th Street."

Las Placitas with its Mexican fare is of course one of the mainstays of 8th Street, but it had been announced a few weeks back that its lease was not being renewed, and that next-door neighbor Matchbox would be expanding into the space.

As for the new location, there hasn't been much going on since Quizno's left a few years back, and other restaurants in the 1100 block of 8th--Chicken Tortilla and Levi's Port Café--have been closed for a while as well.

This space, on the northeast corner of 8th and M, is immediately to the north of the Navy Yard's Latrobe Gate, and is also across the street from the Blue Castle, which was bought late last year by the National Community Church. Plus, one block to the north is where The Brig will open, someday. And this may be especially good news for the eventual tenants of the Lofts at Capitol Quarter, now under construction at 7th and L, who will have a sit-down restaurant a block away.

As we found out a few months ago, the design has been scaled back from a restaurant with a roof deck and patio to a more typical beer garden look--a big outdoor space with tables along with a "service" building that has no seating.

As you can see, there is definite progress on the service building, with a mid-year-ish opening looking to be doable.

The driveway at the west side of the lot will allow for food trucks to sell their wares.

The photos give a feel for the amount of patio acreage as well, and show that some noontime shade will come from a group of trees along L Street, though they could maybe benefit from a bit of a haircut (to, ahem, spruce the look up a little).

You can read my past posts on The Brig to catch up on the long and winding road to this point. And this group of before-and-afters shows the lot over the past not-quite-10-years. (And I can't decide if I need to add the corrugated tin shack visible behind the stockade fence in the early shots to my Demolished Buildings Gallery.)