Zoning Commission Approves Hine School Redevelopment Project

Observers of the long-running saga that is the redevelopment of Capitol Hill’s Hine School can finally turn the page. Yesterday, DC’s zoning commission definitively approved the project’s PUD, which means developers Stanton-EastBanc can now move forward and focus on next steps: gathering financing and preparing for a groundbreaking next summer.

Last night’s meeting was the project’s final action hearing. At a meeting last month, commissioners requested clarification on a number of mostly-small matters, like whether trucks would be limited to accessing the project’s loading docks by driving in rear-first. Stanton-EastBanc representatives submitted their responses—in the loading dock case, pointing out that the entire design would have to be altered in order to facilitate front-end loading—and the commissioners were satisfied.

The Hine School project—which will include residential units and ground floor retail in Capitol Hill’s busy Eastern Market area—has moved slowly since it was awarded to the developers September 2009. Intense community engagement has necessitated a bevy of meetings and consultations, and numerous revisions.

But the project’s community-engagement process has finally come to an end, and the developers are ready to move on. “We’re seeking financing for the project, and are starting that whole process of getting building permits,” explained Alex Golding, a senior associate with Stanton Development Company. He said that the partners started assembling construction documents and drawings some time ago in order to hit the ground running once the PUD was approved, and will be soliciting construction bids in early 2013. “We’re closing with the District [on the property] in July 2013 and hope to begin construction right after that,” he added.

Of course, not everything related to the project’s community aspects has been sewn up. Questions of where the Eastern Market flea market will be located are still unresolved. The market—which has been located on the Hine School site and is currently run by two different private entities—will temporarily operate on a closed 7th Street, but the city hasn’t yet approved that location as a permanent solution. To boot, questions of whether those private groups will continue to run the weekend markets, or whether the city should take them over, are still pending.

Washington, D.C., real estate development news

Hine School Project: Planning Not Quite Done

Sometimes ‘final’ doesn’t mean final. Exhibit A: the DC Zoning Commission’s meeting on Monday night to take final action on Capitol Hill’s Hine School development.

Developers Stanton/EastBanc may have arrived at the meeting expecting a resolution of zoning issues, but it turned out that the commissioners weren’t quite done. A host of questions arose that the developers will need to respond to by October 29th, and the topic will be taken up again by the Commission, probably on November 19th.

The commissioners spent almost an hour going over details of the project and materials that the developers had turned in following the most recent zoning meeting on September 10, and came up with new questions. Many of the issues were quite technical, covering topics like the District’s First Source hiring policy and the construction management agreement; others, such as whether trucks would have adequate space to unload, were slightly broader. But the result is a slowed down process for Stanton/EastBanc, which may have to re-open discussions with the local ANC in order to resolve the questions that the committee posed.

“We were obviously disappointed that the final vote didn’t happen last night, since we’re on a tight timeframe; we need to move forward to close on land and start construction,” explained Mary Mottershead, EastBanc’s head of development. “Some of the items won’t be ready for completion when we need the [permits] for building,” she worried.

The Hine School project—which will include residential units and ground floor retail in Capitol Hill’s busy Eastern Market area—has moved slowly since it was awarded to the developers September 2009. Intense community engagement has necessitated a bevy of meetings and consultations, and numerous revisions, and these final zoning commission meetings are the result of roughly 15 hours of hearings that occurred over the summer.

Still, even as the development team responds to the questions that arose, they are focused on the future, said Mottershead. “We’re still moving forward,” she said. “We’re working on construction drawings and permit plans, and we’re hopeful the next meeting will be the last one.”

Washington D.C. real estate development news

D.C. Zoning Commission Votes on Hine Redevelopment, Final Decision Still to Come

Anyone who thought last night’s Zoning Commission hearing would be the final word on the Hine School redevelopment project’s longstanding PUD and map amendment efforts was surely disappointed.

Representatives from Stanton-EastBanc, the development team for the Capitol Hill mixed-use project, as well as from the architecture firm behind the project, Esocoff & Associates, gathered in front of the Zoning Commission, joining a range of neighbors largely opposed to the project in its current form. But the commission failed to vote on the project, opting instead to gather more information from the developers and reconvene on October 15th for a final decision.

The meeting, which was closed to comments, came on the heels of some fifteen hours of Zoning Commission hearings that occurred in June and July. During those meetings, civic groups and concerned citizens presented their concerns about the future of the Eastern Market flea market and worries that the project included too little open space for the community. Questions about the project’s north building, which is slated to include only subsidized housing, also arose.

In mid-August, the development team submitted an 81-page final PUD order that responded to many of those complaints. New elements include better design of the north building; description of a compromise that has been reached with Eastern Market’s flea market managers, allowing vendors to use an additional street for the weekend market; and details about a 46-point memorandum of agreement between the developers and the area’s ANC commissioners which, among other things, would limit the project’s retail elements to specifically commercial streets.

During last night’s hearing, the commissioners leafed through the document. “There are a lot of improvements,” said Commissioner Turnbull. “I think the pluses outweigh the negatives.” Still, he had concerns about waste removal and the project’s loading docks, while Chairman Hood questioned whether the project might eventually cause debilitating traffic problems in the area.

In the end, the commissioners voted unanimously to ask the development team for more information on a handful of points, including details on how 55-foot-long trucks will serve the project’s south building, how garbage pickup will occur in the alley north of C Street, and a revised floor area ratio calculation that doesn’t include C Street. The developers have until September 24th to respond.

While the development team was largely satisfied with the hearing, many neighbors left unhappy. “I thought [the commissioners] would do more,” said Ivan Frishberg, the 6B02 ANC commissioner. “I thought they’d ask for more in terms of the structure and design of the building.”

Washington, D.C., real estate development news

Eastern Market Concepts OK'd by Historic Review Board

The biggest development on Capitol Hill in recent memory - development of the aged Hine Junior High School - was reviewed before the Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) yesterday, with the board approving designs for the C Street public plaza, overall landscape plan, and both the north and south residential buildings. In keeping with Capitol Hill's style, the design includes: newly added cornices, brick sidewalks, granite curbs, 36-inch iron "hair pin" fences, and a continuous perimeter of trees in 6' x 6' tree boxes.  New design elements (since April) include: a 2-foot reduction in height of the North residential building, whose façade has been split into five distinct sections - what was one long continuous gallery has been broken down "into a series of repeating storefront windows." 

With recommendation from HPRB for architectural diversity appropriate to Capitol Hill real estate, the South residential building (on 7th) now takes inspiration from Late Victorian architecture (not High Victorian) and boasts a "tripartite" facade (lighter gradations in masonry color). It has also been separated into vertical sections, like the North residential building (shown above), with an addition of 3-story protruding retail bays. Located at Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, between 7th and 8th Streets along Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, and across from the Metro station, the 3.2 acre Hine Development is most notably where the flea market portion of the Market has been held every Sunday, year round, since the 1970s. The development team led by Stanton and Eastbanc has been seeking ongoing conceptual review with HPRB since April, when the mixed-use project was first reviewed in its entirety. A small chunk of the project was unanimously approved by the Board last month, with the remainder also unanimously approved by the Board today. The development team was selected in July of 2009, and in turn selected landscape architect Oehme, Van Sweden & Associates, and lead architect Escoff & Associates. The open meeting was a showcase for some heartfelt lamentation of the overall size, but most passionate were those who spoke out against a decrease in public space, and in the flea market operations (down to 68 tents). It was agreed that approximately 120 vendors are currently on site (in the Hine School yard/parking lot) at any one time on Sundays. It was also generally agreed that this does not fall into the jurisdiction of the HPRB, and so all parties (interested in the number of tents on site) will reconvene at the Deputy Mayor's office, where the future of the flea market vendors will be determined. 

Last month, HPRB approved revised designs for the 8th Street residential building and the Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th Street office and retail buildings. HPO staff reviewer Steve Callcott stressed the desire for the development's new retail components - along 7th Street - to serve as a connector between Eastern Market and Barracks Row. The next step for the development team, after a visit to the Deputy Mayor's office, is a trip to the Zoning Commission for PUD approval, which could be in September, if the project is to keep the timeline set by the District. 

Washington D.C. retail and real estate development news

Hine School Project Shifts Plans

The Hine School Project, a development won by Stanton-EastBanc, is shaping up to provide more residential units than outlined in initial plans, partly because of business pullouts.

As reported by Michael Niebauer in Washington Business Journal, residential space has been allocated an additional 100,000 square feet, up from 144,594 in 2009. Though the additional residences will alleviate the District's current housing pinch, the shift was the result of the Tiger Woods Foundation decision to nix youth center plans and the International Relief and Development aborting a headquarters move. The total square footage has dropped nearly 100,000, to approximately 558,000 s.f. square feet of retail, office and residential space.

"We're still early in the process on this project," says Dave Garrison, Commissioner for ANC 6B. "We're not sure how static the plans are. There are still many layers to go before the formal submission of design." Stanton-EastBanc will feature slides on its website that reflect the changes in the design within the next couple days.

Garrison says the the plans will be formally reviewed by the Historic Preservation Board in early March, with a second hearing before the ANC board later in the month. It would then go on to the zoning board, at which point there will be a special meeting regarding the project's community benefits and amenities, since it creates greater density than is currently permitted by zoning. "This is an idiocyncratic process that will be shaped by circumstances, timing and the economy that really is a wide open discussion about the plans," said Garrison.

If all goes smoothly, the projected calendar for development is to apply for permits late this year, with construction to begin in 2012, with a completion date of 2015.

Washington DC real estate development news

Future Starchitects Redefine Eastern Market Metro Plaza

If you add up their respective ages, they barely break 100, yet five Catholic University School of Architecture and Planning seniors are proving that the one about “age and wisdom going hand in hand” may be a tired old adage at that.

Masterminding a radical redesign proposal for the Eastern Market Metro Plaza for their senior Comprehensive Building Design Studio (CBDS), in which faculty-directed student teams form “architecture firms” and compete against other “firms,” Connor Smith, Ron Elmo, Scott Gillespie, David Edwards and Chloe Rice are approaching their studio project in true “Vitruvian” style.

“Architects in general need to know a little bit about everything,” said Rice, a former politics major and daughter of a New York architect and landscape architect. “In his Ten Books on Architecture, Vitruvius said we need to know history; we need to know physics; we need to know everything.”

Left Brain Right Brain

Applying those principles to their work, the five students - who named their firm GEERS Architects (an acronym of the first letters of their last names) - parlayed a $100,000 DDOT-funded proposal to build a 1,000 s.f. information hub for the Eastern Market Metro on a tired and defaced triangular park site diagonally across from the Metro station, into a different concept entirely. Recognizing that the 50,000 s.f. site also had the
potential to include exquisite but low maintenance grasses and gardens (including a meditation garden), Japanese Maples, flowering trees, a sustainable water harvesting system, bike hub and coffee bar, the students expanded their design in this regard and also determined it should encompass a site of similar size and dimension across the street. In short, what was initially a plan for a single information kiosk, which Rice quipped usually looks like a “space ship” that has been dropped onto a site, would become a 100,000 sf oasis - or urban destination - replete with lush landscaping and key lighting for safety during nighttime use.

“These spaces are very open but there are dark areas and someone had to have time to mess up those benches,” said Michigan native Dave Edwards, who’d originally come to the university for a summer program as a high school junior. Pointing to remnants of a heavily vandalized park seating area, Edwards and company emphasized that a comprehensive lighting system could also serve to connect the two Eastern Market Metro Plaza sites to surrounding restaurants, Barracks Row and Capitol Hill.


Confluence of Clients

“When DDOT came to us, in their eyes they had one client, and that was the tourist,” said Ron Elmo, a Philadelphian who admitted he was equally smitten with art and business, which propelled him into architecture. “But we soon realized that the other client was the resident,” he added, noting part of the design studio process for them as seniors is to learn to interface with the community: to work with the varied clients and agendas a professional architect might face.

Per studio director and Visiting Assistant Professor of Architecture Rauzia Ally, area residents and businesses are truly on board with the depth and scope of the expanded Eastern Market Metro Plaza Project. It is also possibly the first CBDS project that could bridge the gap from concept to reality, with DDOT funds to be supplemented by the community. Ally said that construction documents and permitting will be addressed during the summer, with a projected autumn build date if everything is on course. “This community is very active, so they don’t feel they’ll have a problem raising the rest of the money,” Ally said.

A Little Competition

In addition to GEERS architects, 17 other student firms have considered the Eastern Market site, each creating their own buildable architectural design proposal, according to Scott Gillespie. Raised in New Jersey where he and his father were card carrying disciples of “Bob the Builder,” Gillespie says, “In freshman year, they told us that architects design the stage that people live their lives on. When you’re designing, you’re creating spaces, and I always try and picture what it would be like to walk through that space, as I did with Eastern Market.”

According to Connor Smith, “architecture changes your perception of everything around you.” A Manhattan resident with New Jersey roots, Smith was bitten by the architecture bug during a high school year abroad studying art and architectural history at Cambridge University. He is credited by his GEERS peers for generating the site’s more sustainable moves, including the use of materials such as Turfstone in its water harvesting system and a green roof for the information hub.

And The Envelope Please
On May 6, celebrated architects from around the U.S. will come to CUArch to select the winning design – or designs – with a composite design not out of the question in terms of proceeding with the execution of the project. Overall, Gillespie said, “It’s nice to see the community is thinking what we’re thinking.”

The Dirt on... Capitol Hill (East)

Neighborhood Vibe:

I live in a 1-bedroom condo with my husband. Let's call it cozy. Our condo building is home to law students, Hill staffers and long-time residents. My downstairs neighbor is a retired woman who has lived at our intersection for so long, she remembers when the new condo around the corner was a crack house (no joke). My condo could be a microcosm for the area: an odd mix of young professionals, young families, long-time residents, and active older people.

There are slight tensions in the neighborhood as Hill East continues to grow and change. When I was writing freelance from home I used to joke that as the underemployed political wonk next door, I was personally killing the street cred of the kids around the corner. Joking aside, my husband and I have had a couple unfortunate incidents with people in the neighborhood: first, he was mugged last September, then he and a friend were both shot with a pellet gun one night, and recently we had fruit catapulted at us as we walked home. The upside is that the police are incredibly responsive and very good about following up on reported incidents. (Both the mugger and the shooter were later caught, we decided not to report the fruit pummeling.) And since the perpetrators are at least creative; their entrepreneurial spirit gives us great stories for cocktail parties.

Retail and Restaurants
The occasional un-neighborly conduct does not overshadow the positive parts of living in Hill East. I love living in a neighborhood within a large city and having almost anything I want within walking distance. I have a new grocery store with the Jenkins Row Harris Teeter. I can walk to Eastern Market for not only fresh local produce, meats and fantastic cheeses but how convenient is it to be able to buy handmade jewelry, Indian pottery and a gently used couch all within 20 feet of each other? I even bought my "room-defining" painting from an artist at the Market.

The area is home to tons of thriving small businesses. Hills Kitchen is among my favorite shops in DC, not just my neighborhood. The independent gourmet kitchenware store is a great place for unique gifts or for an aspiring chef to stock up on the newest Staub dutch oven - and, they even offer cooking lessons. Owner Leah Daniels cares about her neighborhood and clearly loves her job; she spent several hours (after the shop had closed) working on my wedding registry and walking through the store, debating the pros and cons of various items. Who does that anymore? Nearby, Remix is one of the best vintage clothing shops around - with new items coming in all the time and reasonable prices, I love to stop in to browse, and rarely leave empty-handed. On the more practical side of retail is Frager’s Hardware. No matter what you need for home repair, Fragers will have it - along with other surprises like camping gear, bocce balls and bubble machine rentals. They also have a great garden section, where I have bought my Festivus (for the rest of us) Fern the past several years.

Hill East proper doesn't really offer much in the way of restaurants or bars. There are a few, such as Trusty's and Wisdom, but for the most part I need to go elsewhere for dinner or drinks. Luckily I don’t have to go too far. Barracks row/8th street is becoming a thriving restaurant and bar corridor. One of my favorite locations is Belga Cafe for their amazing Belgian beer list. A more recent arrival and family-friendly food establishment is Matchbox. Down the street two new bars, Molly Malone’s and Lola’s, offer comfortable locations to hang out, watch the game and get late night bar food (Lola’s serves food until 1 AM on the weekend). If I am looking for a more intimate and upscale setting, Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar has a fantastic wine list as well as good food, cheeses and charcuterie (though you might want save this for special occasions and pass on the $16 cheeseburger).

One exception to the walking distance rule is the National's Stadium, but no fear! The Circulator bus picks up on 8th street and takes me right to the Navy Yard Station--the bus is probably one of my favorite parts of going to the Nat's games.

Coming Soon
There are also some new additions planned for Pennsylvania Ave near Potomac Ave metro. Annie and Teddy's Po Boys, a New Orleans style cafe with inside and outside seating, is Joe Englert's newest project; Englert is the man behind DC9, The Big Hunt, The Pug, Rock and Roll Hotel, etc. The new cafe would feature live jazz music 4 days a week (Thurs-Sat night and Sat-Sun brunch). I wouldn't quite call Hill East "on the verge," but I would definitely say it's getting there.

TransportationThe closest metro stations to Hill East are Potomac Avenue and Stadium Armory and Eastern Market. The 34 and 36 buses, which can take you to downtown, Georgetown and all the way to Friendship heights, stop at the Potomac Avenue Metro station, as does the B2 bus, which is your round trip ticket to H St. NE. There are lots of other buses, but honestly, I don't take them that much. There are also tons of ZipCars nearby several right across from the metro and lots stashed in residential areas.

Is it for you?
For some people my age (20-something), the Hill doesn't offer enough of the urban bustle they want. No, it doesn't have the edginess of U Street (we've got the crime, just not the trendy bars) or the nightlife of Dupont or Adams Morgan (we have a jumbo slice, but it's never crowded). Most lights are out by 10 PM - both bars and houses. And the tree-lined streets of Eastern Market are frequented by families with strollers. Call me old beyond my years, but I'd rather have to cab, bus or metro somewhere to go out for a rowdy evening, than have that kind of noise and crowd near my home. So I'll continue to love the bar crawl scene on H Street with a cab ride back to my generally quiet neighborhood (barring any fruit attacks).

I moved to Washington for a school, for a job, and for a lifestyle no other city can provide. I choose to call Hill East home because when I walk to the metro, crossing Pennsylvania Avenue, the Capitol Dome view gets me every time. Washington is my city and Hill East is my neighborhood.

Washington DC real estate news

Stanton- EastBanc Chosen as Hine School Developer

Today, neighbors of Eastern Market got an answer to a long-outstanding question: What will go in the place of the former Hine Junior High School on Capitol Hill? Washington DC officials announced that Stanton-EastBanc had won the right to develop, with a plan that includes a mix of retail, residential and open space to appease the outspoken Capitol Hill neighborhood. The project may break ground as soon as 2011. The selected team includes Stanton Development Corporation, Eastbanc Inc., Dantes Partners and Weinstein Esocoff Architects. The plan for the 3.5 acre lot in Capitol Hill's Eastern Market neighborhood calls for a total of 510,000 s.f. of total development. The new development will include approximately 150 apartments and over 200,000 s.f. of office space. Currently slated for the spaces are the nonprofit International Relief and Development and the Shakespeare Theatre Company. Additionally, the space will offer 150 parking spaces and "neighborhood-serving retail and restaurants." Stanton appears to have gotten the upper hand for several reasons. The group is entirely DC-based, has a proven track record in several buildings in the Capitol Hill area and did not request any subsidy from the District for the project. 

With support from several active and outspoken Capitol Hill neighborhood groups, Stanton secured the project out of an original field of 11 bidders. The competitive project had the Eastern Market neighborhood a-buzz, forming coalitions in favor of one plan or another. Leah Daniels, owner of Hill's Kitchen in Eastern Market hosted meetings at her shop so the StreetSense/DSF/Menkiti Group could show off their plan. It would have included a boutique Kimpton Hotel, which Daniels felt - still feels - is an important addition to the neighborhood. Daniels said that while the group she wanted to win didn't, at least it wasn't the team she didn't want: Bozzuto Group/Scallan Properties/Lehr Jackson Associates/E.R. Bacon Development, LLC/Blue Skye Development/CityStrategy, LLC. She did credit the Stanton group for being willing to continue to work with the community to ensure that the space maximizes its location in the heart of the Eastern Market community. According to Joe Sternlieb of EastBanc, the developers are looking for neighborhood-serving retail. They have letters of interest from restaurants including: Cafe Leopold, Kaz Sushi, Dolcezza Gelato, J. Cholatier, Tryst Diner by Constantine Stavropoulos, The Boat House Restaurant of Charlottesville and the Twins Jazz Club. Retail interest includes: Dawn Price Baby (looking to expand from current Hill location) and B&M Wine among others. Sternlieb indicated that retail spaces will be no larger than 5,000 s.f. each and will likely average 2,000-3,000 s.f. per tenant. In July, the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED), Valerie Santos, narrowed the field of competitors to three and encouraged them to submit final offers for the right to redevelop the site. The school was closed in 2007, in part to free up funds for the DCPS headquarters. Responses to the District’s request for final offers were due in early August. Today's announcement marks another high point in the vibrant neighborhood which recently saw the reopening of the Eastern Market after the fire that ravaged the historic structure in April 2007. Councilmember Tommy Wells (Ward 6) said that the new site should reflect how "special" the Capitol Hill neighborhood is and that the developers and the city have "a lot more work to do" to make sure the project enhances the neighborhood.

Capitol Hill commercial real estate news

Capitol Hill School Developer Short List Narrows, Slightly

For what its worth, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development announced today that three teams have been selected to submit "final offers" for the right to redevelop the former Hine Junior High School on Capitol Hill. That would be newsy, but for the fact that on June 9th the District of Columbia narrowed the list from 6 developers to 4. The upshot: the team of National Development Campus / Western Development has been eliminated.

No word yet on why Western Development got the boot, nor why the elimination of one of the four remaining teams was significant. The Deputy Mayor's office issued a press release on Thursday inviting all developers (all except Western, that is) to submit "final" bids in "early August," stating that "the three proposals were the closest in line with the Capitol Hill community's preference...because they all called for a mix of neighborhood-serving retail, new housing and great public spaces." Presumably, Western failed to meet those needs. The Western team, led by local Ben Miller, who helped develop Chinatown and owns Georgetown Park, was recently heralded by the Citypaper for its concept of a nonprofit incubator which, unlike the other contestants, obviously failed to make the appropriate to-do about retail and housing around the Eastern Market site, leaving it well-funded but too fuzzy for local tastes.

The school was closed in 2007, in part to free up funds for the DCPS headquaters. Responses to the District’s request for final offers will be due in early August and a selection could be made as soon as the end of August.

DC Announces Contenders for Eastern Market School Site

Fresh off last week’s announcement that Eastern Market will reopen in June, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development has gone public with their short-list of candidates for redevelopment of the nearby Hine Junior High School at 335 8th Street, SE.

The 43-year-old, 131,300 square foot educational facility was shuttered in 2007, in order to redirect $6.2 million worth of school funds towards leasing costs for the District of Columbia Public Schools' headquarters at 825 North Capitol Street, NE. Now, according to ODMPED officials, the various proposals aim to repurpose the Eastern Market site for “combinations of new housing, office space, nonprofit space and neighborhood-serving retail.” The six contending teams are:

1. The Bozzuto Group/Scallan Properties/Lehr Jackson Associates/E.R. Bacon Development, LLC/Blue Skye Development/CityStrategy, LLC

2. Equity Residential/Mosaic Urban Partners

3. Quadrangle Development Corporation/CapStone Development, LLC

4. National Leadership Campus/Western Development Group

5. Stanton Development Corporation/Eastbanc Inc./Autopark Inc./The Jarvis Companies/Dantes Partners

6. StreetSense/DSF/Menkiti Group

District administrators will be hosting a community showcase of all six proposals on June 10^th at Tyler Elementary at 1001 G Street, SE. The meeting will begin at 6 PM and is open to the public.

Eastern Market Set for Grand Reopening in June

Mayor Adrian Fenty announced yesterday that Eastern Market, Southeast Washington’s famed and historically protected marketplace that was damaged by a fire in April 2007, will re-open – with much fanfare – on Friday, June 26th. The surprise pronouncement of the restoration’s completion came at the end of a tour of the facility, led by Office of Property Management (OPM) Administrator Curtis Clay, that highlighted the $22 million worth of both new and soon-to-be restored features in the works for the area landmark.

The development team – led by OPM, along with Quinn Evans Architects, the Minkoff Company, Keystone Plus Construction, FEI Construction and The Temple Group – plans to reinstate the North Hall’s former use a center for community activity and arts events with a new demountable stage and dance floor. Meanwhile, Fenty stressed that all of Eastern Market’s original vendors will return to their former locations in the building’s Southern Hall, while their temporary home across the street will be repurposed for an as-of-yet undesignated community use.

Additionally, Eastern Market’s basement level will feature a newly relocated pottery studio and, in a first for the 138-year-old complex, new amenities which will include air conditioning and separate men’s and women’s restrooms. OPM was also quick to point out a newly-installed sprinkler system, with the hope that it will prevent the type of incident that led to the market’s shuttering for two plus years.

Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, who was absent from the afternoon’s proceedings due to a family illness, released the following statement via press release:

"I’m thrilled that Eastern Market is on the verge of reopening. The devastating fire was a blow to our whole community, but the way in which the city rallied around the Market as more than just a building proved how important it is to the fabric of our neighborhood."


That neighborhood will be able to celebrate the project’s completion en masse the day after the ribbon-cutting. Fenty, who called the market a “sparkplug” of community activity, went on to announce that a celebration will be held on Saturday, June 27th along the newly refurbished and soon-to-be reopened 7th Street, SE, which abuts the eastern face of the market.

According to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, “[OPM] and the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) worked together to minimize disruptions and complete projects simultaneously. The new street includes upgrades of the roadway and roadbed and installation of new brick sidewalks, granite curbs, utilities and lighting.” The street will be open to traffic Monday through Friday, but remain closed on weekends to serve as, in words of DDOT Director Gabe Klein, “a pedestrian plaza.”