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

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.

Dakotas Condo Project Near Fort Totten Ready To Roll

After years of planning and dreaming, it appears residential development is about to begin near Fort Totten metro, one of the few stations that has not seen a construction boom over the past years. Work is about to start on Phase I of The Dakotas, a $300 million, 10-acre project containing 800 mixed-income condo units and apartments, a grocery store and restaurant, plus needed retail stores for the area (80,000 sf of retail total). The Dakotas will be located at Riggs Road and South Dakota Avenue (on both sides of Riggs), just a block or so from the metro station. The developers for this project are Lowe Enterprises, Jack Sophie Development and Ellis Denning Properties, who also envision creating landscaped green space for public use, along with well-lit and landscaped pathways connecting The Dakotas and the Fort Totten metro station. The project will be comprised of low-rise, wood-framed buildings, with fitness rooms and rook decks for residents. The condos are expected to be priced starting in the upper $100,000s for a studio to almost $400,000 for two-bedroom and den units. Development of this size has not occurred yet in this part of town, so it will be interesting to see if and how it transforms the area, and if it sparks some more development for this corner of upper Northeast DC.