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Near Southeast DC Past News Items: Yards Park
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In the Pipeline
25 M
Yards/Parcel I
Chiller Site Condos
Yards/Parcel A
1333 M St.
More Capper Apts.
Yards/DC Water site
New Marine Barracks
Nat'l Community Church
Factory 202/Yards
SC1100
Completed
Thompson Hotel ('20)
West Half ('19)
Novel South Capitol ('19)
Yards/Guild Apts. ('19)
Capper/The Harlow ('19)
New DC Water HQ ('19)
Yards/Bower Condos ('19)
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)
Yards/Arris ('16)
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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Yards Park Design Approved by NCPC
Last Thursday the National Capital Planning Commission gave unanimous approval to the early designs of the Waterfront Park at The Yards, which was not a surprise given the nice things said about it in the Staff Recommendation. According to the NCPC web site (I wasn't at the meeting), the commission "commended the applicant, the General Services Administration; the developer, Forest City Washington; and the team's designers for the quality of the design, the range of activities the park will support, its visual and physical connections, and for creatively adapting the design to the site's ground elevation constraints." The design was also endorsed by the Commission on Fine Arts last month.
I've now received a pretty fabulous aerial-view rendering of the park, which I've added to my newly rejiggered page for the project (I've finally separated out the five phase I projects at the Yards onto their own pages), where you can also see a few additional renderings of the design, keeping in mind that these are still preliminary plans--and the NCPC staff recommendation document has even more drawings and detail. Forest City's plan is to complete the first phase of the park in summer 2009, with the retail buildings and the piers and marinas to follow.
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More posts: The Yards, Yards Park
 

First Look at the Waterfront Park at the Yards
A slew of site plans and renderings showing the designs for the Waterfront Park at the Yards have now entered into the public record, thanks to requirements that early designs (35%) be shown to the National Capital Planning Commission. The NCPC will be voting on the designs at this Thursday's meeting, and NCPC staff is recommending is that they be approved.
The staff recommendation document is must reading for anyone interested in the park, as it lays out many of the plans for the 5.5-acre site. There will be a huge "Great Lawn" on the western portion of the site (south of what will be an extended Second Street). The currently existing inlet will be extended northward for a shallow "Canal Basin", with an elaborate pedestrian bridge above it. The designs also show the basic location of piers, marinas, and a water taxi stand (cue Nats fans salivating), although the review of their designs will come later. The existing Lumber Storage Shed (Building 173) will be renovated into glass-enclosed retail and entertainment offering, and two other buildings will eventually come to the park as well. At the eastern end will be a "River Garden", a shadier, more lush area of greenery. There will also eventually be some sort of "vertical iconic element" erected on the pier at Third Street, but no details are yet divulged.
It's estimated that the park will open in 2010. I have some photos of what the park area looks like now, and have also included a few of the new renderings, but it's been a tough spot to get to over the years. (If your browser doesn't jump you to the right place, scroll to the bottom of the page. I'm gonna have to revamp my Yards stuff--it's too much going on to try to shoehorn into my current design scheme!)
UPDATE: I should also mention, for those of you interested in parking issues, that blacktop is now being put down on the open lot at The Yards south of Tingey between New Jersey and Third.....
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More posts: Water Taxis/Riverboats, The Yards, Yards Park
 

Diamond Teague Park on Thursday CFA Agenda
The draft agenda for tomorrow's (Nov. 15) monthly meeting of the Commission on Fine Arts indicates that there will be a presentation of a revised design for Diamond Teague Park. The city initially brought the park in front of the CFA back in September, where according to the meeting's minutes the design was met with a number of concerns about its "fussy and timid" small-scale design when compared to the grand scope of the ballpark across the street; it was described as "overly focused on small elements that are conceptually inappropriate within the large-scale context." (And I'm not sure that the landscape architect's response that the grand staircase of the ballpark should be reduced in size in order for it to better relate to this new smaller park was the best reply.) A post-meeting letter from the CFA after the meeting outlined the revisions the commission was seeking.
I suggest reading the CFA minutes, which give a very detailed description of the initial plans for the park as well as the back-and-forth between the commissioners, Judi Greenberg of the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, and landscape architect Jonathan Fitch; you can look at these original park designs on the web site of Fitch's Landscape Architecture Bureau, by navigating through all the Flash ridiculousness to Projects, then Green, then Diamond Teague.
According to the minutes, the plans are to build the park in three phases, starting with the commercial and recreational piers and the central portion of the park (on the one section of land the city currently owns); later phases would be dependent on Florida Rock's development of its planned public plaza abutting Teague Park and the development of the southern portion of the WASA site as well as the construction of a floating boardwalk to connect the park to the waterfront park at The Yards (scheduled for completion in 2010). If you're interested in the water taxis that the city envisions docking at Teague Park, the minutes have a lot of detail about how their operations would work; apparently a lot of coordination is going on with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, though there's yet to be any design released by the Corps for public comment.
There was a fair amount of discussion about whether the park's scale can accommodate the large number of visitors that will be drawn over by the ballpark and by the proposed water taxi piers, as well as questions about whether the park should even be built if WASA (right next door) is not addressing sewer overflow issues. (Lovely.)
Six weeks later, on Nov. 1, the park went through another of its many required reviews, this time by the National Capital Planning Commission, which "commented favorably" on the park's design without discussion; the staff recommendation document has a black-and-white site plan for the park that does seem to have been reworked in response to the CFA comments, but I don't know for sure if that's the same design being presented to the CFA on Thursday.
I won't be able to go to the CFA meeting, so hopefully I can get some information on what transpires without having to wait too long, although so far the city has held information about the park very close to its vest. In the meantime, you can look at my pictures of the site and see what little background links and info I've been able to scrounge up.
UPDATE, 11/19: The CFA did approve this revised design at the 11/15 meeting.
 

Commission of Fine Arts Reviewing Diamond Teague Park Design
I don't know how I missed this (I'm going to blame my RSS reader), but back in September the Commission on Fine Arts was shown a design for Diamond Teague Park, the new public space being planned for the foot of First Street across from the ballpark. Just posted on the CFA web site is a letter from the commission to Deputy Mayor Neil Albert, whose office is now handling the park's creation, laying out some problems that the commission had with the initial design. The letter led me to the web site of Landscape Architecture Bureau, which is designing the park, and I found deep in it some sitemaps and renderings of the park that look to be of the initial design shown to the CFA. (What is it with architecture and design firms and their insistence on building Flash sites that make it impossible to link directly to anything? Aaaaargh! Stop it! Stop it!!!!)
I've added one of these drawings to my Diamond Teague page so that you don't have to spend a bunch of time digging to find it, and on it you can see "the small triangular subdivisions and narrow walkways to the floating docks" that the CFA described as "fussy and timid and not in scale with the stadium and its visual connection to the river."
The city seems to have responded quickly, because a revised design for the park is now on the CFA agenda for its Thursday, October 18 meeting. (A pretty speedy turnaround--does this mean they are trying to get something done with the park to coincide with Opening Day 2008?)
Even if the specifics of the design change, I'm guessing the general layout will remain the same. The map shows a water taxi pier to be built near the Earth Conservation Corps pumphouse, and the floating bridge connecting this part of the riverfront with the waterfront park at The Yards. I'm also interested to see on this site map that apparently Potomac Avenue is going to be extended east of First Street, to then turn north on a line with a new "1 1/2 Street" that will eventually run parallel to First Street in The Yards.
(As for Florida Rock next door, there had originally been rumors that it was going to have a setdown hearing at this month's Zoning Commission public meeting, but it's not on the agenda, and appears to have been delayed at least until November.)
UPDATE: I've removed the sitemap of the park, after having heard that it's an older design that doesn't show what the proper boundaries of the park will be, especially on the western side that abuts the Florida Rock property. Hopefully we'll be able to see a copy of the newer design they're working on soon.
 

New Web Site for The Yards
After months of a placeholder site, a new information-filled web site for The Yards was launched today (maybe they don't want the world to know, but I happened to stumble across it, so I'm spilling the beans). The biggest news I unearthed while browsing around is that they're saying that the 5.5-acre waterfront park (or at least some portion of it) is scheduled to be open in summer 2009, a year earlier than some previous dates I had heard. There's also a nice map showing the three phases of the project, with the initial projects I've described on my Yards page coming online in 2009 and 2010--the retail renovation of the Boilermarker Shop and 170 apartments at the Pattern Joiner Shop [and the park] scheduled to be completed in 2009, and the office building at 401 M Street (with a grocery store), 271 condos at Building 202, and 180 apartments in a new building at 4th and Tingey all expected in 2010. Phase two would be more residential and retail buildings opening between 2011 and 2013. Phase three would be the portions of the site along First Street and west of New Jersey.
If you want to know what it all looks like now, of course, my Yards pages can help you with that.

More posts: Retail, The Yards, Yards Park
 

PILOT Financing for Parks - And a Ferry Pier
At Tuesday's council meeting, an emergency resolution was passed to allow the issuance of bonds that will bring $140 million in proceeds to fund various Anacostia waterfront projects, including the waterfront park at The Yards and Diamond Teague Park. The money is coming from a Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes agreement for the Department of Transportation HQ, land that can't be taxed by the city because it's federal property. The original PILOT bill laying out the specifics was passed last October and the city and DOT developer JBG signed the agreement in February. I'm not 100% sure why there's now this new emergency resolution, although my bleary-eyed morning reading of it sees that perhaps the council was required to officially approve which projects were designated to get the funding. And, in order to issue the bonds before the end of this fiscal year, the council needed to act quickly, hence the emergency legislation.
A tidbit from the resolution: one of the projects listed as needing this funding is "a new ferry pier at the foot of First Street, SE"; this is the Diamond Teague Park location that's right across the street from the ballpark. I've been hearing rumors lately that the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation has the building of this pier on a very fast track, with the intention of getting it ready by Opening Day 2008; there's scuttlebutt is that the permit applications have already been filed with the US Army Corps of Engineers, though I don't see evidence of that just yet. Perhaps we'll hear more about this at tomorrow's hearing on the move of the AWC into the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.
More posts: Nationals Park, Teague Park, The Yards, Yards Park
 

Lots of New Yards Renderings
With many thanks to Forest City Washington, I've posted a bunch of renderings of the four projects that are on the boards at The Yards in its first phase of development. These came from the submission on the first phase that FC made in advance of its July 12 presentation in front of the National Capital Planning Commission, and while they have some nice drawings of the plans that I've written about in the past for renovating three of the historic buildings at the old Southeast Federal Center, the big news is the first hints of what's planned for "Parcel D", currently a parking lot on the east side of 4th Street south of M: it's to be a residential building the south end of the site and an office building on the north end that would have a grocery store on the ground floor at 4th and M. The drawings also show the additional floors to be added to the brown-and-white Building 160 and imposing red-brick Building 202, both of which have interior atrium/courtyards I never knew about. And there's a few cool renderings of the plans for transforming the very industrial Building 167 that sits right behind the new DOT HQ into retail space. (Plans for the five-acre waterfront park and other areas in the Yards were not part of this submission.)
I didn't get the entire submission, so I'm not knee-deep in details, but everyone should definitely look at these drawings to see what's coming at The Yards. We should be seeing the beginnings of the streetscape improvements Any Minute Now (which include landscaping that barren area on the west side of New Jersey Ave. south of M), but the completion of the Building 167 retail and Building 160 residential won't happen before 2009, and the Parcel D/grocery store project *could* finish in 2010. So don't pack your bags or write your shopping list just yet.
 

Post Writes About The Yards
Today's Post Business section has "A Neighborhood Rises at The Yards," which gives a quick overview of the plans for the old Southeast Federal Center, as well as a profile of Deborah Ratner Salzberg of Forest City Washington. The article mentions a lot of what I posted back in March, that the infrastructure work at the Yards will begin soon (sewer lines, paving streets, putting up street lights and planting trees) so that it can look a bit more presentable when baseball arrives across the street in 2008. (It's expected that surface parking for stadium-goers will be available on lots at The Yards not slated for immediate redevelopment, but no announcement has been made yet.) The article also confirms my previously posted information that the brown-and-white Building 160/Old Pattern/Joiner Shop will be rehabilitated as a residential building, with an expected completion date in 2009. The article also mentions that Building 173/the Old Lumber Storage Shed (the terra cotta-colored building at the north end of the site of the planned five-acre waterfront park) will be remade into a restaurant pavilion; the first phase of the park is expected in 2010. Additional near-term projects not mentioned in the story are the planned renovation of Building 167/the Old Boiler Maker's Shop just to the rear of the new DOT HQ into a retail building and the redevelopment of Building 202/the Old Gun Assembly Shop at 5th and M into another residential block in a joint project between Forest City and PN Hoffman.
You can look at my Yards overview page for a hard-to-read map and guide to the various projects expected to come during the many years of the Yards' redevelopment; there's also plenty of pictures on the Yards Photos tab, as well as a new rendering that appeared with the Post story of what Building 160's renovation will look like. You'll also see at the top of the page a shot of the new Yards sign that appeared at 1st and N this past week.
 

The Yards Web Site
The Yards (formerly known as the Southeast Federal Center) now has more than just a placeholder image at its web site, dcyards.com. There's now a form to fill out if you're interested in more information, and also one if you're looking for details on their local, small and disadvantaged business enterprises (LSDBE) programs. The site says that overall they're planning 2,800 residential units, 1.8 million square feet of new office space, 300,000 square feet of retail, and of course the 5.5-acre waterfront park--this is of course over a multiyear period (like, say, 10 years), but they say that the first office and residential projects will be available in 2010. One of the first retail projects (scheduled to open in mid-2009) will be the renovating of the Old Boiler Maker's Shop/Building 167, at the corner of 4th and Tingey as a shopping space. As for the other projects, I had heard not too long ago that some of the residential projects, which involve the renovation of two existing buildings, would be ready by 2009, but I guess the schedule has changed. Will try to find out more; for now, you can get more details and photos on my Yards page.
More posts: Boilermaker Shops/Yards, The Yards, Yards Park
 
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