Industry Insight: Grant Epstein of Community Three Development

With a fresh Georgetown MBA degree in hand, earned at the end of his seven year stint as an architect with Torti Gallas, Grant Epstein is clearly not a man content to enjoy the quiet life. And still it seems ambitious that three years after starting his own development firm, Grant has two completed condo projects under his belt and at least three more in the wings. Grant spoke with DCMud about development, local architecture, and the pleasures and pitfalls of being one of the few developers to start new condo projects over the past few years.

Tell us about the background of Community Three Development. How did it come together?

Grant: I was an architect at Torti Gallas and Partners for seven years, and decided that I wanted a little more of the process of building. So I went to Georgetown, got an MBA, and talked with John Torti and Tom Gallas about starting this company. We created a business plan, and thought that our ability to visualize things before they 'were' was something of value, so we decided to start Community Three Development, the three of us. That was three years ago.

We really wanted to do projects that we thought other developers wouldn't do, ones that took historical sensitivity and design innovation and community outreach - things that were very complicated, because we thought our talents could really help in those situations, like with the church here [The Lofts at St. Monica’s]. It takes a lot of thinking and design and experience to craft something on the inside of this church that still looks like a church, but now has a new use.

What was the primary focus of your work while you were at Torti Gallas?

Grant: I was doing town planning and I did a lot of work on transit-oriented development, military family housing, Hope VI work--basically making neighborhoods all over the country. I worked on Twinbrook Station and King Farm. I did a lot of work in San Diego, so I traveled a lot. A lot of it was community outreach, doing charrettes, finding out what the issues were in the neighborhood, learning about the vernacular architecture and creating neighborhoods that fit in appropriately.

You left Torti Gallas in 2004, before the downturn. Was that insight on your part about the oncoming drought, or had you always had your eye on development?
Grant: It had nothing to do with the oncoming drought. It was really about me trying to fulfill my goals professionally and personally and academically. In retrospect, it was a good time for us to learn. We got to learn while things were slower. We were going to make mistakes. As a developer starting out you can't make those big mistakes. Your first project has to be a success. That's a lot of pressure but because of the way the economy was, we could take it little by little and learn, be more cautious and conservative and make sure we were doing everything to make that project a success. In retrospect it was a good time to do it.

When did you start acquiring developable land?

Grant: After I finished business school. We bought our first property at the beginning of 2007.

And were there a lot of mistakes on that first project?

Grant: Tons! Tons of mistakes.

Did that make you think twice?

Grant: [Laughs] Yeah, I thought twice. As an architect you have to solve problems with design issues. As a developer you have to do that and you also have a lot more to grasp; sales, construction, the community. But all those things piled together, it's still solving problems. Designing things that solve those problems - that keeps me going every day. I come to work and it is different every day no matter what. Some days it’s really down, some days it’s really up...but I get to make that choice. I get to make those decisions that ultimately affect success. It’s stressful, but I think I'd rather have it that way than not.

You really love this.

Grant: I love it! I absolutely love it. I have a lot of friends who say "thank God it's Friday". I hate Fridays. Not because I don't want to go home, but because I didn't get to do enough this week. You don't feel that if you don't like your job. I work pretty much seven days a week. I wake up in the morning and there's another design problem to solve. I used to feel that way with architecture too.

Do you think a background in architecture is central to good development?

Grant: In our development it is. I look at details very closely knowing that we live in a builder's world where buildings are made of 2,000 parts instead of 20,000 parts like they were 50 years ago. So you've got to be more careful when you design the elements of the building. Having an architectural background I think allows me to see how to use those fewer elements in a way that makes sense and is efficient. I think it also allows me to see a broader picture in terms of all the stakeholders involved. As an architect you're really an ambassador for creation. You've got the community, economics, zoning, historic preservation, neighbors, market - all those things you're trying to get the design to say. As a developer you're trying to do those things as well, but you also have a financial stake in the matter which some would say makes it more serious. Architects are trained for those things and I think that makes you more qualified or more equipped to develop.

Tell us about your process.

Grant: I'm involved in every step from beginning to end, from acquisition to close-out and even beyond, as a developer should be. We do all the design in-house. We do it in a charrette-type format where we sit down either at the site or at our office and spend an intensive day trying to put up every idea we can possibly think of. Generally what that yields is the major issues. A lot of times the solution isn't readily known, but the issues are. Then we continue to refine and refine based upon those issues to come up with a strategy. We take that strategy and start to make it real. We basically do all the schematic design in-house in order to figure out all those issues and further details that come up. Then we go to the community. We say "look, this is what we're planning to do" because we don't live in a vacuum, we live in a community and it is one of the stakeholders in any project. We build the project and we sell it and move on to the next one, but the people in the neighborhood are with the project as long as they're here and it's important to them. We know that. We also work in historic districts so we work with historic preservation, zoning, planning, all right at the beginning so we can understand what the right thing to do is. It sounds altruistic, but if you do the right thing the end product will be fine. And we've proven that. So, then we have an architect, engineers, civil, mechanical, all work with us to do the detail drawings. I'm the point of contact with the contractor, so I basically do the oversight on the job. I'm there during the first stages of construction every week, answering questions, making further design changes on-site, and toward the end of the project I'm there every day, I do my own punch lists, I stage in-house, we do all the brochures, marketing, everything from start to finish we do with the purpose of making it a complete work.

What was your design philosophy as an architect and what is it now that you're a developer?

Grant: [Pauses] I think any architect who says their design philosophy is constant is lying. I think your philosophy matures throughout the course of your work. That's not to say you'll change from a modernist to a traditionalist, but architecture is an experience-based field. That experience is different for everyone and surfaces directly in the design. It's become more refined I think. The experience of doing residential units has taught me more about the way soldier buildings work. The bulk of the buildings in DC are soldier buildings like townhouses, small apartment buildings and the like. My education at Notre Dame highlighted public building design from a more academic point of view. I've come to understand a lot more about the nuts and bolts that go along with designing living spaces. I think that's allowed me to be more holistic in the design process. There's a big picture item about how a building is perceived from the street, but there's also a small thing about how the kitchen sink is next to the window so you can look out.

Do the architect and the developer ever spend any late nights arguing with one another?

Grant: [Laughs] All the time! All of the time! If you're a pure developer you're interested in the economic outcome, if you're a pure architect you're interested in the aesthetic that becomes the project. I'm not saying that architects and developers shouldn't play those roles, I think they need to wear both hats. If you're designing, you need to understand the economics and if you're developing, you need to understand the design. It's that dialogue I have internally that makes this fun for me. It's really the reason I chose to change fields. That dialogue keeps me going at night. It keeps me up at night... but it also keeps me going.

Given the dramatic drop in land prices during the period when you started developing, was there a window of opportunity to become a serious development firm more quickly?

Grant: I would tend to agree in a general sense that land prices went down, however in the district I think in the up-and-coming neighborhoods the opposite happened. We found that people were expecting 2004 prices in 2008. I think that still exists. There are some big parcels that yes, have gone down in value and are available but we like to go into a neighborhood and there are very few parcels that are in neighborhoods that are the right size and were drastically hit by the downturn in terms of land price, at least in our experience. You have to get the land at the right price. Because Washington's such a strong economy nationally, land prices are still elevated. We work very hard to find opportunities where land is at the right price to sponsor the development. It's a block by block situation in this city and a case by case situation.

How do you assess the current market and where do you think development goes from here?

Grant: The criteria for lending has obviously become more strict. There are definitely people lending out there. Most of the smaller regional banks are still excited to do development deals. Once you get over a certain dollar amount they can't handle it, so those deals are the ones that have really suffered. We've had relationships with financial institutions that have been wonderful in the past and they just don't have a process for lending anymore. I think they want to do business but can't. But even in this economy, if you've got a good plan and a good project and team, it's worth betting on. I think that our lenders see that... at least I hope they see that! Everybody's got to work harder to do what used to be done a lot easier. That doesn't mean it can't be done. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want it to be easy but it's not and we have to find a way to make it work, so let's figure it out together. It's painful, but it can be done.

Are you expanding in the area of commercial development?

Grant: I see a lot of empty office buildings and retail spaces around the city. I think there are opportunities everywhere, but I think there are more for residential development than commercial. I think that will change, but right now there's a lot of available space that needs to be absorbed before we build more. I think there will be a market for smaller commercial space as small businesses grow and start up again. And I don't think those are tenants who generally go into a 4,000 s.f. office space. Unfortunately it's directly tied to the lending and for the moment I don't see the lending becoming a reality, at least in the next few years. That's my personal opinion. I hope the commercial sector becomes healthy.

What attracted you to The Nine project?

Grant: The property I think was built in the early 1920's or 30's and it was a plumbing supply store. Over the years it changed hands a couple of times and in the 80's it was a barber shop. It got run down, neglected, unused for about ten years and it showed. What was most intriguing was the 1850's carriage house that was on that site as well, and the horrible condition it was in. It sits on Naylor Court which is one of DC's named alleys where people live, and which has a long and great heritage in that neighborhood.

I could see something there...that it could be. It had some very interesting zoning and site issues because it was a fairly narrow lot, but we did a charrette and we found a way to make a two-sided building that could help to bring some life back to Naylor court on that side. That was our goal. We completely rebuilt the carriage house with the original bricks because it was very unsafe. We even put in the steel beam and hayloft door using old pictures we'd found. Now there are two new residents who live on Naylor Court (pictured at left, pre-construction). A 4 unit building with about 3,000 SF of commercial space also allowed us to learn a lot. It was a fun project.

And M Street Flats?

Grant: M Street was a little different. It was an 1880's mansion that became a crack house, in the 80's, I believe. It was part of Operation Fix It in the 90's and they cleaned it up a bunch but it was still vacant. Somebody had begun to do some development there to turn it into additional units without permits or plans. Obviously, they were shut down.
We bought the building and saw it as an opportunity to get creative with the zoning ordinance on this big lot. What we found after designing and designing it, was that there wasn't enough light in any of the units because it was a row house lot and the building was big, and we couldn't do it. We tried to think about it in a little different way, as a building with a courtyard in the middle where we could get multiple layers of light into the units and at the same time provide outdoor space, something that was very rare for condos in the city. So we found a solution that made ten absolutely unique units that had enough light to support them. It's one of the things, I think, that makes our projects a little different than others.

We'll do that at the [Lofts at St. Monica's] as well. That's why I think people like town houses. Even though they tend to look similar from the outside, inside they’re all different. They each have their own character. I think that people buying condos should have the same experience. Instead of walking down a corridor to unit 107 that's the same as 207, 307, 407, 507, your unit is unique, it's one of a kind. People can go through the building and find a unit they can identify with. It fits their lifestyle. That adds value. By having something unique as opposed to cookie cutter, people can have an emotion about it rather than a need or a financial decision. Those are important, but buying a house or a condo is a position of pride. We want people to feel that sense of pride when they choose to live in one of our properties. That's what I would want. This is going to be my house. It's not going to be anyone else's. I think people need that.

At St. Monica's, was it an obvious choice to re-purpose some of the architectural and design elements?

Grant: I think so. Some people won't want stained glass windows in their home. I don't think they should look to buy in a church then. I think there are people who will identify with the unique nature of each of the units. We want to keep the character of the church. It will always have the church form and we shouldn't be afraid of it. That was part of the appeal. This is a very fun project. The design issues are so complicated, because you're turning a commercial building or a public building into a residential building. The systems are completely different, the way the building was built is not the way you need it built for its new use, and how do you take advantage of all those things on the inside and make sure you don't destroy the hundred year old heritage that's part of this property? And do it all within a budget? It's a very complicated equation. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment but I find that fun. Those are the projects we look for.

So what's ahead for you and Community Three Development?

Grant: We've got a number of projects in the works. If I told you about them I'd have to kill you.

Go ahead, give up some secrets.

Grant: [Long pause] Well... we've got something brewing on Capitol Hill SE, right now a condo project about the same size as St. Monica's. It's something that would start construction beginning of 2011 and deliver in 2012. We're looking for things in the 10 to 20 unit range. That's a size we think lends itself to our process, at least right now, and I think it's the size of deal that can work in this lending environment. We’ve got something working in Georgetown in the Glover Park area. It's along the same lines but more of a mixed use scenario. It would be about the same timeline as Capitol Hill. Those are a couple of them.

You have a lot of starts planned.

Grant: In this business you have to have a lot of balls in the air because a lot of them don't fall. We choose which projects to go forward with very carefully. We want to devote the right amount of time to them. We have a number of things in the works, but whether they'll start now or later, or ever, remains to be seen.

Finally, give us some examples of DC architecture that inspire you.

Grant: Well, as a classicist, all of the federal buildings that are classical. Their grandeur really inspires me. And living on Capitol Hill for ten years, it is amazing how different the facades of the townhouses can look. It's amazing the amount of craftsmanship that went into these houses on the hill. Detail that it's very hard to replicate today. So the old townhouses, they inspire me. We've lost a lot in our new buildings, in the construction of them. It primarily has to do with the number of pieces that go into a house. There aren't many craftsmen that know how to do the details.

It also costs too much.

Grant: That's part of it too, but the people don't exist anymore... the trades don't exist. For instance, iron staircases. Two or three guys in the area do iron staircases the right way. Two or three guys! Back in the early 1900's there were forty! It's a big difference. At M Street we found the iron treads from an old turn of the century house and recast the iron posts in order to use the same style that was supposed to be there, but was missing. There were only a couple of guys who knew how to do that.

Now give us some examples of buildings that should be razed.

Grant: Oh, I can't do that...

You know you have a list.

Grant: L' Enfant Plaza. I don't know that it should necessarily be razed, but...re-conceived. Let's put it that way.

So we'll change "razed" to "re-conceived".

Grant: Yes. Re-conceived. L'Enfant Plaza is one that definitely fits that. It was built in an era where there were certain thoughts about how things would be in the future as opposed to how we relate to the past. Crystal City is another one. All of Crystal City. And I know there's a plan to redo that. It should be reconceived. It's a single use district. And it's not far from being something special. Some very minor changes, some increase in residential could make that into something that's truly spectacular. Could make it into Bethesda very easily. So...those are two.

The interview was conducted by Susan Isaacs 

Rosslyn's Humbled Towers

Commuters exiting the Rosslyn Metro might have noticed construction vehicles and material at Monday Properties' 1812 North Moore Street, raising hopes of a new, LEED Platinum building in the center of Rosslyn. Alas, signs of future construction they are not. Likewise the friendly polka dots and convenient lunch tables on the site of neighboring Central Place by JBG offer, if nothing more, a place to sit and dream of the immense office building that will one day fill the space. The two sites offer hopes for the DC area's tallest buildings. Rosslyn, however, will have to wait for the distinction.

Now-defunct Westfield Realty sold 1812 North Moore Street's $31.5 million parcel to Monday Properties in 2006 after the former’s drawn-out bid to revamp the site met a slow death. Monday initially had much more success with their attempts to put the project into turnaround. Their Davis Carter Scott-designed tower boasts 600,000 square feet of commercial office space, 12,000 square feet for retail and a Metro terminal attached to the facility. Additionally, they were on track to becoming the first LEED Platinum-certified building in the area. But since that time, little has happened. Nor will it any time soon. Arlington's December, 2007 approval for the project was originally set to expire in December 2010, but a July 2009 statute made approval for the Monday project, and others, valid through July 2014.

What about the harbingers of construction seen on site? The materials belong to Dominion Power, which is working on the substation on the adjoining lot. According to the site manager for the Dominion construction team, Clark Construction, the general contractor, will not begin any sort of construction on 1812 until August, at the soonest. But Peter Berk, Executive Director for the project at Cushman & Wakefield said in an email, "the building is not going forward on a speculative basis (without some kind of pre-lease), at least not at this time due to the capital markets." Thanks anyway Dominion Power guy.

Across the street, JBG's equally reluctant Central Place project sits largely untouched with McDonald's bags but no construction debris. The 31-story, 535,000 s.f. building planned for the site will include 12,000 s.f. of ground floor retail in a 390-ft. glass curtain-wall mammoth. To top it all off, a 10,000 s.f. rooftop observation deck with distant views will open to the public.

Andrew VanHorn, a Vice President at JBG, admitted the widely circulated rumor that "office financing is difficult to come by lately." Before any construction can begin, Central Place will need prospective tenants and secure financing; the team will likely need upwards of 50 percent of the building leased before a shovel hits the ground. But it "depends on the credibility of the tenant" said VanHorn. A big catch, like an established law firm, might squeak by under the halfway marker, but in the end it is "really about what the bank is going to require."

Meanwhile, JBG partnered with the Rosslyn BID to create a "Central Space" in the area where the lobby of the future building will sit. Tables and a small rain garden now create a getaway for area workers to lunch. JBG "looked at the site, and though it wasn't going to be there long, it was a waste to have it fenced-up with weeds growing" explained VanHorn. The developer sees this small community area as the viable use for the site for the next 12 to 18 months at the outset.

The two bold, competing projects have each been humbled by the new economic reality. For now.

Rosslyn, Arlington Virginia real estate development news

Chapin Street Development Approved

A proposed five-story, 44-unit, residential building at 1412 Chapin Street received Zoning Commission approval Monday evening. The project joins two other planned developments, Nehemiah Center and 14 W (the latter two sitting idle, for now), in the Meridian Hill neighborhood, equidistant from the Columbia Heights and U Street Metro stations. Buwa Binite of Dantes Partners first submitted the PGN Architects-designed plan to the Zoning Commission in November 2009. Despite the approval, Binite is staying mum on any details about construction timelines. The proposed building would replace a vacant lot that once held the Berkshire, a residential building larger than the proposed structure that burned down in 1996. The ground floor, which will include a community room, will occupy 100% of the available lot space, with the above-grade floors taking on a "U-shape" to occupy only 80% of the footprint. Most units will have a balcony and all residents will have access to a rooftop deck. According to Jeff Goin a Partner at PGN Architects, the design for the building was a challenge, "it's a lot of competition for a project like this to keep it affordable, to kind of match the Solea, the Union - the PN Hoffman [project]. Other projects you see are high-end and quite articulate." In a neighborhood full of new luxury buildings, "the challenge is to meet some of the other newer designs and be competitive and also meet the constraints of affordable housing," explained Goin. The design uses banding of brick, masonry and metal panels, adding three large bays of metal panels to address the planned developments along the Eastern alley of the building. Along the hill on Chapin Street, the structure continues the masonry and metal closer to the planned Nehemiah building, but switches to brick facade "to have a contextual relationship" with the existing traditional structures more typical of Meridian Hill. The proposed project will offer all rental units as affordable and the developer has agreed to provide a $50 SmartTrip card and subsidize membership fees for either a SmartBike or Zip Car membership for each unit upon move-in. Because of the site's proximity to the metro, below-grade parking will provide precisely 34 bicycle spaces (don't even try getting a 35th bike in there) and 17 car spaces, according to the zoning application. The developer could file for construction permits over the course of the summer for work to begin in the fall, if Binite's comments at a community meeting last summer hold true. 

Washington, DC real estate development news

Walgreens 2, Neighbors 0

Despite their best efforts, the Concerned Citizens of Van Ness will be stuck with a brand new Walgreens Pharmacy at 4225 Connecticut Avenue, NW. Last week the Board of Zoning Adjustment denied an appeal by the neighbors who protested building a Walgreens next to such gems as Jerry's subs, Embassy Cleaners and a parking deck. The initial design was "suburban," sitting back from the street with a parking lot in the front. After negative initial responses from neighbors and the District Department of Transportation (DDOT), the Walgreens design team revamped the plans twice, and in April of last year, the BZA approved plans for a store that sits closer to the street and has below-grade parking, but construction has been stalled by continued community objections.

On a strip rife with commercial buildings, neighbors of the Connecticut Avenue site, currently a gas station, were unhappy with the plans after design adjustments to facilitate a so-called "urban environment." Neighbors were concerned about additional traffic from the new store and problems associated with loading. Requests for additional greenery were met to an extent, though a green oasis, it is not.

The 20,000 s.f. store, designed by Rust Orling Architects, will sit a mere 50 feet from the Van Ness Metro Station and will provide 27 spaces of parking on one level beneath the store. The application required a variance and reduction from the zoning requirement for 57 spaces. The Zoning Commission approval references "other parking alternatives" at the neighboring Giant and CVS. Ah yes, Walgreens customers can use parking at a competitor's neighboring store, which offers the same products and prices. It is the second controversial Walgreens to open on that stretch of Connecticut, the first having replaced the beloved Yenching Palace restaurant in Cleveland Park.

Washington, DC real estate development news

EYA Serves Up Old Town Commons

This weekend, EYA will begin sales on its Old Town Commons project in Alexandria. A grand opening Saturday May 15th will be promptly followed by the beginning of sales contracts (it is hoped) on Sunday, May 16th, when EYA will release a limited number of new homes. Old Town Commons will add 245 market-rate and 134 affordable homes, renovating five full blocks of Old Town.

The new development replaces 194 units of affordable housing built in 1954 and owned by the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority (ARHA). Current residents will be relocated on site or transferred to other available ARHA housing in the community. The developer began the process in 2006 when it responded to city-issued RFP, which it won in the summer of 2006. As part of the agreement, the developer will buy the land beneath the market-rate units, money which ARHA will then put toward funding the public housing units. The public housing will also be funded through low-income housing tax credits.

The homes will be a mixture of architectural styles, designed by project architect the Lessard Group. Across the five phases, the housing breaks down into 159 market-rate townhouses, 86 market-rate condos and 134 subsidized apartments. The first phase includes 38 market-rate units and 18 subsidized units with the remaining phases following a similar pattern of two-thirds market-rate to one-third subsidized. The first phase of homes should complete by the end of 2012, according to EYA Vice President, Jack Lester.

The development team will hold a ceremonial groundbreaking on May 26th which Lester described as an event directed towards the neighbors and future residents of the public housing element of the project "to celebrate the beginning of construction."

Alexandria, Virginia real estate development news

Making Half Street Whole

Construction noises and dust are a welcome sign at 1015 Half Street, a planned office project that fell victim to the economic times and has sat half-finished ever since construction stopped in mid 2009. The halted project was the product of a partnership between Opus East, LLC and Prudential Real Estate Investors until Opus ran aground and filed for bankruptcy in mid-2009. Now that court-appointed receiver, Douglas Wilson Companies, is in the picture, general contractor Skanska USA Building has a new $26 million contract to begin work again on the shell and bring 1015 Half Street to completion within the year. Skanska, which is developing the stalled office project at 10th & G, was the surprise choice in a bid awarded on April 23rd.

Construction, begun in October 2008, has now resumed, and will add 442,000 square feet of office space, complemented by 21,000 square feet of retail to the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood. The 10-story, WDG-designed building boasts a 2-story lobby, 8 1/2' ceilings, 3 stories of underground parking and views of the Capitol and Anacostia River. Opus purchased the property in 2007 from Potomac Investment Properties for $41.5m.

Skanska is shooting for a Silver ranking from the USGBC, the arbiter of greenness, by covering 60% of the roof with vegetation, using recycled materials, and adding bike racks and showers, among other features. Skanska Executive Vice President and General Manager, Chuck Brawley, said the project will "certainly be silver" but that the team is "hoping to get gold." Altogether a much different atmosphere than when the site was home of the Nation nightclub.

Skanska will still need to complete the building’s core and shell, including the building’s glass and precast concrete exterior skin before work on the interior commences, though Skanska anticipates completion by December. Brawley said his company "tried and succeeded to reuse the existing contractors" who had worked on the site, prior to the stall. About the significance of renewed work to the community, Brawley said the project is "realizing the potential of the area, moving the redevelopment along. We are excited to be part of this success." Skanska, headquartered in Stockholm, currently has 33 offices and 7,000 employees in the U.S. alone.

Washington, DC real estate development news

Martin Luther King Memorial Taking Shape

Its not easy building a monument on the National Mall. And yet despite the intentionally time-consuming, necessarily frictional process, construction of a 4-acre monument to Martin Luther King Jr. is now, finally underway on the Mall's Tidal Basin.

After decades of preparation, and a groundbreaking back in 2006, the achievement may seem at once inevitable (3 ex-Presidents have lent their support, and corporate sponsors read like a Forbes 500 list), yet so long in conception that DC residents could be forgiven for having not noticed. Hidden from Independence Avenue by a nondescript beige wall, what began 3 or 4 decades ago, depending on who you ask, is at last technically under construction, as contractors begin to place 300 concrete pilings - Venice style - into the silty marsh of the Mall. The pilings will ready the site - a river, after all, until the late 19th century - to accept what will effectively be a large landscape project supporting oblong granite memorials to the civil rights leader.

Once completed - possibly by next summer - the park-like memorial will wrap around the northwest corner of the Tidal Basin, opposite and viewable from the Jefferson Memorial.

Visitors will enter from the northwest edge, near Independence Avenue, by way of a new walkway past the World War I Memorial to better connect the King Memorial to the Mall - a necessity for an area that serves as DC's main attractant but fails to provide for those who show up by car. No designated parking will be added.

Visually, visitors will be greeted by one of the monument's principal symbols - the "mountains of despair," a literal embodiment to a reference in King's "I Have a Dream" speech. The twin granite slabs will frame the entry, two 30-foot sentinels 12 feet apart, appearing to have been sliced and parted, bearing inscriptions from the 1963 speech with themes of justice and hope. Again emulating the civil rights struggle, despair will lead to a path beyond, and having passed through it emerges the view of a single stone, the "stone of hope," appearing as if cleaved from - but beyond - the struggle. Harry Johnson, President and CEO of the Martin Luther King Memorial Foundation, takes up the vision of the entrance: "It will look like a mountain that's been split in two. Outside is rough, simulating the roughness of the civil rights movement. You still have not seen Dr. King until you get closer to the Jefferson. It will appear as though the stone of hope will have been cut from the mountain of despair. [King] will be carved on that stone." In fact the granite, quarried in China, is too big to ship in tact, and will be cut into sections and reassembled on site. Lei Yixin, a Chinese sculptor, designed the statue.

Having crossed the memorial to the 28-foot sculpture of King carved into the granite, who stares back at the entrance, arms folded, the visitor will be surrounded by 700 feet of arcing inscription wall that peaks at the entrance at 12 feet in height, decrescendoing down to two feet at the ends, which bow toward the Tidal Basin. Selected quotes will be etched into the surface, which in its first design was intended to flow with water during the summer months, a feature removed when the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) determined it would interfere with visitors' ability to read the quotes.

Set just behind the arcing wall are 24 large, raised semicircular niches, each designed to "commemorate the contribution of the many individuals that gave their lives in different ways to the civil rights movement." Each will allow a private, reflective space dedicated to individuals that died in the civil rights struggle; some will be left blank "in deference to the unfinished nature of the movement."

Hundreds of trees will be "randomly massed" throughout the exhibit, with evergreen Magnolias along the perimeter, Oaks tracing the arc of the stone exhibit, and Cherry trees weaving into the Cherries that now dominate the circumference of the basin. According to Johnson, the Foundation, which has been responsible for the design and construction of the memorial, will add another 200 cherry trees along the tidal basin. Despite the addition to the canopy Johnson says it "will be very visible from the Jefferson Memorial, you will be able to see Dr. King and the memorial." None of the current Cherries will be removed.

The project to build the memorial has been a separate struggle worthy of its own narrative. The official website dates its inception at 1984 (Wikipedia brings it back to 1968), when Alpha Phi Alpha, a fraternity to which King belonged, first proposed a memorial on the National Mall. After much lobbying and rallying, President Clinton signed legislation authorizing the memorial in 1996. The Foundation was formally organized in 1998, and fundraising began in earnest. Unprecedented corporate support (General Motors eventually gave $10m, Tommy Hilfiger gave $5m, and thousands of other corporations have made contributions), gave the tribute momentum, and the development process its acme. In 1998 the National Capitol Planning Commission (NCPC) approved a site at Constitution Gardens.

But in 1999, the CFA, which has authority to approve every element of any memorial, voted against the eastern end of Constitution Gardens as a site, contradicting NCPC's approval, and later that year the two commissions approved the Foundation's request to move the site to the Tidal Basin. In 2000, the Foundation reviewed more than 900 submissions for the design of the memorial, and later that year selected ROMA, a San Francisco-based design firm for its concept of the memorial park. In 2004, Devrouax and Purnell, a DC-based architecture firm, was picked to carry out the task. Devrouax had worked for the city on almost every high-visibility project - projects like Nationals Stadium, Ronald Reagan Airport, the new Convention Center, and the African American Civil War Memorial. According to Marshall Purnell, a principal at Devrouax, he suggested that his firm and ROMA for a joint venture to keep ROMA actively in the process of implementing its design.

While work got underway, the relationship between the Foundation and the Devrouax did not survive the project . "We continued to submit designs, but at some point we fell out of favor with the Foundation" said Purnell. "We were pretty deep into the process by that point, about 65-70% finished with the construction designs and documents." No one involved wants to discuss why the Foundation chose to remove them, and Purnell will not cast aspersions, saying only that "it got sort of ugly. The contract was terminated."

Up until that point the memorial's construction seemed imminent. Congress had just donated $10,000,000 in matching funds, and a groundbreaking had been scheduled for 2006, but other problems beset the project. Fundraising efforts were complicated by King's family, which demanded royalties from money raised using King's name and image in marketing for the memorial. Some supporters protested that a black sculptor had not been chosen, and others decried the choice of Chinese granite, noting that the use of Chinese workers, who are poorly paid and treated, was not respectful of their own civil rights struggle.

With funding lagging, a new design team did not begin until the summer of 2007, when the Foundation selected McKissack and McKissack, Turner Construction, Beltsville-based Gilford Corporation, and Tompkins Builders (now owned by Turner). According to Lisa Anders, Senior Project Manager at McKissack, the engineering firm was chosen because they have "done work on the Mall, and worked on Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, and we are a minority CM and architecture group, so we bring that to the project."

In 2008 the Commission of Fine Arts asked for a reduction in the size of King's statue and the stone of hope, stating that "the statue design is difficult to evaluate because such colossal human sculptures are rarely created in modern times...the recent imagery of such sculptures includes television broadcasts of these statues being pulled down in other countries, a comparison that would be harmful to the success of this memorial." Commissioners commented that only statues meant to be viewed from a distance were now built so big (both Lincoln and Jefferson nearby likenesses are smaller), and created the suggestion "of a colossal statue rather than a depiction of an actual man." The Commission also disagreed with the heavy use of bollards, and the resulting shift in perimeter security to a more natural barrier slowed the project by up to a year.

Despite the complications, work now appears to be in its last phase. With $107m of the projected $120m project already raised, the National Park Service issued construction permits last October, and on December 28th of 2009 initial site prep began on the site, which should wrap up in a little more than a year. Says Purnell of the original design-build team "I would just like to see the Memorial built." It now seems certain he will get his wish.

Washington DC real estate development news

Sheridan Station Breaks Ground

Today, Anacostia's Sheridan Station development kicks off with a ground breaking for the first phase of the HOPE VI residential project. The 344 mixed-income housing units are funded in part thanks to a $20 million HOPE VI competitive grant that the District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA) received from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2008. Sheridan Station’s 11 acres in Anacostia are owned jointly by the DC Housing Authority and William C. Smith & Co. Though the project was initially set to begin construction in January of this year, DCHA only recently closed on financing. Phase 1 of the 344-unit Sheridan Station, formerly Sheridan Terrace, will revolve around an initial 114 units of public housing and 69 Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) units. The 114 units will deliver in the form of a 104 unit multi-family building and 10 single-family rental units. At least 25 of the public housing units available in Phase 1 will be reserved for current Barry Farm residents. Phases 2 and 3 of the redevelopment will begin once all units in Phase 1 are filled, but the entire project is expected to be complete by 2015. The multifamily building is registered with the US Green Building Counsel for LEED Certification Gold. Green features include a 100 KW solar photovoltaic array which provides 30% of the buildings core energy, a vegetative green roof, and an 8000 gallon rainwater retention cistern underneath the slab of the building. The building will also have a health and wellness center which will provide general family practice care for the neighborhood, provided by Core Health. Construction on the first phase is expected to be complete in December 2011. When all three phases are complete, the 344 units will be almost double the amount of the original Sheridan Terrace - a troubled project that was torn down in 1997. As with the original Sheridan Terrace, the new-and-improved Sheridan Station will contain 183 public housing rental units. An additional 161 units will go up for sale; 117 of these will be sold at market rate and another 44 will be sold as affordable units. As lead developer, Smith partnered with Union Temple CDC and Jackson Investment Co. to form Sheridan Terrace Redevelopment LLC. Sheridan Station will comprise a small piece of the Barry Farm/Park Chester/Wade Road redevelopment planned for Ward 8. The project was designed by Bethesda's SK&I Architects, which furnished the seven different building designs that will include landscaped green space and a pedestrian trail.

Washington, DC real estate development news

Whole Foods Opens Next Week in Chevy Chase

Whole Foods will open its latest area store next Tuesday. The neighborhood-transforming grocer is putting the finishing touches on its Chevy Chase store, located just over the DC border at Wisconsin Place, at 4420 Willard Avenue.

New England Development (NED), Archstone and Boston Properties jointly developed the Wisconsin Place shopping center, which also features a 432-unit apartment building designed by SK&I, 295,000 s.f. of office space, and 305,000 s.f. of Chevy Chase-style retail.

Turner Construction began working on the new Whole Foods back in August of 2004, interior work is being performed by L.F. Jennings. This will be the 296th Whole Foods to open in the U.S., Canada and U.K., according Liz Burkhart of Whole Foods.

Washington DC real estate development news

Married to the Job, and Each Other

Answer: Margaritas and salt. Shoes and socks. Peanut butter and jelly. Question: Name things that go together unconditionally.

When DCMUD approached three area husband-and-wife architect teams about their formula for combining work and marriage, we wondered if for them, the concept was also unconditional.

Checks and Balances

For Jane Treacy and Phillip Eagleburger of Treacy & Eagleburger Architects PC, working together was a natural expression of their relationship, though marriage came four years after the professional partnership. Introduced to each other as fledgling architects by other married architects who all frequented DuPont Circle watering holes around 1985 (Treacy, who had worked in several East Coast cities, was working for Hord Coplan Macht in Baltimore and drove in for D.C.’s social life), the Eagleburger’s found that for them compatibility had many faces.
“I think it’s peculiar to the profession that architects kind of live with their work, more so than other professions,” said Eagleburger. “I think that’s why you get a lot of architects married to architects, because they understand what the situation is.”

Formed in 1989, Treacy & Eagleburger, with a staff of four, focuses primarily on regional residential projects, though their award-winning work extends to Massachusetts’ toney Cape and Islands as well. With Eagleburger preferring “edgier design,” explaining that their firm walks the line between traditional and contemporary, he is admittedly “more of a polemic,” something he attributes to his academic and jury experience. Eagleburger credits his wife’s more pragmatic style with reigning him in at all the right times, however.

Speaking to their modus operandi, Treacy explained that when a project comes in to the office, typically one principal and one staff member take it. “We do tag team things though,” she added. “We pretty much split the work: We’re both involved in the business end and in the architectural/design end, each acting as consultant” to the other principal. “We know all the time what’s going on with the other partner,” Treacy affirmed, though the client may not realize it.

At home, and even after a long day together at the office, Treacy, who often finishes her husband's sentences (the reverse is also true), said they spend a lot of their personal time together, dividing up activities, with dinner duty falling to her husband whom she concedes is “the better cook.”

“If Jane gets too involved in the kitchen, I kind of kick her out,” Eagleburger quipped, conceding that Treacy is better at cleaning.

Victoria is in the Details

Douglas and Victoria Rixey of Rixey-Rixey Architects met at University of Virginia School of Architecture just before Douglas graduated. Marrying soon after, each obtained a masters degree (Douglas from UVA and Victoria from Rice University) and worked separately for various firms such as Hartman-Cox and Bowie Gridley. Opening their own office in 1985, Douglas Rixey explained that because they’ve been working together so long, it’s no longer as hard as it may have been early on.

“At any firm, no matter how big the project, there’s really one person running that project,” he said, acknowledging that possession of one’s own project is key in their joint stewardship of the practice. That said, the opportunity for them to solicit the other’s input or critique is also invaluable.

The Rixey's, who specialize in high-end residential work and operate without a staff, pride themselves on the boutique aspect of their firm (nothing can be relegated to a junior associate, Douglas said). Both agreed Victoria is better at the details, and Douglas is more interested in the big picture.

Raised in a cutting edge Ohio home on a wooded bank designed and built by her industrial design engineer father (lots of cantilevers and soaring ceilings), Victoria said she and Douglas both love modern architecture but in their own practice in the region, gravitate toward more traditional or transitional work – and lots of it.

“Work used to be everything,” Douglas Rixey said. “And it’s just too much.’

With that in mind, the couple wraps up any discussion of the day on the trip home, talk of drawings, structure, fenestration and cost yielding perhaps to the evening’s menu and movie choices.

“That’s always been the easiest part of the relationship,” Victoria said. “There’s never been any friction related to housework, cooking, taking out the trash, laundry, any of that. It just kind of magically gets split up – I think very evenly,” she added. “We really enjoy being together all the time.”

Yours, Mine and Ours

For Elizabeth (Beth) Reader and Charles (Chuck) Swartz of Reader & Swartz Architects, PC in Winchester, Va., working together is not only a couples’ affair, but a family affair.

“Our kids (Ella, 13, and Jake, 10) get dropped off from the school bus into our office and do their homework,” Swartz said, recalling that from the earliest ages, they got their parents’ old models to glue and play with. “They go on site visits with us.”


Meeting at Virginia Tech School of Architecture and Design in 1986 and marrying the following year, Reader and Swartz returned to Winchester, the latter’s home town, briefly working in the same office together and opening their own firm, currently with a staff of five, in 1990. With a substantial number of cutting edge commercial and residential projects on their dance card, Reader and Swartz have observed a kind of manifest destiny of late in their client base: D.C. ex-patriots finding their way to areas such as Winchester, building weekend or retirement homes.

“We pretty much eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner and see each other all the time,” Swartz said of their relationship, qualifying their actions by adding that “because (they’ve) done it for so long, it doesn’t seem strange.”

According to Reader, who is credited with running more of the firm’s business side of things, she takes her work home all the time and hasn’t found a way to separate it. “Our kids even complain about it,” she admitted.

In support of his wife’s shop talk predilection, Swartz, who enjoys the casual moniker of “spiritual leader” (translation: he keeps everyone going), said he and his wife “love doing architecture and don’t know how to do anything else. We get a lot of positive stuff riding down the road,” he explained.

Close to Home

When queried about conflict, the couples wasted no time in bringing up renovations of their own homes and/or the building of their own vacation home.

“We joked that maybe we should have divided up the rooms,” Phil Eagleburger said, reflecting on a renovation of their Cleveland Park home five years ago.

“It took us nearly two years before we could even start construction,” said Douglas Rixey of the couple’s vacation home in the northern neck of Virginia, “And it wasn’t so much that we disagreed on solutions,” he added. “We just couldn’t decide.”

According to Chuck Swartz, the way he and his wife deal with disagreements is to trust and respect one another. “The bigger difficulty was when we did our own house – the client was us as married people. There were a lot of people in the room all at one time,” he said. But in the end, he realized that “together, we make a pretty good architect.”

Photography of Reader & Swartz home by Hoachlander Davis Photography, couple's portrait by Nathan Webb

Pedestrian Party in Chinatown

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) has been running experiments throughout the District like a team of overzealous transportation scientists with DC as their lab. First the bike lanes on 15th Street, then the pay by phone parking meters and now a 29-second pedestrian free-for-all played out every few minutes at the busy intersection of 7th and H Streets in Chinatown. Starting Wednesday at 10 a.m., the lights at the intersection will turn red for cars in all directions and allow pedestrians to legally cross the streets, even diagonally. Diagonally!

Apparently, the new arrangement is one of several changes the agency is carrying out to increase pedestrian safety. The 29-second period, part of a 100-second cycles, will halt all vehicles in every direction for pedestrian crossings and then traffic will split the remaining 71 seconds for vehicles to go their merry ways. Another change of note for drivers, you will no longer be able to make any turns at the intersection. At all.

John Lisle, DDOT spokesperson, said the experiment will last several months to allow people to get used to the new pattern and to help the agency determine the effectiveness. DDOT has data that recorded the length of time it previously took a vehicle to pass through the intersection and will compare the old times with the news times to see if there are any efficiencies. Additionally, the intersection last year had a total of 35 accidents, 4 of which involved pedestrians for a total of 9 injuries. Other jurisdictions, such as San Francisco, have used this model with success for its busiest pedestrian intersections.

"It may work really well" said Lisle, "and then we'll consider doing it at other intersections. And if it doesn't work, we'll roll it back." Lisle admitted that the plan would not work at every intersection. For instance implementing a no-turn policy at Wisconsin and M Streets in Georgetown would be a total nightmare.

Now we'll wait for someone to organize a flashmob dance party at 7th and H. A Lady Gaga song clip of 29-seconds would work just fine.

Washington, DC real estate development news

Vets Medical Center Expansion Gets Initial OK

Thursday, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center master plan moved one step closer to making the proposed changes for the 350-acre campus. The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) approved the plan, which proposes to expand and modernize the existing 900,000 s.f. medical center with 818,000 gross s.f. of additional space, creating a massive 1.7 million gross s.f. development. The expansion, which is split into four phases, will take place over the course of 20 years and is set to finish in 2030.

According to the NCPC, "the proposed development will increase inpatient and outpatient areas, add a new long-term living facility space, add medical research space, consolidate administrative functions, and improve site utilities." The VA's proposal will make better use of the current surface parking lots by either building new facilities or converting them to green space. Employees, patients and visitors will rely on two new structured parking garages. The north garage will come online during the third phase; NCPC advised the VA to closely monitor parking use and demand for better planning of the matter. The plan will actually reduce the parking ratio to one space for every four people, reducing the number of staff spaces by almost 300. Additionally, the plan increases the amount of open green space on the campus from 19% to 33% of the total acres.

The NCPC stressed the importance of addressing the urban context, accordingly the plan places new structures nearer to the edges of the property. The design also includes extensive planting of trees and new shrubbery along North Capitol Street to provide a buffer between the massing of the new medical buildings and traffic.

The VA also has a transportation plan to increase the accessibility for bus, Metro and pedestrian commuters. The VA team has discussed transportation with the nearby Washington Hospital Center and proposes a new "transit center" along 1st Street. The new center would change the bus circulation pattern, reducing trip times. It will also include either a pedestrian bridge or "enhanced crosswalk" to make the intersection safer.

A mere 20% of the project will be built in the first three phases and some of the plans already have funding, meaning they could begin over the course of the the next five years. The other 80% will take place in the fourth phase, which is scheduled to wrap up in 2030.

Washington, DC real estate development news