Clark to Add Residential to Lonely Atlas District

Metro area developer Clark Realty is moving forward with their planned Arboretum Place project - a 430-unit condo/apartment development at the tail-end of the H Street corridor - aka the Atlas District.

Described by the developer as a "multifamily luxury apartment community," the project will sit on a 5-acre vacant lot located at 1600 Maryland Avenue, NE. A firm timeline for the project has yet to be established, but Clark’s publicity contact at PR firm Tomb & Associates, Joy Lutes, tells DCMud that "Clark's intention is to move forward with the project and break ground after the first quarter." Designs for Arboretum Place are being handled by the Preston Partnership.

In furtherance of the project’s “luxury” qualifier, the developer plans to outfit the community with a pool, a business center, a gym, entertainment space and gardens – amenities competitive with other H Street developments like Senate Square and, eventually, Clark hopes to attract local retailers, though it is incorporating only about 5,000 s.f. of retail space on the site. In a neighborhood best known for outlets like “Fish Sandwiches” and “Alex Carry Out,” it will likely be a welcome and necessary change.

But nothing on H Street happens quickly: note the talk of development at places such as Capitol Place (on hold), the District's H Street Corridor Revitalization Plan, the H Street trolley line (always pending), and the District's Starbust reorganization plan for the nightmare intersection at Maryland Ave / H Street / Benning Road, to name just a few of the ambitious projects that have garnered far more time and money in outreach and planning than actual construction. Maybe next real estate boom.

Washington DC retail and real estate development news

District Picks Developer for Old Engine House 10

The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development announced yesterday that it selected the Argos Group to redevelop two Capitol Hill buildings including Old Engine House 10 into two buildings with four condo units each, half of which will be affordable.

Located in the northeast corner of Capitol Hill at 525 Ninth Street, NE and 1341 Maryland Avenue, NE, both buildings are just over 5,000 s.f., assessed at almost $1 million, and have stood vacant for years. The District issued a solicitation for developers in January, three teams responded.

Offers were evaluated based on experience, project feasibility, unit affordability, offer price, and Certified Business Enterprise participation. The developer, who has far exceeded the 30 percent affordable housing requirement, must also use green building design standards.

The Maryland Avenue building is 114 years old and was designated a historic landmark in January of this year. The Ninth Street property, built in 1932, was formerly a police station. Both were controlled by the former National Capital Revitalization Corporation until the agency was dissolved and it's properties transferred to the Deputy Mayor's Office.


Deputy Mayor Neil Albert said it is time for the buildings to become more aesthetically pleasing and put to better use. "These are great historic structures, but they've been neighborhood eye sores for far too long. Argos is a highly capable local developer that will put these properties back to productive use and make lasting improvements to these neighborhoods."

Argos' $3 million redevelopment project, within walking distance of the H Street corridor, will be designed by Architrave with construction by Hamel Builders.

Razing the Stakes on Capitol Hill

The Louis Dreyfus Property Group has received final PUD approval for the razing of approximately fifteen adjacent historic townhouses on Capitol Hill to make way for Capitol Place, a 380,000-s.f. mixed use development with 302 condominiums and 20,000 s.f. of retail, designed by New York-based Cook + Fox Architects. The townhouses, dating from as far back as the mid 19th Century, will be sacrificed as part of a deal that will allow development of the site, but may also enhance protection of historic buildings on the rest of Capitol Hill. The buildings, located at G and Second Streets, NE, are currently being leased to area businesses, and may be demolished as early as this fall. The trade will include an $83,500 payment from the developer to the Capitol Hill Restoration Society, enough to pay for a professional survey of the area to delineate the merit of an expanded historic zone. The survey is the first step toward an extended Capitol Hill Historic District which, according to the PUD, would include properties located "within the twenty-six blocks comprised of 2nd to 15th Streets, N.E., and F to H Streets, N.E., not including the Site or properties within the H Street Overlay."

The block misses the Capitol Hill Historic District - a legislatively demarcated zone which ends at F Street, NE - by one block, and therefore does not go before the Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB). As with all raze permits, the application went through the Historic Preservation Office (HPO), part of the Office of Planning, but was not held for the customary thirty day discussion and review period because it was part of an existing PUD. Ultimately, all razes are signed by David Maloney, DC's State Historic Preservation Officer, whether historic or not. Non-historic razes end at the HPO after they double check that the structure and site are not historic; applications for historic sites go on to the HPRB. 

With Maloney's signature, the fate of this block was sealed. In this case, even though the buildings are not in the historic district, Brendan Meyer, Preservation Specialist with the HPO, said the request was an unusual one to come through the office. “Typically we get 1950-1960 ranches out on the city fringes that are razed and subdivided, but something closer to the historic area would give us more pause. We would evaluate it and ask, ‘is it significant enough to do outreach to prevent the raze, or do we just say that it’s outside the historic district and let it go?’" Sean Cahill, Vice President of Development for Dreyfus agreed, “This is not your typical application,” he said. According to Meyer, the Capitol Hill Historic District is listed as historic for its architectural history and marked with a longer period of significance (1791-1945) than other areas like Mount Pleasant (1870-1949). Meyer said that in the case of the Capitol Hill Historic District “It’s not one person or event, but a collection of architecture that represents a broad and rich timeline of DC’s urban development. It helps us understand how DC grew and how it became a city.” That being said, he added that not every town house can be preserved. "They are perfectly nice and charming, but we have 8,000 others already established and we are protecting them. These townhouses are outside the district and there is nothing about them that makes them particularly special," Meyer said. According to Cahill, the neighborhood ANC is on board, as is Gary Peterson of the Capitol Hill Restoration Society (CHRS). “We went through a mediation process with the neighbors on Square 752 as well as the ANC and the adjoining ANC, so it was a very long process,” Cahill added. 

"I think most people are reasonably satisfied with where we ended up. I am a pretty ardent preservationist, so I hate to see old buildings taken down, but i think that the development will be a benefit to the city and we worked hard to design a project with the least negative impact for the remaining residents on the square," said Drury Tallant, Co-Chair of the Stanton Park Neighborhood Association Land Use Committee and square resident. "If it were in the historic district, the buildings that are being taken down would be contributing structures and they would not be allowed to demolish them. One of the things Dreyfus offered to the community was money to pay for historic structural survey that would potentially lead to the expansion of the Capitol Hill Historic District to cover from this square to 16th Street... In essence, it was a bargain the community made in order to pay for the survey that is a prerequisite for expanding the district. These buildings were sacrificed to get the funds," Tallant said. HPO's approval allows for demolition this fall; construction is anticipated within the following year-and-a-half, and delivery expected thirty-two months later. Located adjacent to the H Street Overpass, Capitol Place will be the closest residential and mixed-use site on H Street to the Union Station Metro. Though it will share a block with the historic two and three story row houses, it will also sit across from the 10-story Senate Square, as well as a new 11-story office building still under construction. Reduced 43,000 s.f. from its original size, the 10-12 story building has been in the PUD process for the last three years as the developer worked with architects, the Zoning Commission, and the neighborhood to come up with an appropriate, neighborhood-serving design. Other goodies for the neighbors include two micro-grant programs, the first of which will be $150,000 for which property owners of adjacent lots can apply to make repairs and improvements to the parts of their homes that are either within public space or viewed from public space. The second program will allow $80,000 for which property owners living on the construction square (752) can apply to make upgrades to their homes as approved by the CHRS. Finally, the developer will pay $20,000 to CHRS for administering the two grant programs. In addition to the grants, Dreyfus will also give $150,000 to H Street Main Street for the Clean and Safe Program.  The developer, which mainly works on “high quality, central business district and suburban office buildings” has properties in DC, suburban New York, and Paris.

Washington DC commercial property news

Senate Square Closes Sales

Broadway's ambitious Senate Square Towers project, which closed its sales office doors last month vowing to reopen in a few weeks, has quietly revealed that it will cease to sell condominiums in its 432-unit project, and will now finalize the construction to turn the project into a "luxury" apartment building. The 12-story towers at 201 I Street began sales in September of 2005, but as of the date of closure had no more than 150 units under contract, and was at least 6 months behind schedule for project completion. The first settlements had been anticipated to take place in November.

As the first residential project on H Street, NE, the New York-based developer had faced the daunting hurdles of selling a "luxury" building in a scrappy, low-density location that had yet to feel the effects of revitalization now taking place, just as the condo market was beginning to wane. Broadway eventually hired Shvo, a Manhattan-based condo marketing firm, to bolster the marketing efforts of McLean-based Mayhood, but sales remained lackluster, inevitably forcing prices down. Speculation had long pointed toward the project converting to a rental apartment building, and the developer had entertained offers to sell the entire project, and has now quietly changed its website to reflect its new status. And while other residential projects queue to break ground in the immediate neighborhood, Senate Square joins a long and well documented list of projects that could not garner sufficient selling prices to justify construction, turning instead to the fast-growing rental market, taking yet another whack at the shrinking supply of condos.

H Street End to Get Revision

Bids have closed on a major District Department of Transportation (DDOT) project which will replace 200 feet of Maryland Avenue with a half-acre public park. The new park, dubbed “Starburst Intersection,” will replace a number of scattered traffic islands and leftover bits of sidewalk that currently sit on the pavement. This project is the first step in a $20 million DDOT program which will transform the H Street corridor from 14^th street to Oklahoma Avenue.

“Starburst Intersection is the complicated junction of six roadways - H Street NE, Florida Avenue NE, Bladensburg Road NE, Maryland Avenue NE, Benning Road NE, and 15th Street NE,” according to the DDOT website. Describing the junction as complicated is an understatement; the intersection doesn’t seem to be working for anybody. According to Karina Ricks, Associate Deputy Director for Transportation Policy and Planning, it has been nearly impossible for pedestrians, cars, bicyclists and transit vehicles to make efficient use out of the six-street connection.

“Our primary objective was to create a livable community and to support the local economic development,” said Ricks. In order to exemplify the blight of the current interchange, Ms. Ricks discussed the convoluted path that local senior citizens must walk to get from their senior center, located at the northwestern-most point of the intersection, to the local stores just a few blocks east. “The seniors are in a very livable place where these amenities are so close,” Ricks said in reference to the nearby CVS Pharmacy and Hechinger Mall, “but they might as well be across town.”

The current intersection requires the crossing of three extremely busy, main streets in order to get from the senior building to CVS Pharmacy – a task not unlike Frogger - a game of threading traffic without getting squished. The new design will reorganize traffic in a manageable way, re-time the traffic signals to allow more time for pedestrians to walk and will force seniors to cross only one busy street in order to purchase their necessities. “It’s not just about the seniors,” Ricks added, “but they graphically illustrate the need for this improvement.”

The park will feature an 8' high, 30' long terrazzo panel commissioned by the DC Commission of Arts and Humanities, which will be surrounded by a number of recreational areas and fixed game tables where pedestrians can unwind. Additionally, the DDOT has included provisions for a large water fountain in the overall design. Although the DDOT will be providing the capital investment for the water structure, project leaders are still seeking a neighborhood organization to take stewardship over it. Starburst Intersection will also include a multitude of Low Impact Design features, making it an eco-friendly addition to the H Street Corridor. The Starburst Intersection is projected for completion in early 2009, and should be followed by the stalled trolley plan for H Street, but more on that soon.

Zoning Moves to Extend Comments on Capitol Place

As a result of testimony from Stanton Park Neighborhood Association (SPNA) and Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6C and 6A in an October 1 hearing, the DC Zoning Commission moved to keep the record open for input on the Capitol Place Project, a proposed residential project on H Street's 200 block. The commission decided to keep the record open in an attempt to allow comments from the community at large to be documented before the board.

The SPNA has been reviewing the project in an effort to resolve community agitation over the density of the development straddling both the row house neighborhood on 3rd Street and the commercial H street corridor. The project, which has been conservatively valued at over $150 million by sources close to the development process, has endured two and a half years of review, suffering major architectural critiquing from neighborhood and community organizations. Designers for the Capitol Place are encircled by three distinct architectural contexts: the row house architecture adjacent to the proposed structure on G and 3^rd streets, the modernist Kevin Roche-design of the SEC building on the opposite side of the road and the stonework motif used in the creation of Senate Square on H Street. The Capitol Place project team is being encouraged to incorporate all three milieux into the design of the 390,000 - s.f. edifice by the local ANC; a daunting task that Zoning is still evaluating.

The dilemma surrounding the proposal has progressed into an unprecedented zoning quandary. The square on which Capitol Place construction is to take place is comprised of four separate zones: “R-4, which is a zone for attached residences or row houses, C-2-A and C-2-B where some commercial uses are permitted and building height restraints and construction density are limited and C-3-C with much larger height and density restrictions,” explained Drew Ronneberg, the Chair of Economic Development and Zoning Committee for ANC-6A. This is the only instance Ronneberg or the Zoning Commission could recall where R-4 and C-3-C zones were in effect on the same square.

Zoning for the Capitol Place building allows the project team to build up to 110 ft. in the most northwestern corner of the square, and permits a high density of construction to take place within those 10 stories. The zoning commission, however, has required the plan to incorporate a gradual decrease in height along H street, diminishing the structure to just 55 ft. at the easternmost point. The G street façade is proposed to shrink down to a stature of just 45ft in order to avoid dwarfing the flanking row houses. The zoning contrast is quite drastic, “It’s the only place in the city where zones for two to three story row houses, are sharing the same square that permits a 10 – 12 story building,” added Mr. Ronneberg, “They’ve done as good a job as you can to put a 389,000 s. ft. building on that lot.” Many sources close to the process think the two zones are incompatible, thus it is the zoning commission's movement to allow further community input; the record is now scheduled to close on October 22.

Senate Square Closes Sales Office, Temporarily

After months on the gossip wagon (whatever that even is), the Towers at Senate Square will be closing its offices - at least temporarily. According to the sales office, Broadway's ambitious development - 432 condominiums in two 12-story towers - has paused with the closing of the sales office, effective today. New York-based Broadway began selling the units in September of 2005, and had reportedly sold about 150 market rate units before making the decision to take them off the shelf to evaluate "refinancing" of the project. Sales had been "temporarily halted" weeks ago when the developer paused sales in order to 'adjust its pricing'; upward, they have been saying, but kept the sales office open, now the sales office will remain closed until September 24, according to the sales staff. Broadway had been accepting but not ratifying contracts in the interim, leading to speculation that the project would change in scope. The pair of buildings are expected to complete in November.

The Towers, located adjacent to the Amtrak line on H Street, has been offering no shortage of amenities, including an 80' rooftop lap pool, green roofs, running track, and concierge, all within a gated community. Broadway has been one of the few residential pioneers on the booming corridor, but numerous residential and commercial projects are in the offing on H Street, which itself will be eclipsed by the volume of construction immediately to the north and west in NoMa.

More Changes Coming to H Street

Previous reports on the redevelopment of H Street NE have usually focused on the western Union Station side (The Senate Square / Landmark Lofts condo project at 3^rd and H Street) and the eastern end (Joe Englert's entertainment district and the Atlas Theater), but never the sandwiched middle portion of the block. This will soon, change, as the Washington Business Journal is reporting that Washington Real Estate Partners is planning on turning the 600 block of H Street into a 312,000-square-foot residential, retail and office project valued at nearly $150 million. According to documents filed with the DC Board of Zoning Adjustments, Washington Real Estate Partners is hoping to develop an existing 200,000 SF office building into 234 residential units, with 500 parking spaces and ground-floor retail, with the resulting building being nine stories in some parts (which is sure to stir up those hoping to keep the smaller scale of H Street intact).