AdMo Hotel Gets New Look, Pushes Forward

Plans for the hotel addition to the Adams Morgan Historic Hotel have a new look, a new design team - and no shortage of comments on both - at yet another Historic Preservation Review Board meeting.

The Board again will hear community testimony at its May meeting before making a decision about the plans to develop at the First Church of Christ Scientist building on Euclid Street. Dozens of residents attended the March and April meetings for their chance to speak, but two meetings was simply not enough time to hear them all. Another 45 minutes will be designated for the project in May when the Board might finally get its chance to ask some questions and cast a vote.

Barbara Mullenex, principal at OPX Global, presented its latest plans in March showing a more subdued, red brick masonry building with light steel windows behind the century-old church that itself is under consideration for historic landmark status. The new building is 90 feet tall on Euclid Street but steps back as the land slopes down 13 feet toward Champlain Street. A 3-floor, mostly glass, 28-foot hyphen joins the two buildings.

Click here for more renderings

Friedman Capital Advisors and national hotel developer Beztak Companies first introduced plans for a 180,000 s.f. "boutique hotel" four years ago. Marriott signed on to manage the hotel as part of the Edition line of boutique hotels created in conjunction with Ian Schrager's hyper-sophisticated brand. But Kevin Montano, head of development for Edition, said the developers terminated the Ian Schrager agreement several months ago.

The Adams Morgan Historic Hotel website still lists Marriott as the hotel management. Brian Friedman did not return calls or emails requesting information about the project.

New construction behind the (not yet designated) historic church will provide space for guest rooms, parking and other more private facilities. The church will be refurbished and repurposed for a restaurant, ballrooms and community room open to the public.

The Board provided concept review for the project in July and November of 2008 when Handel Architects presented a mostly glass building with colored panels. According to the latest Historic Preservation Office staff report:

"In its two concept reviews in June and November 2008, the Review Board offered a range of comments to improve the compatibility of the project. Those comments focused on: 1) increasing the distance and visual separation between the church and the addition; 2) ensuring the connection was light-weight in feeling and lower in height than the church’s cornice line; 3) redesigning the porte-cochere and vehicular access to the addition to ensure it did not extend over to the side yard of the church; 4) shifting the mass of the addition away from the church to the greatest extent possible (moving it further down Champlain Street and/or concentrated at the rear/west side were specifically suggested); and 5) articulating the building’s all-glass elevations so that they didn’t appear flat, monolithic and looming behind the church building. It has been based on this guidance that the HPO has worked with the applicants over the past 18 months to ensure that these points of concern have been addressed."

The building is more clearly separated from the church, the glass connector is much shorter and transparent, vehicle traffic moved to a redesigned porte-cochere that fits better with Champlain Street, massing shifted away from the church, and masonry replaced most of the glass.

The Historic Preservation Office staff report "recommends that the Board find the revised concept to be compatible with the proposed landmark and consistent with the purpose of the preservation act..." If the Board follows that recommendation, it is fairly certain members will offer tips for improvement as plans develop. The real problems could occur with zoning.

Residents who dislike the plan seem to focus on two big factors – height and community impact.

This fall, the Office of Planning sent a report to the Zoning Commission including concerns about the building’s height. The Zoning Commission agreed in November to set down the proposal for a hearing but also expressed its own height concerns.

Designs changed since November based on recommendations from the Zoning Commission such as colors and massing. But the overall height dropped only two feet to fit within current zoning limits, leaving even more uncertainty about whether a high-end hotel can be a good-enough addition to AdMo - the District's preeminent late night bar scene. 

Washington, D.C., real estate development news

Friedman/Schrager AdMo Hotel Rebuked by Office of Planning, May Shrink

The Brian Friedman/Ian Schrager/Marriott International Adams Morgan hotel project received a mild rebuke when the Office of Planning issued a setdown report last month criticizing the hotel design as too tall, among other things. The report went on to list several other points of contention, including concerns about the roof design, the inadequacy of Champlain Street as a main thoroughfare, a dearth of information about potential transit use by hotel patrons, and an “overall lack of information and inadequate drawings.” (!!)

The most potentially problematic of the Office's objections was the height overrun, which at 92 feet was two feet over the C-2-B PUD maximum. While the Office does have the prerogative to grant a 5% flexibility height exception, an anonymous source tells DCMud that developers are now leaning towards lopping off that two feet rather than making the case that the 92-foot height is "essential to the functioning of the project."

One possible avenue to this (speculation alert!) would be amendment of the roof design, to which the Office of Planning also took exception. Looking at the mockups, the present roof design seems to consist of multiple stacked tiers or platforms ("the rooftop would exhibit multiple heights where only one is allowed"). Amending this to a flatter, more consistent design seems like an obvious two-bird-one-stone solution.

Friedman’s plan to convert the historic First Church of Christ building at 1782 Columbia Road into an 174-room Ian Schrager-designed Edition boutique hotel has traveled a bumpy road from the very beginning. Early community resistance centered around a 20-year $46 million tax abatement the city awarded the project. With the D.C. budget in tatters and the tide of conventional wisdom starting to turn against Nineties-era orthodoxy about the public value of municipal givebacks like tax abatements and publicly-funded stadium construction (many studies have shown the economic benefits promised by builders seeking subsidies have been negligible or nonexistent), many observers wondered why a luxury hotel needed handouts. (Standard rebuttal - a number of hotels in DC received similar abatements; the abatement is a vital part of the financing package, i.e. the hotel can't be built without it; the abatement is just a discount on future tax revenues - estimated at $7 million per year - none of which will reach city coffers if the hotel isn't built.)

Local critics also wondered if the location was right for a high-end hotel, pointing out the neighborhood’s lack of access via public transportation, its potential harmful effects on area rents and, again, the narrowness of adjacent Champlain Street (some online commenters astutely observed that design mockups seemed to fudge street proportions). Friedman assuaged some of these concerns by emphasizing the number of jobs that will be created by the hotel's construction (1,500 construction jobs alone), partnering with the Adams Morgan Youth Leadership Academy to provide jobs and apprenticeships to local youth, and throwing in a 4,000 square foot Adams Morgan community center.

Overall the plan calls for a conversion of the existing church building into a restaurant and bar, with the southfacing c-shaped hotel itself being built on the church's rear parcel (now a parking lot) and on the adjacent lot on Champlain, the present home of Washington City Paper and jazz radio station WPFW.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

Adams Morgan Church Resurrected as Hotel

On Wednesday, Beztak Companies and DC-based Friedman Capital presented plans for their conversion of the First Church of Christ Scientist, in the center of Adams Morgan, into a 150-room "boutique hotel." The concept submitted involves the construction of a hotel within and behind the church at 1770 Euclid Street, NW. Under plans submitted to DC's Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB), the century-old church will be designated as a landmark site, undergo major restoration, and connect to a larger, seventy to ninety foot structure that will replace the current City Paper building. 

The 180,000 s.f. boutique hotel at the intersection of Euclid Street and Columbia Road, NW, will be partnering with Ian Schrager, the developer responsible for New York's Studio 54 and Gramercy Park Hotel, and credited by some with creating the "boutique hotel" genre. Not aiming for your average conventioneer, the developer plans to convert the main sanctuary into a grand ballroom with a 500-guest capacity, and the mezzanine section for an elevated bar overlooking the ballroom. The two areas will be separated by a glass curtain that can be alternatively transparent or reflective. 

Designed by New York-based Handel Architects, the project, in keeping with the boutique theme, will host large, up-scale, "exclusive" events. Your average guest will not get to climb the front steps - those will be reserved for special galas and events, thank you very much. "One of the most important aspects of the sanctuary space is volume and preserving the structure of the space," said Brian Friedman of Friedman Capital. Connecting the church to the new structure has presented a logistical challenge in preserving its historic integrity. At the behest of HPRB, the developers will expand two existing windows in the church's former nursery to act as a connector, minimizing damage to the facade. HPRB also recommended increasing the space between the buildings, currently planned around twenty feet. 

No doubt the developer is mindful of the fate of Il Palazzo, the old Italian Embassy nearly next door, which had been sanctioned by DC Zoning for conversion into a condominium, but was later 'landmarked' by HPRB, effectively shutting down the project after sales had already begun. Until recently, the site had been marked for a 69-unit condominium, initially to be developed First Management Group of Chevy Chase, but later revised their plans in favor of a hotel. "I want to note that we tried very hard to come up with a type of business that could go in there to preserve a church that is 100 years old. We needed a business where, 100 years later, you could still see that church. A hotel was the only thing we could come up with to make that happen. We started with condos but we think this development brings better progress," Friedman said. He added that the project would offer 4,000 s.f. of community space for meetings and events. "We are very proud that there will be community space, to give you an idea, the penthouse or condo units are half the size of the community space," he said, referring to the ten condo units destined for the penthouse level. 

But while developers project an urbanizing, avant-garde creation that will invigorate the neighborhood, neighborhood organizations are predictably wary, especially about the height - this being Washington DC. "I think that in the spirit and concept of project we are fully behind it. I think that some commissioners are hesitant to put full support behind until we see full elevation and full plans," said Bryan Weaver of ANC 1C Peter Lyden of the Reed-Cooke Neighborhood Association was less credulous. "We've not seen any definitive drawings with height, density, or views, so we really haven't had any solid detail to make a decision. We do have comments that were received...one from long time resident reads, 'In my view, this height simply goes beyond heights of the neighborhood...the height should fit the character, not change it.' We welcome the idea, but it has to fit the zoning of the area," Lyden said. To which the developer replies that the building will be hidden behind the church and will not overtake it. 

To alleviate traffic on Champlain Street, the developer plans to follow the example of the Georgetown Ritz and incorporate the parking driveway into the site. Friedman and his team will submit a PUD and return to the HPRB in October; until then, the board recommended moving the pool, which will be surrounded by the hotel and next to a spa and bar, rather than on the roof, to muffle the noise of festive guests that might disturb the late-night hordes on 18th Street. The developer wanted the pool on the roof but neighbors were concerned about noise; the board recommended moving the pool up a few stories in order to put rooms under it. The board also recommended studying the building at the street level to "avoid an overly commercial look for an addition to a masonry church building in what is a largely residential area of the city." In fact the building would be the lone hotel in the Adams Morgan and Mt. Pleasant neighborhoods. This will be first foray into hotel production and several other single and multi-family projects across the country. The new church-hotel does not yet have a name or an established construction timeline.

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