The DC Zoning Commission has scheduled a public hearing on Dec. 8, 2005 for the Florida Rock project. According to the hearing notice, Florida Rock is requesting approval of a second-stage Planned Unit Development as well as a zoning map amendment (are your eyes glazing over yet?), to allow for a nearly 1.1-million-sq-ft mixed use project, just south of the new baseball stadium. The project "would be developed as three separate buildings, but would visually appear as four buildings as the westernmost building is separated into two towers above the 32-foot elevation"; the buildings would be set back from the Anacostia River no less than 75 feet. The project's footprint spans not only the area marked on my map at right, but under the Frederick Douglass Bridge and all  the way down into Southwest  to S Street (from South Capitol Street to the river) toward Buzzard's Point. Given the intense interest in the baseball stadium having riverfront access, as well as the ongoing planning for rebuilding and rerouting the South Capitol Street bridge, it will be interesting to see how the Florida Rock project is designed. (The notice mentions that the building heights would taper down to 92 feet at 1st and Potomac.) Project architects Davis Buckley have a few small designs of the project on their web site, but these were done long before the stadium popped up on the radar screen.

Two baseball stadium-related stories in today's Post : "Stadium Estimates Still in Ballpark" reports that DC is still beneath the $165 million cost cap for acquiring the 14 acres of land in the stadium footprint, despite an increase of $18 million in the amount the city expects to pay for the land. Letters with the city's offers will go to out to the 33 landowners on Tuesday, according to the article; the owners will have 30 days to negotiate, and after that the city can take the land through eminent domain. The plan is still for the city to control all the land by the end of the year, so that construction on the stadium can begin in March 2006 for a scheduled opening in 2008. I was interested to see this tidbit: "By law, the city can make offers based on property values that do not take into account plans for a stadium," which will keep prices well below those for properties near (but not on) the stadium site.

Which brings us to article #2, "Monument Realty Buys Coveted SE Site," describing the purchase of a small lot at N and Van streets (right across the street from the stadium site, in the "stadium district") for $3 million, as part of Monument's assembling of acreage for a 750,000-square-foot office / retail / residential project. UPDATE: Washington Business Journal adds a bit of info.