Development of Rare Vacant Lot in Dupont to Start Next Month

A nine-story apartment building planned in Dupont Circle at the corner of 17th and O Streets, NW will break ground this year, replacing a parking lot on one of the last undeveloped lots in the neighborhood.  The First Baptist Church of Washington owns the lot, but developer Keener Squire will build the 218-unit building under a 99-year ground lease with the church.  Eric Colbert and Associates is the architectural firm on the project.

Rendering: Eric Colbert & Associates

DCMud reported in April that the developer intended to break ground this year, but unlike project start dates that regularly slip indefinitely, executives at Keener Squire assure DCMud that the initial estimates are still valid.  Developers expect the total construction time to be about 18 months.

The project has obtained necessary approvals from the Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) (the site sits in the Dupont Circle Historic District), and the DC Board of Zoning adjustment, and has the support of Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 2B and the Dupont Circle Conservancy.  The building's 118 units will be mostly junior one-bedrooms and some two-bedrooms, which were added to plans in response to requests from neighbors.

The building's design fits in with neighboring 1930's-era buildings, an architect on the project said.   "The design draws from the art moderne apartment buildings in the area, but at the same time is an updated 21st century building," Steve Dickens, architect with Eric Colbert and Associates told DCMud.  He cited Bay State Apartments and Boston House Condominiums, both just across the street from the site, as examples of neighboring art moderne-style structures.

Art moderne buildings in the neighborhood, Dickens said, were built after just after the historic district's so-called "period of significance" - a period historic districts look to in consideration of design appropriateness - which goes up until the 1930's.  Still, the HPRB backed the design.  "Given that this neighborhood has almost no buildings that date to the period of significance, the HPRB felt that the buildings that were around us were the significant buildings to look at."

Dickens emphasized that the design process has been collaborative, with the church as a major partner, "they want to make sure that whatever goes there is something that the most immediate neighbors are happy with."

Washington D.C. real estate development news

Bringing Berlin to DC: Inspirations for Dupont Underground

What inspiration can D.C. draw from Berlin about what to do with an unused trolley tunnel under Dupont Circle?  That is the question at the center of a new exhibit and events series organized by Provisions Library and the Goethe-Institut of Washington D.C.  The exhibit, called "Parks and Passages," runs at the Goethe Institut September, 14 through November 2.

The exhibit is meant to bring a "poetic interlude," in the words of research co-curator Stephanie Sherman of Provisions Library, to the ongoing and emotional discussion about how to best re-enliven the Dupont Underground.  That 75,000 square feet of space in tunnels lies - closed off for now - under the District's most visible circle.

Dupont Underground, Image courtesy Provisions Library

Built in the 1940's for trolleys (they ran only briefly), the space has been cast as a potential bomb shelter, health club, food market, even a "columbarium" (for cremated remains.)  None of those ideas ever panned out, although the tunnel did house a maligned food court for about a year in the 1990s called "Dupont Down Under."

Even now, the tunnel remains a virtually unknown public amenity in a city of above-ground monuments, boulevards, and upward-looking gazes.  But diverse gazes are shifting underground, as the exhibit shows, as more District-dwellers find resonance in the story of the tunnel.

In 2010, the Deputy Mayor's Office For Planning and Economic Development issued a Request for Proposals for the space, and a group called The Arts Coalition for the Dupont Underground - brainchild of longtime tunnel fan and architect Julian Hunt - clinched the exclusive rights agreement for the space.

Dupont Underground, Image courtesy Provisions Library

According to coalition managing director Braulio Agnese, the coalition estimates that it would take at least $30 million to open up the entire space, but so far has fund-raised what amounts to a "drop in the bucket."  The group hopes the space could become an arts venue.  "We are eager to see what these artists have come up with," Agnese said of the exhibit at the Goethe Institut, adding that he hoped the research would be useful moving forward.

But the coalition's exclusive rights agreement expires soon, and the coalition continues to work with the city toward obtaining a lease.  The city had not responded for a request for comment by the time of publication of this article.  And the space - even now - remains closed to the public, or open for imagination, depending on how one looks at the situation.

"Parks and Passages" documents the adventures of four DC-based Provisions Library Fellows - an architect, two artists, and a cultural theorist - who spent 10 days in Berlin and then fleshed out their inspirations for DC using archival materials, architectural renderings, mixed-media installations with historic film footage, and even graffitti.

Exhibitors are artist Edgar Endress, a George Mason University professor of new media and public art, visual artist James Huckenpahler, architect Pam Jordan, and cultural scholar Paul Farber.

The goal, according to Sherman, was to think about how Berlin's creative sites emerged and how the city adapted spaces. Why Berlin?  Curators were convinced the city's creative, sustainable, adaptive use of historical spaces had some inspiration for DC.

"Parks & Passages" exhibitors Endress, Farber, Jordan, & Huckenpahler

The group visited spaces under both public and newly private management, such sites as a bunker art gallery, an East Berlin amusement park, and the vast Tempelhof Airport, the city's largest public park. The airport was built by the Nazi government, was site of the Berlin Airlift, and a Cold War hub.  At Tempelhof, the City of Berlin has turned 988 acres of a history-laden, inner-city airport, decommissioned in 2008, into a thriving space for recreation, gardening, biking, and creative re-uses - some temporary, some more permanent.

Berlin's development strategy, according to Martin Pallgen, a Berlin city staff member and project developer for Tempelhof, also uses a "bottom up" approach to planning that involves creative occupants of the space. Pallgen visited Washington, D.C. with a team from Berlin for the opening of the exhibit. That feedback, he says, is a component of Berlin's development strategy, which Pallgen sees as a a "process" rather than a one-step deal.

The Tempelhof development model for the future, Pallgen said, would take time to "think about what is right and what is wrong, and think about each step...was it the right decision or not?"

Much larger than the Dupont Underground space, Tempelhof also benefits from both public and private investment. The Dupont Underground coalition - as things stand now - must raise private funds from mixed-use leases or philanthropic donations. To make matters more complicated, the space sits under confusing layers of federal and local control. While the city controls the entrances to the tunnel beginning at the stairs, the National Park Service owns most of the spaces surrounding them.

As the exhibit shows - Dupont Underground has always been a vessel of dreams and imagined uses, and sometimes a target of derision.  It was once called the "Blunderpass". "It was controversial even before it was built," said cultural scholar Paul Farber, who delved into Washington Post archives to research the trolley tunnel.  At the same time, he says, it has always been a symbol of the future.  The archives reveal familiar patterns, Farber writes, that may affect that future: including "the dysfunctional relationship between D.C.'s local and federal governing structures" and the "inherent complications of overlapping public and private ownership."

The city released homing pigeons when the streetcar line opened to traffic around 1950, but the trolley line would see just a few short golden years. District streetcar operator Capital Transit Company lost its charter in 1955, and the last trolley ran in 1961. A trolley funeral was held in Mt. Pleasant.   The number 42 bus line now runs along that old trolley route. 

In the early 1960s, the space was stocked with food and beds as a bomb shelter but never used as one.  In the early 1980s, the Marion Barry administration considered three proposals: for a health club, a health market, and a columbarium, but those didn't pan out. In the early 1990s, the city signed a deal with a questionable businessman named Geary Simon to develop a food court called "Dupont Down Under", but it closed just a year later, beset by legal troubles.

Dupont Down Under had a Sbarro's and a Schlotzsky's. Their signs - old and dusty and cast in darkness - were still there in 2009 when chair of the Dupont Circle Advisory Neighborhood Commission ANC2B, Will Stephens, visited the tunnel in December, 2009.  That was when Adrian Fenty's administration put out the most recent RFP.  Recent tours of the tunnels have entered at a little triangle formed where P Street, Massachusetts, and Dupont Circle all meet at a point.  That's where the ANC2B office is too. "The Z was dangling," Stephens said of the Schlotzsky's sign.

ANC door sign under Dupont, Photo: Will Stephens

Then, Stephens recalls that, as the group of ANC2B members walked with flashlights along the dark tunnel, they saw a dusty sign on a door on which were printed the words "ANC2B." "All of us there from the ANC, including the (public policy) intern were all freaked out," Stephens remembers. "We were joking with him that that was going to be his office."

In February and November of 2010, the ANC2B passed two resolutions.  Both praised the city for involving community stakeholders in the RFP process and requested that the space's long-term future use be kept open for potential transit use.

"Our chief concern from the perspective of the ANC is that whatever goes into this space be feasible and sustainable, so that we don't repeat the failure of the Dupont Down Under food court project," Stephens told DCMud.

The most inspiring lessons from Berlin for DC? The main inspiration, Sherman said, could be seizing the present moment by asking “what can we do within those (given) parameters and let it be an evolutionary process?” That flexibility, Sherman is convinced, will be important.  "We are not presenting solutions or answers," said exhibit research co-curator Don Russell, who also sits on the board of the coalition for the Dupont Underground. "We are layering and opening it up to the public."

The exhibit also features a series of "interactive" public events centered around the goal of thinking about creative approaches to urban problems and challenges:

Thursday, 13 September, 6 pm
Discussion and Exhibition Opening
Natural Adaptation, Urban Re-Use: Berlin and Washington, DC

Friday, 14 September, 1 pm
Discussion
Creative Research: Modes and Methods

Tuesday, 18 September, 6:30 pm
Reading
James Huckenpahler: Metamonument

Thursday, 20 September, 6:30 pm
Presentation
Urban Interventions

Saturday, 22 September, 12 pm
Gardening Workshop
Gardening Workshop

Your Next Place

I've been going to open houses for a while now, and I admit I'm a little jaded.  Usually my reaction to a place ranges between polite, bored indulgence (i.e. the face women make when you try to hit on them in Whole Foods) or outright curled-lip disgust (i.e. the face women make when I try to hit on them in Whole Foods).  I'm hard to impress.  But this place - this place made me outright giddy, back to my first innocent days of open-housing.  (Cue Madonna's "Like A Virgin.")

I mean, look at it.  Never will you find another place like this.  The extraordinary top floor in the Dove House Mansion, this place is to attics what Tom Cruise is to short guys.  Exposed beams and skylights combine for an incredible dramatic effect, and every room in the house is completely distinctive.  As soon as you step off the private elevator (yes, that's right), you're struck not just by the sheer size of the place (downright amphitheaterlike), but by how much there is to look at.  Every nook and corner and area has a little unexpected touch, whether it's an angle or a light fixture or, in the case of a master bathroom, a life-size statue of a horse on top of the vanity.

The kitchen features stainless steel appliances and granite countertops, and the master bath has an awesome double sink vanity.  The master bedroom is lofted, so you can look down on your kingdom, and there's also a private balcony so you can look down on, well, Dupont.  And priced at just under 770K, you can bet it won't be on the market long, so start begging the in-laws for another advance on the ol' inheritance.

1740 New Hampshire Avenue NW #NH-G
2 Bedrooms, 1.5 Baths
$729,900

Washington D.C. real estate news

First Baptist's Apartment Building to Replace Dupont Parking Lot

Having finally received approval for their requested zoning exceptions, the First Baptist Church of Washington's planned nine-story, 218-unit apartment building, set to be built on one of Dupont Circle's last remaining surface parking lots, is juuuuuust about ready to go.

"The project has a clear runway to ground- breaking. All we need now is the building permit. We're thinking we'll start construction in 4Q of this year, and it'll take about 18 months, all told," said Michael Korns, Developer at Keener Squire, the firm overseeing the project.

The Eric Colbert and Associates-designed project was initially met with considerable community resistance, for reasons ranging from noise, a potential influx of students, and preserving the neighborhood's last parking lot (arguably the least sympathetic cause of all time). In response to the outcry, developers and architect Eric Colbert revised the design to reduce the exposure of rooftop common areas, and reduced the number of efficiency units. (There was some speculation that the reduced number of efficiencies was in response to complaints that the building might become a magnet for students. Perhaps sensitive to the suggestion of reverse ageism, ANC 2B removed text praising the efficiencies reduction from their resolution in support of the project.)

At around ninety feet, the building will fit in with the established scale of the area, and aesthetically it should match the neighboring structures. "It's a stone and brick and precast building, yellow in color, a fair amount of glass, and metal sunshades," says Korns, all of which is in keeping with the modern architecture in the area. Though the area will lose some parking spaces once the lot is gone, the edifice does include 93 below-grade parking spaces. And although any construction is, of course, disruptive, the plan that was approved was the least disruptive of all possibilities that were discussed.

"Some of the plans we were thinking of presenting would have involved demolishing an extension built onto the church in the Eighties, but we decided against that. It would've been too disruptive to the neighborhood and to the church; they have daycare there, and community programs."

Having finally cleared the last hurdle, after withstanding fierce community resistance and making significant concessions and design changes to appease those concerns, did Korns have anything he'd like to say to the community?

"No comment," Korns said dryly.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

Your Next Place

By Franklin Schneider

This Dupont rowhome is definitely one of a kind. Set way back from the street and slightly elevated, it glowers down on you like that one person at the bar who's clearly way out of your class and knows it, and thus is the only person you're interested in, much to the chagrin of your best friend's coworker, who only came out because you were described to her as a "nice, normal guy." Ha ha, as if that even exists!

I loved the bright, wide living room in this place, and it opens out onto a beautiful flagstone patio. The kitchen is incredible, with acres of wraparound counter space. Standing in the kitchen felt like what I imagine it would feel like standing on the bridge of an aircraft carrier. (Or maybe I'm just used to my really tiny, crappy kitchen.) There are also a ton of unique, endearing little touches throughout the house, like the varied color schemes in the bedrooms, or the double ceiling fans in the master bedroom (which I've never seen, but is a downright brilliant idea). Out back, beyond the patio, is a huge two-car garage in which you could easily fit three or four cars (why do you own four cars?!).

My favorite part was the massive jacuzzi tub. My girlfriend was slightly hungover that day and she was like, "do you think I could quickly jump in the tub without the agent noticing?" I think she would've done it too, but she knew I would've immediately called all the other open-housers in and then posted pictures on Facebook of her getting dragged soaking wet and nude from the house by police. We have a love-hate relationship. (A 10/90 split, I'd say, which is still way better than my parents.)

1319 21st Street NW
5 Bedrooms, 3 Full Baths, 2 Partial
$1,900,000

Washington D.C. real estate news

IMF Releases New Renderings for Dupont Hotel

The IMF has released new renderings for the hotel it is fashioning on New Hampshire Avenue in Dupont Circle. The 1964 structure has been used as an IMF apartment building, but with the building in dire need of a renovation and eating up a chunk of IMF dollars, Fund planners decided to sell one of the two buildings that comprised the apartment complex and renovate the remaining building.

With visions a LEED Gold building, the IMF and architecture firm Bonstra | Haresign are in the midst of a full gut and renovation of the building, and have designed a new skin on top of the old shell complete with rain screen (a kind of waterproof membrane under the skin, with breathable cavity in between) and super efficient glass curtainwall system, adding 20 units to the 100-unit building. The building is expected to be completed in about a year. Below are renderings of the new structure. Washington D.C. real estate development news

Your Next Place

By Franklin Schneider

Reading about this gem before the open house, the blurb said it was a "magazine quality" rowhome, and boy was that accurate. With its just-perfect details (the moldings, the exquisitely stained floors, those fairy-tale-ish under-staircase closets) and totally unique furnishings, I felt a distinct "through the looking glass" sensation as I toured the place, almost like I'd stepped into the pages of one of those glossy interior design magazines my ex-girlfriend's mother would always pretend to leaf through in an effort to convince everyone she was, in fact, human. (Nobody was fooled.)

There's a streamlined, well-lit living room (with fireplace), dining area, and the kitchen has beautiful pale gray marble counter tops, Subzero and Viking appliances, and one of a kind custom cabinets. (I don't care how many late-night infomercials you fall for, you will never be able to buy enough crap to fill all these cabinets.) The adjacent sitting room opens, via a pair of french doors, onto a large stone-paved wraparound patio, probably one of the finest outdoor spaces I've seen in this part of the city. It's large and open and simple and private and immensely appealing, aesthetically and otherwise. I like greenspace as much as the next guy, but it can often be more trouble than it's worth. (Take it from someone who weedwhacked his ankle almost down to the bone last summer.)

The master bedroom is a sprawling, luxurious affair, with a cozy window nook and a fireplace. And the master bath, with its very deep soaking tub and glass-enclosed shower, is as nice as the bathrooms in a five-star hotel in Vegas, but without invisible traces of prostitute vomit on every surface. (What, you know it's true.)

1618 Corcoran Street NW
4 Bedrooms, 3.5 Baths
$1,799,000

Historic Dupont Mansion to be Sold at Auction

A historic, 128-year-old mansion, home of the Swann House Bed & Breakfast, located north of Dupont Circle at 1808 New Hampshire Ave, NW, and built in 1883, will be sold at auction next Friday.

The 3-story dwelling dangles crystal chandeliers, and is pocketed with 9 carved fireplaces, offering 12.5 bathrooms, and 12 guest rooms dressed-up in varied themed decor like the "Zen-inspired" "Shanghai'daway" in a dim section of the bottom floor, and the "Nantucket" room in breezy blue shades with seahorse-stamped wallpaper on the well-lit top floor.

The 5,405-s.f. lot, with 7,538-s.f. home - zoned for commercial use - was purchased in 2003 for $329,000, but the 2011 tax assessment pegs the value at $2.19 million; with property taxes over $36,000 this year. The property will be auctioned off by Tranzon Fox at the office of Ober | Kaler on H Street, NW.

Update 10/12: Per Tranzon Fox, the auction has been cancelled due to a bankruptcy filing.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

IMF's Dupont Hotel on Path to Redesign

The IMF wants to clean up its hotel image. No, not the mental image of DSK in a hotel room (eww), but its image in Dupont Circle-West End, where it has run a nondescript apartment-hotel since 1991 for visiting professionals from the IMF and World Bank. The stately location - a visible corner 2 blocks from Dupont Circle at 21st and New Hampshire Ave. - may offer a convenient respite for employees, kitchenettes and multilingual staff, but its tired structure needs a reinvention befitting its international clientele.

To that end, the IMF will gut and refit the 10-story structure, now with 100 apartment units, into a more contemporary visage, taking the same shape as the existing edifice, and sell the smaller of the two buildings that now make up the Concordia Hotel. The IMF will employ Washington D.C. architects Bonstra | Haresign to redesign the '60's motif by gutting the building and keeping the existing concrete frame.
The IMF will sell off the Bond Building (see picture below), now accounting for 78 of the 178 units of the Concordia and connected on the ground floor. Initial plans are for a LEED Gold certified building that will slightly increase the interior space with the same footprint, gaining additional units over the current 100-unit configuration, adding rooftop amenities for residents. The Concordia, appraised by the DC government for $58m, was designed in 1965 by Berla & Able who, in a more inspired moment, also designed the Omni Shoreham hotel in Woodley Park.

Next door, Bonstra | Haresign's designs are already coming to fruition. The architects designed a pavilion that will add more retail to the corner of New Hampshire and M Streets in the West End, where Meiwah now sits. Construction is about midway to completion.

Even if the thought of DSK makes the idea of staying in an IMF hotel unappealing, at least the avenue will get what is expected to be an upgrade, erasing one more '60's building.

Building permits have not yet been issued for the project.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

Congolese Buy 16th Street Mansion for Embassy

A grand home on 16th Street from 1894 that's served many lives is taking on a new one as the Congolese Embassy. Currently under contract, the home is listed at $5.75 million and is a short sale. Built in 1894 for $40,000, the home was designed by William Henry Miller for Supreme Court Justice Henry Brown, who lived in the home until his death in 1913. After stints as home of the Persian Legation and the American Zionist Organization (not simultaneously), the Toutorsky clan bought the house to use as a conservatory, the role it served for forty years, until it was bequeathed to The Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins in 1988. The school sold it, after which it eventually landed in the hands of the current owner, Humberto Gonzalez, who bought the home for $2.2 million in 2001. Gonzalez, who has at times run a bed and breakfast out of the mansion, listed the home for sale in 2008 before contracting with the Congolese - that's Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, i.e. led by Joseph Kabila - not its junior neighbor to the west. Should things go as planned, the embassy will vacate its current digs at 1726 M Street, NW, for a 6,700 s.f. lot with 12,000 s.f. of space. In the meantime, the embassy requested, then withdrew, a plan for a circular driveway, which would have had to go through zoning adjustment. As filed with the BZA by the embassy's lawyer on February 9th, "Time is of the essence in the completion of this Chancery application in order to meet the short sale agreement deadline with the Bank of America. The President and CEO of the America [sic], personally, has gone to great lengths on behalf of the Republic of the Congo to facilitate and expedite this short sale transaction. The inability to timely complete this transaction with the Bank of America would be an embarrassment to the government of the Republic of the Congo."

Washington DC commercial real estate news