Monument Realty has added to it's web site an "Upcoming Projects" page, listing "Ballpark District - Phase 1." This is the project on the east side of Half Street between M and N we've been hearing about, but it's nice to see it "confirmed" on their web site. It's described as 275,000 sq ft of office space (which would be at M Street, above the Navy Yard Metro station) and 450 condos (down toward N Street and the stadium). The site says "more details to come by Spring Training 2007." No word yet on the outcome of the bidding for the WMATA land.

No news yet on the fate of the Herb Miller/Garages Wrapped With Development Goodness plan to solve the issue of parking at the new baseball stadium (despite the Sept. 1 date when the financing was supposed to be in place having now arrived), but the Post editorial page weighs in on the lonely plight of CEO Gandhi trying to make sure that the DC taxpayers' interests don't strike out.

The agenda for the September ANC 6D meeting has been released; items of Near Southeast interest include a vote on the request for alley closings on the east side of Square 701 and also a presentation on changes in the Florida Rock PUD in advance of it's Sept. 18 zoning hearing. (Perhaps the Square 737/739 alley closing will get added to the agenda as well, it was supposed to be referred back to the full commission from the Development Committee for this meeting.) The meeting is on Sept. 11 at 7 pm at 65 I Street SW.

Oops, I missed this badly. The August Hill Rag's report from the July ANC 6D meeting gives us our first description of what's being planned for 1st Street between M and N (just north of the stadium and part of the Ballpark District area): "a 515,000 square foot mixed use office, residential and retail development. The office building will be 11 stories[;] the apartment building, which will contain 252 units, will be 12 stories. There will be 499 parking spaces, more than a hundred more than the number mandated by regulation." This was revealed as part of the alley closing request, which was referred to the ANC's development committee, and will be reconsidered by the full commission at it's Sept. 11 meeting.

A short blurb from Friday's Post: "D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi asked the city's attorney general yesterday to rule on the legality of a plan for a private developer to build a mix of parking garages, condominiums and shops adjacent to the new baseball stadium. In a two-page letter, Gandhi expressed concern that the plan would violate the $611 million stadium cost cap adopted by the D.C. Council and a ban on using the money the city would receive from development rights near the stadium to build the garages. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) and other city officials are aiming to complete an agreement by Sept. 1 with developer Herbert S. Miller to build the garages and condos." (Boy, I've enjoyed these past few weeks without any news on this. But I'm guessing next week this'll be back with a vengeance. Blech.)

The parade of alley closings and street closings/realignments this year in Near Southeast continues, as the National Capital Planning Commission has on its September meeting agenda the proposed closing of a public alley in Square 701 (the square bounded by 1st, M, N and Half Streets, SE--see my cruddy tax parcel map for assistance on where the squares are). I figured that this was going to be the alleys in the footprint of the Monument/WMATA properties, since Monument has made clear it's plans to move forward with developing the land along Half Street, but instead I find out that the alley closings being requested are on the east side of the Square, between Cushing Place and 1st Street, where the land is owned by the Cohen and Camalier families, who have said little about their plans for these properties. Does this mean we'll be seeing development coming to 1st Street south of M soon, too? And believe it or not, as I was writing this very entry, I received word that Monument has now filed it's application for alley closings on the west side of Square 701 as well as one small alley on Square 700 (behind the Amoco Station). Note that neither of these applications request closings of Van or Cushing. These applications follow successful alley closing requests already this year for Square 0743N as part of the 100 M and 1100 1st Street projects, the street/alley closings for the new ballpark, and the closed alleys and new streets for Capper/Carrollsburg--plus there are the still-pending requests to realign the streets in Square 737 in preparation for William C. Smith's big mixed-use project at 2nd and H and the Lerners' request to close a small portion of an alley in Square 697 as part of their 1000 South Capitol office project (no bills for these yet appearing in the DC Council legislation database).

From today's Washington Business Journal print version (available online to subscribers only for 30 days), news that Monument Realty, which owns most of the land facing Half Street between M and N not controlled by WMATA, has stopped waiting for the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation to get the Ballpark District rolling and has submitted an unsolicited proposal directly to WMATA to incorporate the Navy Yard Station's Half-and-M entrance and the adjacent WMATA parking lot into an office building that Monument wants to build. Metro then put out a Request for Proposals so that other developers could bid on the land (bids are due by 3 pm Aug. 21). If Monument's bid is successful, they say they can move forward "more promptly" with their plans for an office building with ground floor retail at that spot. AWC doesn't really seem all that concerned; Adrian Washington is quoted as saying "Our goal is to redevelop the ballpark district. We're fine either way." Monument, which would manage the government-funded $15 million expansion of the Metro station, says that they need to get control of the property ASAP in order to be able to have the station upgrades completed by Opening Day 2008. The article also notes that AWC expects to have a land disposition agreement completed by next month for Forest City Washington to purchase a portion of the WASA land at 1st and O; but color me a bit skeptical on timeline announcements from AWC these days.

This is a little old at this point, but here's the prepared remarks of CFO Natwar Gandhi when he testified before the council's Committee on Economic Development on July 6 about his concerns with Herb Miller's proposal for the Garages Wrapped With Development Goodness.

The Anacostia Waterfront Corporation has posted a PDF of a presentation from Wednesday's board meeting, with bullet-point updates about their initiatives, including the Southwest Waterfront, Poplar Point, Hill East, and of course, the "South Capitol Street Waterfront". Nothing really new in it regarding the Ballpark District, though I was little surprised to see a map they had (page 29 of the PDF) of the area that they have some sort of weird layout of the southeastern corner of the stadium site, with a big plaza that easily crosses over to the riverfront, and even shows P Street running halfway through the stadium site. Unless there's been some huge reconfiguration of the stadium design that I haven't yet heard about, methinks they're being a tad blue sky and are trying a bit too hard to turn the stadium into a "waterfront" ballpark. They've also got a watercolor on page 27 that doesn't even depict the stadium in its correct layout. There's a map at the top of my Ballpark District page, released by the AWC in Dec. 2005, that is I believe a more realistic rendering of how the stadium interacts with the waterfront; and page 15 of the DCSEC renderings presented to the Zoning Commission shows the design of the southern side of the stadium (but don't get me started on that blue-grey "future development" monstrosity shown on that slide--I'm guessing the ZC wouldn't be interested in approving THAT). Hopefully the long-awaited (and very long overdue) Ballpark District Master Plan will be released before too much longer, where we can see concrete designs of what they're anticipating.

From a short piece in Thursday's WashTimes: "D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams said yesterday the city is still committed to partnering with developer Herb Miller on a parking and commercial complex north of the Washington Nationals new ballpark despite a tight deadline and lack of clarity on how the project will be financed. Williams said the Miller plan remains the best option to satisfy the city's requirement for parking at the stadium site while also promoting economic development in the area." They are still negotiating with Miller to figure out how to finance the project while dealing with the budget squeeze faced on the parking.