City Awards Unoccupied Brightwood School to Washington Latin Charter School

The Rudolph School building in Brightwood / Fort Totten

One of four empty school buildings in DC that the District's Department of General Services put up for public charter school bidding in April has been awarded to Washington Latin Charter School.  This week, DGS and the Deputy Mayor for Education recommended that the city award the Rudolph School, located at 5200 2nd Street, NW, in the Brightwood / Fort Totten neighborhood of Northwest DC, to Washington Latin.

Washington Latin, which is going into its sixth year, features a classical curriculum and Latin language education starting in the 5th grade. The school also has a full athletic program, and also teaches the modern languages Arabic, French, and Chinese.  Washington Latin currently occupies three buildings on 16th Street, but plans to spend $15 million to occupy the 84,000 square foot former Rudolph School facility in Brightwood by August, 2013.  Mark Lerner, president of the Washington Latin board of governors, said Washington Latin would finance the restoration with a commercial loan, and then repay it with the facility allotment that charter schools receive from the District.

Future home of Washington Latin, which has an athletic program

While the Rudolph School closed in 2008 because of low occupancy, DC's public charter schools often face a different problem: space limitations and growing student bodies.  "Every charter school gradually adds grades per year, and many charter schools close because they can't grow because they can't solve this facility problem," said Lerner.

Lerner said Washington Latin started in 2006 with 179 but that the school now served 600 students from all eight wards of the District in grades 5-12.  The school offers bus pickups for students in Ward 3, where the school first began in 2006, and at Union Station.

The Rudolph School closed in 2008 due to low enrollment

Most charter schools, Lerner said, open in temporary locations because they don't have full enrollment when they open.  "Parents and staff become eventually dissatisfied if you don't have appropriate facilities," he told DCMud.  "Our being awarded Rudolph is a major milestone for the school," Lerner said.  "It gives us a permanent space."

Deputy Mayor for Education De'Shawn Wright wrote in a press release, "Ultimately, the panel recommended Washington Latin based on a strong performance record and an exciting proposal for reusing the building."

Washington D.C. real estate development news

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

Ft. Totten: Hanging Tough, or Just Hanging?

Being on top of a Metro station means that real estate development and rising property values are a given; or so goes the axiom. More so if that Metro line is vermilion and close to downtown. Ft. Totten is proving the exception, with neighborhood-transforming projects sidelined, and now a distressed apartment sale shows why developers have held off.

Despite Ft. Totten's 3 Metro lines (Green, Yellow, Red), its bike trail, its local parks, its juxtaposition at several major traffic arteries and ample developable land, developers have balked at building out what seems on paper to be a model of transit-oriented, mixed-use development.

Clark Realty Capital, the only developer to have built on the site, demonstrated the hazards of pioneering, having recently lost its 5.6 acre property in a distress sale to Greystar, which paid $55m for Fort Totten Station (Greystar also snapped up 909, Axiom, Jefferson at Capitol Yards, all near the ballpark, and Jefferson at Thomas Circle.) Clark had completed the project in late 2007 after obtaining a $47m financing loan in 2006 plus a ground lease from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, but had gotten several foreclosure notices late last year. At the time, Clark called the project "the anchor for a comprehensive revitalization plan for the Fort Totten Metro site...the first of several developments planned for the Fort Totten neighborhood," but hedged its bets with little retail space and low budget architecture.

Clark's vision might still come true, but not soon. The few single family homes in the area sell (after a while) for around $200,000, and commerce is all but forgotten. The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation and Lowe Enterprises, the two biggest private landowners in the area, have both iced plans for development. Representatives of Cafritz refused to speak about their project, and a representative of Lowe would say only that the project has been "put to the back burner." An Urban Land Institute (ULI) study in 2009 (sponsored by WMATA) noted that the project is "a mere 3.5 miles from the U.S. Capitol" but that "the Fort Totten market will support calls for smaller, more affordable units, and basically allow only for wood-frame construction."

If anyone sees opportunity in Fort Totten, it is WMATA. The publicly chartered organization still owns 9.3 acres around the Metro station (on top of the 5.6 it leased to Clark), and can't afford the pessimism of a private developer. The transit agency has been pushing for the past several years for Ft. Totten to be a different kind of example, one that showcases revised concepts of transportation planning, and has been working to corral developers to integrate plans, so that the individual pieces are built in some semblance of an organized whole.

Foremost among those pieces are Cafritz's Art Place and Shops at Fort Totten, 2 million s.f. with a mixture of community-serving retail, residential (over 1200 units) and arts and cultural space to house arts promoters like The Washington National Opera. Cafritz expected to begin construction in the first half of 2010.

The Lowe team (with partners Jack Sophie Development and City Partners Development, and now JBG too) was to include 898 residential units on 9 acres of land (see rendering below right), and was to have preceded Cafritz. Together the projects would have added more than 200,000 s.f. of retail space. But if its clear that projects need to be coordinated, its also clear that the area cannot yet support that much development, at least to its financiers.

Laura Cole, an executive with RCLCO and formerly head of ULI when it issued its Fort Totten study, says that there's a gap between what a financier would typically support and what might work for the area. Cole notes that a financial institution will require traditional parking-to-apartment ratios, a model that is simply too expensive for a neighborhood like Fort Totten, and sites the DC USA site as a model of overbuilt parking requirements.

WMATA is attempting to change that philosophy, and followed up with another study in 2010 with urban development planner Parsons Brinckerhoff. Nat Bottigheimer, Assistant General Manager for Planning at WMATA, seconds Cole's assessment of the financial inviability of traditional notions of housing development, but is also keen to change the way planners see parking in general. Bottigheimer's vision for the undeveloped site is a communal approach to parking, where evening uses (for residents) piggyback on daytime uses (office and retail). "We should experiment with a kind of residential building that doesn't reserve spaces for cars, the building might provide 50 or 75 shared spaces instead of 150 dedicated parking spaces...[y]ou don't want to be just doing standard models, you also want to push the envelope as a public agency to promote the achievement of these public goals that we're in business to support." Hence the ULI report.

"We don't want to find out that we've built adequate parking, and others have developed theirs, and together we all contribute more than the necessary amount of parking...but that requires alot of coordination with other property owners to come up with an overall development plan." Bottigheimer pleads the case for a concept he admits is an "untested product in this market," but points out that "it costs $40,000 per space to build...more than a vehicle. Most of these are just car storage spaces, there's got to be an efficiency to provide a better system than we have now."

While WMATA has no specific plans for its own property, and can't force other developers to abide, it still has an influential voice at the District's Office of Planning. "We will collaborate with the District to get the kind of development that makes sense for the area" says Bottigheimer...we need to do more research with the development community to see how this could work." Admirable as that may be, it still requires developers to invest in an area that now is 0 for 1. At least WMATA seems intent to keep trying. Says Bottigheimer, "all options are open."

Washington D.C. retail and commercial real estate news

Art Place at Fort Totten

Coming off its recent zoning approval, the Art Place and Shops at Fort Totten development is now being readied for the initial stages of planning and demolition, in what will be a 2 million s.f. transit-oriented project with a mixture of community-serving retail, residential and arts and cultural space to the area between South Dakota Avenue and the Fort Totten Metro. The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation are seeking bids to work on the nearly 17 acres of land in northeast DC's Fort Totten community. The project will be executed in several stages with one massive building in the first phase and the rest to follow. Developers expect to begin construction in the first half of 2010 and have the first building ready within 24 to 36 months from now.

Initial schematic designs call for the demolition of the Riggs Family Apartments and three warehouses currently on the site. The demolition will make room for the construction of four buildings comprised of 929 multi-family one- to three-bedroom units; 305,000 square feet of retail space; 170,000 square feet of cultural and arts spaces; and a 47,000-square-foot children's museum. Ehrenkrantz Eckstut and Kuhn (EE&K) is the master planner for the site, 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 first phase of construction will begin with Building A at South Dakota and Galloway Street, which will be joined below grade by a common foundation and parking garage, but above grade will appear as 3 distinct, adjoining buildings. The residential portion of this phase will offer 529 units including 98 units of senior housing and 43 affordable units out of a project total of 161 units set aside as affordable at 60 to 80% AMI. The retail space includes approximately 59,000 s.f. for a grocery store with supporting retail lining the street as residents walk to the metro. Cafritz Foundation Board Member Jane Cafritz speculated this retail could include stores like card shops, dry cleaners and restaurants, and is shopping around for a grocery store to anchor the first stage of development.

Though buildings B, C and D received approval, Cafritz said their exact designs are still up in the air and dependent on market conditions around the time of construction. In the PUD zoning approval, Building B is planned for three stories of retail and cultural use to include the 47,000-s.f. ground floor children's museum, ground and second floor retail and space for a child care facility and seniors' center.

The planned seven-story "cultural and arts spaces" in Building D would potentially serve both the Washington National Opera and the Shakespeare Theatre for storage, rehearsal space and related shops. The developers also offer to provide upwards of 20,000 s.f. in this building for a public library and an additional 30,000 s.f. of "community space;" giving away space like free samples at Costco.

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. Of the 400 rental units, 30 may be set aside as affordable for artists- everyone loves the arts these days.

All this development does not come without growing pains. Several current community members living in the Riggs Family Apartments were outspoken during the PUD review process. They will be displaced from their current home and moved into temporary housing on the same site until the new affordable spaces in the Arts Place project are ready. One senior from the community and a resident of the Cafritz apartments testified in objection to the handling of the current residents, saying that residents had not been told where they were going or when.

Despite community complaints, Jane Cafritz tried to paint a rosier picture, adding that that temporary homes for the tenants are fully refurbished with new appliances and the developers will try to accommodate seniors with first floor units. Highlighting the benefits of the new project though, Cafritz said the foundation will pay the gap between the rates on the affordable units and the actual cost of a market rate units, absorbing that cost for "20 years or the life of the tenant," whichever comes first. The former Riggs tenants will have first dibs on the new affordable residences at Arts Place and Shops.

Building A images courtesy of Interface Multimedia.

Washington DC Real Estate News.

Knee Deep in New Development at Fort Totten

DC Mayor Adrian Fenty was joined by representatives of Lowe Enterprises today to announce the sale of a city-owned parcel at Riggs Road and South Dakota Avenue, NE, in the Fort Totten neighborhood, that will soon be transformed in a million square foot mixed-use development. Although initially unveiled as "The Dakotas" way back in 2006, new details concerning the project are now being released. The project will be built in three phases and include 898 residential units, along with 94,000 square feet of retail space.

"If you've ever been to Riggs Road in the area of South Dakota Avenue, you know it is an area of boundless potential...We are at the point where we are going to maximize that potential,” said Fenty.

The first phase, to be entitled Ft. Totten Square, will occupy the site of a vacated strip mall on the intersection’s northwestern quadrant. The 4-story building will house 468 residential units – 94 of which have been earmarked for affordable housing - and 71,000 square feet of ground floor retail, which is to be anchored by a full-service grocery store. 500 parking spaces will also be included in the development. Construction on Ft. Totten Square is slated to begin later this year and will be followed shortly by a second phase, the so-called Dakota Pointe across the street, which will include 170 units of housing and the requisite parking.

The project’s third and final phase – the Dakota Flats – will include the triangular parcel relinquished by the District at the development's southern-most point. It will feature 260 apartments with 52 reserved as affordable, 23,000 square feet of retail. According to the Mayor, construction of the Flats will “be set to close in 2011.” In addition to Lowe, the development team also includes Jack Sophie Development, City Partners Development and mixed-use planners StreetSense. Hickok Cole Architects are designing the project. Ellis Denning will serve as general contractor. The total cost of the project is currently estimated to be roughly $80 million.

Both the City and development team were keen to highlight the infrastructural improvements they have in store for one of the city’s busiest intersections. “We are working on making this a safer intersection because traffic is fast,” said Ward 4 Councilwoman Muriel Bowser. “We have thousands of hardworking, taxpaying citizens in Riggs Park who take their lives into their hands to get the Fort Totten Metro. We’re going to change that.”

In doing so, the District plans to eliminate the highway-style on-off ramps that guide traffic onto Riggs Road and include improved pedestrian crossings – while serving as a gateway to nearby Prince George’s County. “There’s not many more thoroughfares with much more traffic than this one right here,” said Marc Weller of Ellis Denning. “People came across the line into DC and the first thing they’d see is just a sign and vacant parking lot. We’re trying to create something much different than that.”

That change, however, has been a long time coming. Weller told DCmud that over the course of two years “overall market conditions [have] repositioned the project so that it could work in today’s markets.” Neither party would disclose the terms of the LDA, but details will be revealed as the project moves closer to fruition.

District's Ft. Totten Land Agreement to be Announced

The DC government will hold a press conference on January 14th at 10:30am to announce a land deal transferring title of land from the District of Columbia to Lowe Enterprises and JackSophie Development. The property, at the Ft. Totten Metro station, was initially announced two years ago, without further development. The Land Disposition Agreement (LDA) will bring up to 900 residential units and 100,000 square feet of retail in the first of three phases to the intersection of Riggs Road and South Dakota Avenue, NE. The city values the project at $80m.

Details of the LDA, which was to be held on the 5th but was abruptly canceled, are being withheld. The Fort Totten development team also includes Hickok Cole Architects, Ellis Denning, City Partners Development, and mixed-use planners, StreetSense.

Washington DC commercial real estate news

Agreement (Finally) Reached on Ft. Totten Project

Nearly two and a half years after the project was initially announced, the District government and Lowe Enterprises will announce a Land Disposition Agreement (LDA) that will bring up to 900 residential units and 100,000 square feet of retail to the intersection of Riggs Road and South Dakota Avenue, NE in a bid to revitalize the Fort Totten neighborhood's main corridor, a project the city estimates to be worth $80m.

Lowe made their initial announcement concerning The Dakotas project during the summer of 2006 with a planned late-2007 start date that never came to fruition. Details are being withheld at this time, but Sean Madigan of the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development confirmed that a formal announcement of the LDA is tentatively scheduled for 10:30am Monday at the site.

Lowe’s last project in conjunction with the District was the Mount Vernon Triangle’s CityVista development and accompanying Safeway that opened their doors to much acclaim in 2007 and 2008, respectively. The Fort Totten development team also includes Hickok Cole Architects, JackSophie Development, Ellis Denning, City Partners Development, and mixed-use planners, StreetSense.

Fort Totten or Bust

Northeast’s Fort Totten will be almost unrecognizable (a good thing) by 2012 if a group of local developers are able to get their proposals off the ground. In presentations made at yesterday's DC Economic Partnership Annual Meeting and Development Showcase, developers brought forth not one, but two major development proposals for the intersection of South Dakota Avenue and Riggs Road NE. Together, they plan to bring more than million square feet of retail and nearly 2000 units of housing to the area - essentially the same model of high-density shops, apartments and arts space that Montgomery County planners used to such great effect in Silver Spring.

First on the block is Lowe Enterprises Real Estate Group and JackSophie Development’s Fort Totten Square. Plans for which have been bandied for the past 2 years, but according to Lowe's staff and publicity literature, the project is now on track for a 2010 completion. Designed by Hickock Cole Architects, their 9-acre parcel will feature 900,000 square feet of residential and retail space, complimented by 100,000 square feet of “grocer-anchored” retail. Residential units will arrive in the guise of The Dakotas – an 875 unit development that will also sport on-site parking.

In a concurrent phase of development is the Fort Totten Arts Place – a 20-acre redevelopment project being funded by the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. Standing right next door to Fort Totten Square project – and on top of the neighborhood enclave that currently stands at 4^th and 5^th Streets NE – the EEK/MV+A-designed stretch of storefronts and apartment buildings will almost be a neighborhood in and of itself. For starters, the development will include 1220 residential units (220 reserved for seniors) and 147,000 square feet of retail. The latter will be reserving 9,000 square feet for a brand new Safeway supermarket, 82,000 square feet for neighborhood businesses and 6,000 square feet for a major banking branch.

You might be thinking, “Where is all the art at Arts Place?” The Washington National Opera might be a good place to start – they’ll be getting 75,500 square feet of rehearsal space, costume shops and production and administrative offices. The Shakespeare Theatre Company will also join them on the block will their own 75, 500 square foot space of administrative offices, costume and prop shops, and, yes, rehearsal space.

It’s also been seen to that the local community will get their fair share of benefits out of all redevelopment hoopla. There will be a new 27,000 square foot DC Public Library, 15,000 square feet of public performance and meeting space, a 20,000 square foot senior center, a 10,000 square foot daycare center, a gym, a health facility geared towards seniors, a cyber café, and a renovated and reconfigured plaza in Morris Square. Altruistic organization Food & Friends, which delivers meals to the terminally ill and is already located in Fort Totten, will also receive an expansion of its existing facility.

These twin packages of development should serve as a fine compliment to the joint Clark Realty – Washington Area Transit Authority apartment complex at the Metro station that completed Phase I of its’ $58 million, 3-building development earlier this year. If the Lowe and Cafritz projects make it out of the planning stages, we're going to be looking at very different Fort Totten in the future.

New Digs for Riggs and Dakota

As previously reported in DCMud, Lowe Enterprises Real Estate Group is planning the development of their 9-acre site at the intersection of South Dakota Avenue and Riggs Road. A partnership of Hickock Cole Architects, Jacksophie Development, Ellis Denning, CityPartners Development, and mixed-use planners, StreetSense, the development team is planning a mixed-use project that could include up to 900 condominium units, 100,000 s.f. of retail space, and corresponding parking.

While no final plans have been made, potential retail options include restaurants, a grocery store, salons, and dry cleaners. Developers also plan to improve the traffic dynamics of the intersection to make it more pedestrian-friendly. The project is estimated to cost $300 million according to the Washington Post’s coverage of the development.

Located blocks away from the Fort Totten Metro Center, the development may also include a pedestrian pathway to the station which is served by the Red and Green Line. According to the Washington Business Journal’s coverage of the project, WMATA would like to extend the Yellow line to include Fort Totten Station.

It may be another month before plans are finalized as community support of the project is necessary. Developers plan to meet with community groups to present and discuss their plans. Their current community website gives a general overview of the project. We will keep you posted as plans are finalized.

Ft. Totten to See Major Mixed-Use Project

Lowe Enterprises has announced they intend to develop approximately 9 acres of land next to the Ft. Totten Metro station after having joined two local developers that recently purchased the land. The Metro station serves both the Red and Green lines but the area, isolated by the CSX lines that bisect the neighborhood, has seen no residential or commercial development - until now. The project is intended to add for-sale and rental housing and substantial retail space, though the composition of the development has not yet been finalized. Though the Metro stop is known more as a dot on the Metro map than a destination, Centex and Clark Realty Capital have both announced large projects nearby - making Ft. Totten the next Petworth (which is the next Columbia Heights - which is the next U Street). Clark's project, already begun, will provide several hundred rental units to the area.