Ft. Totten on the Rise

One of Ft. Totten's most transformative developments is at last on the way, and with it, a new neighborhood. The Art Place at Fort Totten, the 826 unit mixed-use complex that sits between the Metro station and South Dakota Avenue, is ready to begin construction "within the next few weeks." The project, conceived by the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, will form a new community with over 300,000 s.f. of retail, 2282 parking spaces, a children's museum, and senior's home in 4 separate buildings.

The plan has been on the boards for years - developers hoped to break ground in 2010 even after the market crash - as part of plans by the city to spur all local owners to coordinate development of the area, one of the last Metro centers that has not seen significant development. The first phase is expected to complete 30-36 months from now.

With construction fences now up, and raze permits all but finalized, developer Jane Cafritz says demolition will commence "in the next 3 to 4 weeks" on "Building A" at South Dakota and Galloway. The multi-phase project will start with the demolition of 5 of the 15 buildings on the 16 acre site in order to make way for 1 of the 4 planned mixed-use buildings. This phase will incorporate about 530 residential units and 110,000 s.f. of retail, though no grocery store at this point due to the Walmart planned across the street, which may be underway as early as this summer.
Cafritz says timing on the project was not affected by the announcement of Walmart. "We're there to be a catalyst in the neighborhood."

Phase 1 will also incorporate a small subsidized housing component and the senior living center; and about half of the 98 units of senior housing will go to current residents of Riggs Plaza. Cafritz notes that the project was designed in phases partly to accommodate existing tenants "that we have great repsect for that have been on site literally for generations." Ultimately all the buildings will be connected by an underground parking garage. All buildings have been approved by DC zoning officials but timing and design issues for Buildings B, C and D have not yet been finalized. While no office space has been planned, Cafritz notes that the first phase will incorporate flex-space that could be either retail or office. The Children's Museum is planned for the second phase of construction.

The Cafritz Foundation had earlier dangled the prospect of hosting both the Washington National Opera and the Shakespeare Theatre for storage, rehearsal space and related shops, a scenario that has now been shelved, but Jane Cafritz says her team is now talking to other similar non-profits. All residential units will be for-rent, the "Foundation owns this and intends to keep this," says Cafritz.

Master planning for the site was done by Ehrenkrantz Eckstut and Kuhn (EE&K), Shalom Baranes Architects (SBA) has designed the first of the four buildings, and MV+A Architects is designing the retail, all to meet basic LEED certification standards.

The eight-story Building C is planned as entirely residential, built in two C-shaped wings, joined at the second level, to accommodate the possibility of a new 3rd Street connecting the Arts Place property to the neighboring Food and Friends property, should the neighbors decide to sell or redevelop at a later date.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

The History Lesson

By Beth Herman

Lacking funds for law school and denied employment as a journalist by the Dayton Herald because of his race, Paul Laurence Dunbar read Tennyson and Shakespeare in empty cars as a $4-a-week elevator boy. When a Washington, D.C. high school was created in 1917 to honor the man who would eventually become what historians called "a seminal African-American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries," the building’s tall ceilings and fluid use of natural light gilded a rich academic tradition – one that paralleled all Dunbar ultimately achieved as a literary icon. Razed in 1977 and succeeded by an adjacent Brutalism-style structure emblematic of its day, in time the eponymous high school was plagued with energy, aesthetic, programmatic and security issues precipitating a new design slated for a late October/early November groundbreaking. Helmed by EE&K Architects+Engineers in association with Moody Nolan, Inc., the modern Dunbar Senior High School will honor the 1917 structure’s design-forward elements, such as its facility for light and ventilation, while positioning it as a cutting-edge 21st century educational and civic presence. The Way We Were According to Moody Nolan D.C. Manager Patrick Williams, a victim of time and trends, Dunbar became “…a palette of everything that could go wrong with a school.” In addition to the building having closed O Street and disengaging one of the plans within the L’Enfant grid, Williams said the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization, OPEFM, has identified a decline in the D.C. student population. In that regard the current high school’s size, at 343,000 s.f., is larger than the current demographic requirement. Accordingly, a decision was made to demolish the 1977 structure, though not before building a new 250,000 s.f. school steps away on the former 1917 site (the initial school measured 263,416 s.f.) so students will not be displaced during construction. “The 1977 high school had open classrooms – no walls around them, with the idea that people would teach and collaborate within a much larger, flexible environment,” said Sean O’Donnell, Principal of EE&K Architects+ Engineers. “What happened is that it became an acoustical problem with people disrupting one another,” he explained, speaking to another of the school’s core issues, adding with the integration of audio-visual equipment and emerging technologies in education, a totally open scenario became even more challenging. A dearth of windows in the 1977 building in response to the energy crisis of the era was thought to enhance energy performance, O’Donnell explained, noting the practice actually had a negative effect on students and teachers. With outside views and natural light credited in achieving an optimal learning environment, the architects’ objective is to include abundant glazing, redolent of the 1917 large and heavily-fenestrated structure, ratcheting up significant points in pursuit of LEED Silver (or higher). 

LEED for Future Leaders 

On the road to LEED, for HVAC purposes a ground source heat pump system will be installed beneath a new ball field, with the current one, which sits in the footprint of the 1917 building where land is now needed for construction, eliminated. An underground cistern will collect rainwater, and water from Dunbar’s projected state-of-the-art swimming pool is expected to help flush toilets and serve as a possible component of the HVAC system. Green roofs will collect and control rain water quantity and quality on the site, and budgetary constraints withstanding, photovoltaics are anticipated to generate power. Terrazzo floors are being explored, according to the architects, due to their ease of maintenance, extended lifecycle and possibility of integrating elements like recycled glass into their design. “You start to think about somebody putting their soda bottle into a recycling bin in the school and you can see how it comes back into the tangible materiality of the building in floors and countertops…,” O’Donnell said. “It’s going to be as diverse an array of sustainable options as we can possibly create here, all with the idea that these things will become educational options as well.” In addition to meeting the LEED educational requirement, students will be exposed to the process of sustainable technology and how it may affect their lives when they leave and enter the workplace. 

 As the 1977 structure is fundamentally concrete, plans to recycle it include grinding for fill or as a component of another concrete product, though not necessarily in the Dunbar project. Demolished steel will also be repurposed. Counting among its celebrated alumni members of government, the arts, military, education, science and sports, including Senator Edward Brooke, Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C. Mayor Vincent Grey and Duke Ellington, Dunbar Senior High School was the first African-American high school in the country. With two academic wings in the 1917 structure orbiting an “armory,” which served as the heart or social axis of the school, the new design will emulate the original concept with an atrium/armory feeding four levels that each contain an “academy,” or area of concentration, like smaller schools within a school. These are a 9th grade academy, an engineering academy, a business academy and computer academy, flanked by faculty offices for an easy integration of students and teachers. Connecting to the four-story academy building, plans are for a two-story facility containing shared resources from the pool, gym, media center with library and large theatre, and student services and operations such as a college counseling space – in a retail storefront design. Additional urban design attributes of the building will include a south-facing entry plaza sited toward an existing park across N Street. The Dunbar Recreation Center, also across the street, will be engaged in the public space infrastructure supporting the school, O’Donnell said. 

Design by Delegation 

“We found that very early in the design process, we were able to interview different alumni,” said Williams, noting a collective decision to honor Paul Dunbar in the entry space also called the “lantern.” An image of the poet along with some writings may complement a wall of honor for the school population. With a long civic view from New York Avenue, and the library/media center sited at the juxtaposition of 1st and N Streets, O’Donnell said the concept at this point is also to dedicate some or part of the media center to Dunbar’s legacy. The son of escaped slaves and author of a dozen books of poetry, four books of short stories, five novels and a play, Dunbar also worked for the Library of Congress. Faced with an uncertain life at best, the determined poet met a litany of insurmountable challenges, influencing generations before his light was extinguished by tuberculosis at the age of 33. “The alumni have told us they really want the building to celebrate the rich academic tradition of Dunbar Senior High School and certainly celebrate Paul Dunbar’s life as an individual,” O’Donnell said of the $122 million project. “We’re tremendously excited about it.”

Fish Market Concept Takes Shape, SW Waterfront PUD Application Coming Soon

While developers of the Southwest Waterfront still aren't ready to promise much in the way of architectural specifics or set-in-stone timelines, they've become rather adept at presenting their vision of transformation. Such acumen is attributable to the vivid imagination of the planners and developers amassed from the project partnership between PN Hoffman, Madison Marquette, and design firm EEK. But if practice really does make perfect, their busy itinerary of power point presentations can't hurt either. Last week, Madison Marquette and master planner Stan Eckstut, Principal of EEK, attended the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) meeting to share their most up to date concepts.

While these informational meetings are important, developers expect to truly kick off the planning review process with their Stage One PUD application submittal in late 2010, early 2011. This will initiate a more intensive public communication process, followed by a Stage Two PUD as more details are hashed out, and fingers crossed, a late 2012 groundbreaking. A full build-out will take seven to eight years from the start of the construction. Although not concrete, developers expect a middle portion of the development, including three buildings and the parks and public space surrounding them (it sounds vague because it is), to be the heart of Phase One. Like all phases of the project, construction will be focused on creating captivating public space first, and erecting buildings second. But as buildings do spring up in each phase of development, they will always do so as a balanced mix of office, retail, and residential, never all one or the other. Developers are also hoping that secured financing and improving market demand will allow them to reach as far west as to include the Fish Market and Market Square in their Phase One plans. "As probably the most dynamic and active aspect of the redevelopment, we want the Fish Market to be an early stage part of the project," says Anselm Fusco, Senior VP of Investments at Madison Marquette, "It would really help set the tone and put a flag in the sand."

But what exactly will Market Square be? What will it look like? After listening to Eckstut's NCPC presentation last week, Office of Planning Direct Harriet Tregoning characterized the concept as a "happy collision of pedestrians, vehicles, and bicycles, where everyone is forced to slow down." Angela Sweeney, Vice President of Marketing at Madison Marquette, seconded this appraisal. In an analogy using the redevelopment site as a giant domestic entity, Fusco described Market Square as "the kitchen of the house, the most dynamic, vibrant, and bustling space." Eckstut promised to preserve the unique and gritty character of the Fish Market, saying "we want to keep the same messiness, the same crazy parking scheme."

The goal is "to preserve the integrity of what's there and intelligently augment it," explains Fusco. A trip to iconic West coast marketplaces such as Granville Island Public Market, Seattle's Pike Place Market, and San Francisco's Ferry Building served as inspiration a plenty for the project planners. This indoor-outdoor marketplace will be re-imagined at the Fish Market/Market Square with fresh seafood spread out on 90-foot long blocks of ice, complemented by a seasonal green market where not only neighborhood foodies will frequent for a bushel of fresh produce, but where also local chefs and restaurateurs will come to cultivate long-term relationships with local farmers and producers. "The idea of what was once the Head House will be re-appropriated as Market Hall (think Pike's Place), an indoor space, but a very permeable place that will feature more permanent tenants selling both prepared foods and hard goods," says Fusco. Supplement the water-meets-land Marketplace concept with a plethora of picnic tables, public plazas, piazza lighting, cafes, bakeries, and a standalone microbrewery, then color it with the "whole neon sign thing" of the Fish Market (as Fusco calls it), finally, populate the space with a dynamic demographic of people, and you've got what Eckstut believes will be "a place that feels authentic and alive and real...a jolt from the federal Mall experience." To top it all off (literally) developers intend to accentuate the Marketplace with a large iconic sign, for purposes of place-making and way-finding.

Such a commerce-centric place would go a long way towards meeting the 20% local business minimum requirement of the Land Disposition Agreement (LDA), but developers believe throughout the Waterfront redevelopment, not just at the Marketplace, the retail makeup will skew towards community-based merchants. There will certainly be a mix of local, regional, and national tenants," says Fusco, "The retail experience in each area will vary." Continuing his "rooms-of-a-house" analogy, the 7th Street Park and kayaking pier dubbed The Landing "will have a very different feel: largely green, with lots of trees and landscaping, more like the dining room of the house, formal and quieter." This unique space will feature a different character restaraunt, a boutique, not a nationally franchised, big-boxed retailer, while 9th Street's City Pier will be "larger scaled with a big long, wide pier, a ferry landing, with lots of activity and tall ships coming in." Here is where the national tenants would be more likely to find a home, Fusco postulates. Further down the Wharf to the east we find the M Street Landing, the family-friendly rec room of the house, possibly featuring an ice rink in the winter and big water fountains for children to frolic in the heat and humidity of the summer--a little more fun and less formal than the dining room. Even farther east, a meandering pedestrian finds an expansive well-scaled public park, featuring a large halo of trees insulating a rolling lawn. As Fusco puts it: "It will be a park in the traditionally conceived sense of it, enabling passive recreation, and providing a sense of quiet."

Although it may be sometime before this impressive vision becomes reality, Angela Sweeney promises that her development team is "focused on creating and activating the site before an actual groundbreaking happens. We will continue to offer expanded and enhanced on-site programming." Another reason for optimism is the LDA stipulation that the $198 million tax increment financing promised by the District must be used for public amenities--further emphasizing the developers genuine focus on creating an assortment of vibrant, diverse, and inviting public arenas, not simply a canopy of concrete. So far, developers have proven they can dream big. How these dreams mesh with the practical parameters of the Planning Office and feasibility of the financial climate remains to be seen.


Washington D.C. Real Estate Development News

Architects and Developers Roll Out Concepts for Southwest Waterfront

Last night at the Arena Stage, as the developers from Madison Marquette and PN Hoffman, as well as lead planning architect Stan Eckstut of EE&K, presented their master plan for the redevelopment of the Southwest Waterfront, one thought really stuck: it's going to take a boatload of time, money, and effort to make these ideas reality. The vision was colorful, imaginative, and mostly astounding, with prospects of a world class waterfront with international port-cities like Genoa, Auckland, Baltimore, and Seattle as inspiration. If only they had a plan for how to pay for it or when to build it.

Unfortunately the idea men are real estate developers, not wizards, and it will take more than a PowerPoint presentation to transform the city's Southwest Waterfront. But with no definite time-line given or dedicated financing, developers seem to be turning to the increasingly common fallback of government-sponsored housing. Some of the basic tenets of their master plan were released: 840,000 s.f. of office space, 335,000 s.f. of ground floor retail, several entertainment and cultural features (maritime museum maybe?), three hotels totaling 600 keys, as well as over 500 residential units, fully half of them being set aside for low-income residents at 60% AMI or less - one of the District's lower end income caps for subsidized housing. The presenters also promised that 60% of the 27 acres would be public space, emphasizing their belief that creating buildings is not their primary focus, it's shaping spaces for a 4-season destination for commerce and recreation.
While the development details set for dry land were compelling, developers stressed that their vision really begins and ends with the water itself. Their plan sees the two major yacht clubs significantly expanded, almost doubling their holding capacity to four or five hundred slips. Their concept also stretches several large piers well out into the channel, each plank serving a different purpose. The "City Pier" will extend from 9th Street, welcoming larger cruising vessels with a bandstand of some kind, where the "mayor can welcome visitors" (Greetings, Mr. Putin, how was your boat trip to America?) and pedestrians can enjoy concerts and fireworks. Planners hoped a modern lighthouse-like tower would anchor this pier on land, but admitted developers had not figured out a way to pay for this yet (not to mention the rest of the project). Another pedestrian-heavy and recreational pier will split the waterfront in half, wedged between the two marinas, planners sketched the picture of a small sailing school, kayaks and boat rentals. On the far west side of the waterfront, a wider pier will feature a plethora of dinner boats, stretching the many future dining options out onto the water.
On land, "The Wharf" will be the main pedestrian-centric thoroughfare, taking the right of way from the few vehicles that venture down the water's edge. Wide bike lanes will run along the inner portion of the expansive sidewalks stretching from current Fish Market to M Street. And developers are hoping that by including a streetcar line down the middle of the street, the District will be compelled to get moving on their pledge to make public streetcar transit a reality. Maine Avenue will shoulder most of the vehicular traffic, with District officials having requested the closing of Water Street, and will feature bus drop offs and a 2,500-space below-grade parking garage. Other land-side features include the re-imagining of the fish market as a year-round "Market Square" featuring brew pubs, cafes, restaurants, and picnic areas. On the opposite side, a large open park at P Street will be vehicle-free and less dense, transitioning the development into the neighborhood.

Cicada-like hisses greeted Eckstut's mention of stretching some buildings to a height of 11-stories and 130-feet, but the architect defended such dimensions as allowing wider, more inviting sight lines and access points to the waterfront, massing density vertically in strategic locations to allow a more porous, open waterfront. A more agreeable talking point was his promise that those currently living on boats at Gangplank Marina would not be threatened and expelled by the new plans.

The details of the development are many, and are difficult to bundle into a comprehensive understand via prose, but blog Southwest Quadrant has a solid bullet-pointed rundown of the major features. The entire PUD will be submitted to the Zoning Commission later this fall, with many lively public hearings set for the spring. Phase I construction can't be expected until at least 2012, despite a recent groundbreaking, and construction could take upwards of eight years. And that's a best case scenario. The development team was awarded the project in January of 2008.

Washington D.C. Real Estate Development News

Insider Interview: Sean O'Donnell and Matthew Bell of Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects

While architectural firms around the region quietly rightsize their workforce, international architects Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn have announced three new projects with the District of Columbia, including a study for the cloverleaf at North Capital Street, a master plan for Northwest’s Mount Vernon Square neighborhood and the modernization of Glover Park’s Benjamin Stoddert Elementary. Not a bad start to 2009. Oh, and they're designing the PN Hoffman-led development of the Southwest Waterfront. Enough to keep them busy for weeks. Two principals with the firm, Sean O’Donnell and Matthew Bell, took some time to sit down with DCmud.

Tell us a little about the firm and your approach to architecture.

SO: There are 35 people in this location. We also have offices in New York, Los Angeles and Shanghai. We’re an international practice and this just happens to be one of our offices. Our offices all collaborate on projects, so our work and expertise flow back and forth. I’ve worked in all four of the offices, for example, and that’s quite common. Our skill set, I think, is a little different than some of the other practices here in town. We do a lot of very large scale master planning, such as the Southwest Waterfront and on other things like Reservation 13 or Inner Harbor East. We’ve done a lot of waterfront planning across the country. That’s part of the large scale vision of the practice and we take that with us into any project, of any scale. Even when we’re doing building scale projects, like the many schools we’ve done here in the District, there’s always a larger vision of how it engages its context and the community.

MB: In DC, we’ve done the School without Walls, the George Washington University master plan, the Georgia Avenue master plan from just north of Howard, and we helped with the Wisconsin Avenue plan. We did the U Street plan and the Reservation 13 master plan that’s in development. We did the baseball stadium site study that located the stadium down where it was built. We worked with Mayor’s office on Great Streets. Right now, we’re doing the Deanwood Recreation Center over in Northeast.

You are the master planner for the Southwest Waterfront project, possibly the most prominent single development in the city. Tell us how you were chosen for that project.

MB: There was an international selection process between the Office of Planning and the developer who was eventually selected, Hoffman-Streuver. I don’t know who else had submitted, but our partner, Stan Eckstut – who was one of the founders of the firm – has made a living doing great waterfronts. He did the waterfront in Long Beach, California, the waterfront in Los Angeles and the promenade in Battery Park. We’ve all learned a lot from Stan about how to approach that kind of project.

What can we expect from the Southwest Waterfront? The only other true counterpart it has at present is the Georgetown Waterfront. What will the comparisons be once it’s completed?

SO: Well, one thing we learned from Stan about waterfronts is how important the water actually is. You need to have a plan for the water too, and not just focus on the land side of things.

MB: What happens on the water totally influences the rest of the project. I think the general feeling is DC doesn’t have, outside of the Washington Harbor, a place where the city comes right to the water. If you think about, most of Georgetown pulls back and places like the Navy Yard never really went right to the water and, for years, were industrial. And, of course, the Anacostia is silted up and never became a great port. If you go back and look at the L’Enfant plan for the city, people were originally going to come by water and then travel by canals, so it was going to be a waterfront city. It never really happened that way and the idea is to finally bring the city to the water with people living there, working there, hotels, retail, restaurants and all different kinds of activity.

How do you go about integrating those original L’Enfant designs into your plans for a modern development?

MB: We base all of our work on what works in other places, so we spend a lot of time looking at precedents. We feel very strongly that great places are made by looking at other places, taking those ideas and using them as a basis for new ideas. I don’t think necessarily we’re trying to reinvent; rather, we’re taking the best of what you have at other waterfronts across the world and trying to make something that’s unique for DC. The L’Enfant plan is one aspect of that, but there are other ideas and other places as well. There’s an idea to connect to the Mall along 9th Street, there’s an idea to make Maine Avenue a vibrant place with active waterfront uses that ties in the existing fish market in a creative way.

EE&K designed the Inner Harbor East project in Baltimore. How would you rate the success of that project, and how would you do it differently if you were to start over again?

MB: What we tried to do there was to design a network of public places. We realized that the market might change, the buildings might change, but if you have strong idea about the kind of places you’re trying to make and you preserve those in the plan, you’ll get a general network of public spaces all along the waterfront. I think a lot of what we’ve learned over the years is that though market forces do have their effect on cities, but if you have a strong idea about place, those things will work out.

SO: When you think about the timeframe that it takes to implement these kinds of plans, the dynamic changes throughout the course of it. Battery Park City has been in the marking for 25, 30 years and we’re actually doing the last two buildings right now to complete the plan. It’s taken a generation.

MB: We try to take the long view. Stan’s been working on Battery Park City for 25 years. We designed the Hill East Waterfront in 2001 and here we are in 2009. Lots of time these master plans do take a long time for their complete realization, and we understand that.

SO: Part of our approach, though, is that since these things can take time, the first phase feels intact and complete. So while there may be 60-acres of development to go, that initial project feels like it’s not a construction site. That’s critical.

The District recently selected EE&K to design a “North Capitol Gateway,” but the details were left a little vague. Can you tell us what shape that project will take?

MB: We’re working now for the Office of Planning, looking at the cloverleaf at North Capitol and Irving. They’ve asked us to imagine different options that are more pedestrian friendly, less highway-like than what’s there now and that work better with the surrounding property owners and uses – like the hospital, Catholic University and the redevelopment of the Armed Forces Retirement Home. The NCPC master plan identifies this as a place that could have more memorials and things, so we’re trying to look at this a new gateway to the monumental core. It could be much more like a parkway, not unlike Rock Creek Park. One of the challenges is that there is a lot of green space in that part of town, but very little of it is successful. They’re seeing this as potential catalyst project, but we’re just really starting it now.

You’ve both worked on projects all over the world, giving perspective about the District's development process. How would you rate the process, especially with regard to the height limit and other procedural differences that set it apart from other parts of the country.

MB: There are plenty of cities that have tall buildings that are really ugly. If the restriction was such an economic deterrent, then there wouldn’t be developers in this town.

SO: We do work across the country, but both Matt and I live in the District. Every time I come back, I always enjoy returning to Washington. And I think the process here is really quite good. It can be complicated, but, having worked in other jurisdictions, there’s a level of professionalism here with the CFA, NCPC and Office of Planning. Their interests are the same as ours; we’re both after a very quality urban environment. The public process here can actually elevate the results.

MB: I agree. Compared to other places, there are a lot of very smart people working at the regulatory agencies here. And with all the specific experiences we’ve moving projects through the regulatory process here, they only seem to get better. I can’t really sit here and say, “This is bad” or “that’s bad.” Sometimes, it’s lengthy, but it is anywhere. Once you set that aside, their concerns are always justified. It’s that kind of balance between the imperatives of the private development world and the regulatory bodies that results in a better product. Most of these bodies recognize that good development is good, and they know that there are certain kinds of development they don’t want to do. We don’t want to do them either – drive-ins, strip malls, and that kind of thing. We share the same objectives. DC is a good place to practice.

DC Officially Awards SW Development Contract

Some day, there may be just be a reason to visit Southwest. Last week, Mayor Fenty awarded a contract to Hoffman-Struever Waterfront LLC, a partnership between PN Hoffman, Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, McCormack Baron Salazar, ER Bacon, Acresh, Gotham, City Partners and Triden. The multiplex LLC now officially holds the contract to turn 23 acres of land along the Washington Channel, into a riverside paradise. Back in September, 2006, Hoffman-Struever was officially selected as the master developer for the gargantuan project which allowed the team to establish an Exclusive Rights Agreement with the District. The Agreement was signed in April 2007. Now, the Land Disposition Agreement is being drafted - and although the contract has been awarded, the Mayor still needs to wait for the City Council to approve disposition to Hoffman-Struever and the nearly $200 million in Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and Payment-In-Lieu-of-Taxes (PILOT) financing. City officials hope to get the legislation approved by Spring of this year. The enormous project is projected to create more than 2 million s.f. of new development and provide 2,800 permanent jobs in the community, as well as about 3,000 construction jobs, expected to take a long, long time. The District will finance about $200 million of the developmental costs, accounting for roughly 18% of the projected expense; no matter (some say), once completed, the "world-class urban waterfront" is projected to create more than $32 million in tax revenue each year, compared to the $6 million that the land currently brings in. 

Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn was selected as the Master Architect back in June 2007. The details of their plan include 767 new housing units - both rental and condos - about 400,000 s.f. of office space, 280,000 s.f. of retail space, a 360-room hotel, 150,000 s.f. of cultural space, and the renovation of the historic southwest fish market. Developers aspire to achieve LEED Silver certification for all nine buildings. Along with all of the new buildings proposed for the area, the development team is including heaps of landscaped open space into the deal, preparing to cultivate more than 14 acres of parks, a half-mile promenade and bike trails for southwest's newest residents. 

The piers will also get their fair share of upgrades. The development team hopes to pick architects for the vertical phases of construction in the summer of 2008. Hoffman-Struever's vision dissects the area into three separate "neighborhoods." The City Pier District, located in the northwest corner of the site, is proposed to be the retail center of the area, laying hold to most of the restaurants and the hotel, thereby being the most likely place to attract visitors (and tourists). Notable mini-developments within this area include a water-taxi service (which with our luck will be 'zoned' - $4 if you want to get in, $25 if you want to go all the way to the other side), and a pedestrian bridge connecting the site to the National Mall. 

Then there's the Esplanade District, which PN Hoffman describes as the center of the project where most of the residential will be sited, along with offices and some neighborhood-serving retail. Finally, the southeastern corner of the site will hold the Cultural Park District which will include a 5-acre "cultural park" and other amenities that will serve as the center of the "cultural zone;" classes will be held on-site courtesy of the Living Classrooms Foundation and the National Maritime Heritage Foundation. “Over the past two years we’ve studied waterfronts all over the world, reached out and forged working relationships and agreements with existing leaseholders, and conducted over 100 meetings with regulatory agencies and surrounding stake holders,” said Monty Hoffman, CEO of PN Hoffman. “This is just the beginning of the process to create a ‘world class’ waterfront. We will continue to work with the mayor’s office on making a waterfront that draws visitors from everywhere, but our first commitment is to the people of Washington, DC. The Potomac River is our greatest natural resource and first and foremost, this project will reconnect Washington with its waterfront. We look forward to working with the City Council to achieve passage of the Mayor's legislative proposal so that District residents can see a shovel in the ground by 2010.” You go Monty.

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