* MAIALINO: The Union Square Hospitality outpost at the new Thompson Hotel at 3rd and Tingey is going to be Maialino Mare, a "Roman style trattoria." (Eater DC)

* TINGEY SQUARE: Via Twitter, it looks like the construction of the long-planned Tingey Square at the intersection of New Jersey and Tingey is underway.

* GREYSTAR: Via Twitter, evidence that work is apparently gearing up at the Greystar project on the old CSX site west of New Jersey and immediately south of the freeway. Here's my post from a few months ago on the plans.

* PROTECTED LANES: Via Twitter (sensing a theme?), after much (much!) discussion of the perpetual vehicle occupation of the 1st Street bike lanes, both sides of the 1200 block are now separated and protected.

* BOXING: 9Round fitness kickboxing is coming to the Insignia on M building at New Jersey and M.

* BRIG: The Brig beer garden at 8th and L SE is one of the first three bars to apply for a sports betting liquor license.

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.

"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.

To the east, the not-minor project to do the masonry work and the siding at the 195-unit mixed-income Lofts at Capitol Quarter at 7th Street continues--apologies for only showing the rear of the building when I take a wide shot, but with the trees and the narrowness of L Street it's basically impossible for me to get a good photograph of the front. (Plus the low sun angle from late October through early March makes southern-facing photos a pretty miserable experience with a pretty miserable outcome, anyway.)

At 5th and K, the Capper Community Center's exterior isn't changing too much at this stage, but I'd get the shakes if I tried to not photograph it.

At New Jersey and Tingey, the new trapeze school building's blue-and-white exterior is mostly finished, though I'm such a bad blogger that it didn't occur to me to walk up to the big opening and peek in--but TSNYDC has posted a photo of the inside.

As for the Brig, the beer garden-to-be at 8th and L, the building itself looks pretty well finished now, though the "garden" portion of the venture does not appear to have gotten underway yet. And with two pit bulls on guard (!), I wasn't about to poke my camera through the fence for a better view.

And while I had designs on pressing my camera up against the glass at Buffalo Wild Wings on Half Street, they were having a staff training session when I arrived, and so I chickened out (Bad Blogger Data Point #2). But the gentleman I spoke with there confirmed again the Nov. 16 opening date, saying that the doors will open that day at 10 am--and that they generally have people camping out over Sunday nights to be among the first 100 customers through the door, who are then winners of the free-wings-once-a-week-for-a-year prize. Hope y'all have warm sleeping bags!

Still to come, the skeletons-and-holes report.

Otherwise, the masonry work continues slowly at the Lofts at Capitol Quarter (lower left), while the windows are in at the new Community Center (lower middle) and the Brig beer garden at 8th and L does show evidence of progress.

* ARRIS: Let's start with the now-topped-out Arris apartment building at the Yards. In addition to its having reached its final height, the masonry work on the five lowest floors of the eastern portion of the site is pretty far along, and windows have started appearing in the second floor.

While the three "pavilions" on the western side (not seen real well in this shot, but check the rendering) will be brick-faced all the way up their eight floors, the east tower's upper façade will be all glass, with an undulation that's obvious even with just the concrete in place.

This building will have 325 rental units and 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and is expected to open in early 2016.

* PARK CHELSEA: It certainly won't win the prize as Speediest Construction Project Ever, and the countdown to the start of leasing has changed its target from July 1 to September 15, but work on the 430ish-unit rental building on New Jersey Avenue does continue. You may have seen the forms with the planets-and-the-stars design that have now been hoisted up to their final perches on the roof--I've been told this is based on Johannes Kepler's "star polygon tessellations," which I concede is way too much education for JDLand to normally pass along.

* LOFTS AT CAPITOL QUARTER AND CAPPER COMMUNITY CENTER: They may not be tall, but they are wide--as is my lens, thankfully. If you are wondering about the concrete portion on the western end of the Loft's construction, that's parking for residents of the building's 195 mixed-income units. The two projects, both along L Street between 5th and 7th, should be completed in 2016.

* THE BRIG: I certainly could have used a drink after the 11 miles of walking I did in two passes on Sunday to properly update my photo archive, but while work on the beer garden at 8th and L to be known as The Brig continues, it still has a ways to go before it begins quenching thirsts. But it's interesting to now start to see the outline of its contribution to the "skyline" along 8th.

The links above have lots more information on each project, of course. And I skipped the Hampton Inn in the roundup, but I wouldn't want it to feel left out.

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.)

We'll start with the photo at right, which shockingly reveals that dirt is actually being moved on the northwest corner of 8th and L, where the beer garden now known as The Brig has been planned for such a long time. Clearly work is in the very early stages, but that's a nice change from no progress at all. It's supposed to open in the spring.

Continuing the tour....

Digging continues at the 1111 New Jersey apartment project (above left), with the shoring at far left helping to give a sense of how far down they've gotten so far. (Spoiler: they have a long ways left to go.) And at the Capper Community Center Building House (above right), the foundation on the south end of the site along L Street is now a pretty sizeable structure.

It's hard to get a decent shot of the Lofts at Capitol Quarter construction, because the building is so long, though the wide open space of Nats Lot W helps. Vertical construction continues at the far east end, at 7th Street, while the western end waits its turn. Here's a big version of the latest image, to make it easier to see. (But remember, you can click on all photos to pop up larger versions.)

From there I wandered to the Yards (after rejoicing that the Hull Street Gate to the Navy Yard was closed, so I was able to take photos of the Lofts construction without hassle). The Arris apartment building is now getting its second floor, from south to north, as seen in the below left shot from the corner of 4th and Water. And a different sort of progress is visible a few feet away, in the windows of the northwest corner of the Lumber Shed.

Not pictured is the lunch stop I made at 100 Montaditos, mainly to watch Mr. JDLand's continued march through the menu.

Meanwhile, the Hampton Inn at 1st and N (above left) continues to stand all but alone (I find myself thinking of it as Near Southeast's grain elevator). I also think I managed to capture a construction milestone when I spied its first installed windows. And, up at New Jersey and I, the Masonry Marathon continues at the Park Chelsea (above right), though it does look like that phase may not last too much longer.

There's one other batch of progress photos I took on Saturday, but you're just going to have to wait a bit longer for those.

But in reading various documents more closely, the equally big news is that the project has gone from a restaurant with a roof deck and patio to a design that's more in keeping with the idea of a real "beer garden" -- the design that will now be built is of a big outdoor space with tables and room to stand around, plus a small "service" building that has no seating.

In 2011, site owners Mark Brody and Alan Gaunoux had planned what I described at the time as a "one-story building with a roof deck, in addition to the proposed ground-level summer garden. The look of the building (which is closer to 1 1/2 stories high) is very industrial, with large multi-paned windows and lots of "wood rainscreening" on the exterior and the roof deck."

The Historic Preservation Review Board's staff report in Feb. 2011 referred to the design's "somewhat chaotic and unfinished appearance," but the commissioners felt that it was on the right track and "was very close" to achieving acceptance. The next month, the owners returned with a "substantially simplified" design, moving to a brick veneer and other changes. This version appeared on the board's consent calendar, with final approval delegated to the board's staff.

And then we fast-forward to April of 2013, when Brody and Gaunoux returned to the HPRB with a scaled-back plan after apparently having "reevaluated their finances." The HPRB staff report described the new version as "largely an open-air 'use' of the existing lot, with a smaller service building rather than the indoor restaurant space previously proposed."

The new design included a one-story stucco building along the northern edge of the property, just for restrooms, storage, a small kitchen, and the bar opening up to the garden. There would be a roof-type structure projecting 10 feet southward to cover the bar area, and a paved area along the east edge of the site that could provide space for a food truck and trash collection. The bulk of the site would be "paved" with flagstone, and there would be a 6'6" "ornamental" metal fence surrounding the site, plus a central pole anchoring string lights that would provide illumination. All of which, according to the board's staff, would improve on the "visually disadvantageous" parking lot now on the site, as seen in the above photograph from March of 2014.

The service building became a focus, with the Historic Preservation Office having "discouraged the applicants from proposing trailers, shipping containers, or portable toilets." In June, a revision of the revised design updated the service building including signage and new fixed shutters on the building's blank wall along 8th Street, plus a "decorative parapet" and cornice along the roof line, similar to what is seen on several of the one-story buildings along Barracks Row.

On July 11, 2013, the board approved these concept plans, and by mid-August a building permit had been applied for, with a scope of work described as "a prepared food shop with an accessory fast food establishment (food truck) for 210 seats and 399 occupants." That permit took nearly 15 months and numerous corrections to get its approvals, with the permit finally being issued last week and the owner saying that he expects to break ground soon.

(And this huge summary doesn't even get into the Class CT Tavern liquor license fight back in 2011!)

So, all in all, it does sound like if you're one who likes your beer garden to be heavy on the "garden," this will be right up your alley. It also sounds like it's perhaps starting small, without too much of an investment, to see whether it catches on.

It will be called "The Brig," and will seat 210 and serve 299, and property owner Alan Gaunoux told WBJ that he "expects to break ground next week." I believe the seating is configured as 99 indoor seats and another 200 outside. (see update, below)

This project has been so dormant that I haven't written a post about it since November of 2011. I thought it was still languishing in the Historic Preservation Review Board process, but apparently all systems must be go, though, as WBJ says, "early versions of the development were scaled back[.]"

You can see the rendering from back in 2011 and read the multiple posts on the project's early days on my project page, though I don't know how much it resembles what will actually be coming. It is still apparently a one-story structure, with a bar, and some food, and perhaps some live music.

UPDATE: I will write another post on this in a few days--I'm looking at documentation that indicates this is definitely a very far scaled back operation in terms of a "building" from what was being looked at in 2011. Puts the "garden" in beergarden.