West End Hotel Construction Begins

OTO Development has begun work on the Hilton Garden Inn at 22nd and M Streets, in DC's West End neighborhood.  The project had been on hold for years as a previous team sought to put a fashionable "1 Hotel" on the site, but failed to get the project off the ground.  Turner Construction, the general contractor on the project, began site work last week.

OTO, based in Spartanburg, SC, is one of the three developers partnering to build the West End Hilton, along with newly-formed partnership including Starwood Capital Group and Perseus Realty, LLC, a partnership that brought the financing needed to start construction.  Shalom Baranes of Georgetown is architectural firm designing the terracotta and brick, 10-story, 237-room hotel, which will feature a second-floor, landscaped courtyard, meeting rooms, a rooftop garden and pool and a green roof.

West End Hilton Garden Inn, Washington, DC

The 15,600 s.f. lot at the corner of 22nd and M has been dormant since 2008 when the site's original developer demolished the Nigerian Embassy to make way for a boutique hotel.  Starwood then planned a luxury hotel but failed to secure financing for the concept.



In 2011, developers sought permission to modify the site plans and instead of a boutique eco-luxury creation, they announced plans for a Hilton Garden Inn (a brand categorized as upscale mid-priced) with 237 rooms, along with Shalom Baranes and OTO Development as a third development partner.  Although neighbors complained about the "fanny pack crowd that would frequent the hotel, the choice proved easier to finance.

The hotel will also feature a ground-floor restaurant and bar with indoor-outdoor seating opening onto the street on the corner of 22nd and M, and is the beginning of Hilton's play into more urban areas.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

Today in Pictures - JBG's District Apartments

JBG announced in January of 2011 that it was moving forward on District Condos, which later became District Apartments, with new partner Grosvenor.  The pair started work a few weeks later on their 125-unit, Shalom Baranes designed building, on Logan Circle's trendy 14th Street.

18 months on, the project is nearing completion.  JBG incorporated the former AIDS clinic at the southern end of the lot for additional retail that will wrap around the corner of S and 14th Streets. The Chevy Chase developer teamed with Toronto-based Cecconi Simone Inc. for interior design, in a building that will have smallish, mostly 1-bedroom apartments.  Occupancy is expected to begin around the end of the year.

Washington D.C. real estate development news.  Photos by Rey Lopez

Shrinking AdMo Hotel Rebuked By Zoning Commission

In a brief but heated zoning board hearing on Thursday night, representatives for the Friedman Capital Advisors/Beztak Companies' controversial hotel project in Adams Morgan received a series of stinging rebukes, after botching their documents submission.  Though required to submit any amendments 21 days in advance, developers submitted the newest amendments on Tuesday evening, with disastrous consequences.

The proposed project, which has been n the works for over four years, encompasses properties at 1770 Euclid Street NW, and 2390 Champlain Street NW, and consists of just over 42,000 s.f. of space currently occupied by the 100-year old First Church of Christ, Scientist, a parking lot, and a small office building.  The OPX Global-designed plans call for up to 227 rooms and 174 parking spaces; Thursday's hearing was primarily to discuss changes to the building's proposed 90-foot height (which has been extremely problematic) and to the number of parking spaces.

However, these changes were never addressed, as members of the zoning commission raised serious concerns about the timing, quality, and adequacy of the submitted papers.

Vice Chairman Marcie Cohen feared the community had not had time to review the latest plans.  Commissioner Michael Turnbull objected strongly and at length to the quality of the renderings that the board was given.  "I only have little tiny drawings.  You need full size ones.  Black and white is unacceptable, I need color.  I need a ground floor plate that shows the entrance, the lobby, et cetera.  These little black and white cartoons don't convey what the building actually looks like.  They're muddy, they're not accurate."

The roadblock comes at an unfortunate time, falling just a day after the project's developers won support from the Office of Planning as well as a local group that had obstructed the hotel over height concerns.  Friedman / Beztak had agreed to drop the height from 81 feet to 72 to appease height activists despite broad support from the greater community.  Friedman also had to agree to make numerous repairs at the Marie Reed Center as a condition of the neighborhood's approval.  Last December the developer had agreed to reduce the height from 92 feet after a similar slap-down from the Office of Planning.

Still, zoning commissioners weren't impressed.  Peter May, though he began by damning the project with the faintest of praise ("Generally speaking, the development of this case has been positive.  I don't know that it's been positive enough, but it's been positive."), was the sole supporter of moving forward despite the late submission, asking his fellow board members if there was some way to mitigate the damage, and pointing out that if they were to turn down the amendment, they'd have to reschedule the hearing for sometime in December.

Chairman Anthony Hood didn't have a problem with that.  "The way this was presented to me, I don't have a problem waiting until December," he said.  Hood, like Cohen, had concerns that the community hadn't received a fair chance to review the changes, and was clearly irked by the last-minute submissions.  "I spent the weekend reviewing stuff [for this case] and then I get all this stuff on Tuesday. It's not ... popular."

Perhaps encouraged by Hood's apparent irritation, Vice Chairman Cohen quickly moved to cancel the hearing and to refuse to even acknowledge receiving Tuesday's controversial packet.  However, after May pointed out that if they went that route, the developers would have to "get back in line for a hearing date," the board moved instead to simply push the hearing to the 13th.  After a series of procedural moves designed to delay the business at hand until next week without setting everyone back to square one, it was suggested that the applicant be allowed to explain why the submission was so late and so shoddy.

"I really don't want to hear from the applicant," said Hood.  But cooler heads prevailed, and the project's representative was allowed to speak.  Apologizing for the late submission, the representative promised to make all materials available to the community, to submit better drawings, and to observe the proper regulations governing the timing of submissions.  He then pointed out that the changes at hand had been made to address the District's and the community's main concerns; a reduction in height, and a reduction in the number of parking spaces.  "These could make supporters out of a lot of objectors, or at least take people who are against this project and turn them neutral," he said.

However, after reps from ANC1C declined to comment on the new plans ("We've received three sets of documents in the last 72 hours; we're not prepared to comment."), the meeting was quickly adjourned, postponed to next week.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

DC's Union Market to Open Saturday

Rendering courtesy of Edens

D.C's long-anticipated Union Market hall opens in D.C. this Saturday, September 8th.  The opening heralds what many hope will be an ongoing revitalization of the eastern downtown area, as well as the NoMa neighborhood.  With the new market the city has two working market halls - institutions known worldwide as centers of trade, exchange, and community.  The market is located between 5th and 6th Streets NE north of Florida Ave. and east of New York Ave., and held a preview party in July.  The city's other market hall, the historic Eastern Market, is located in Capitol Hill.

The grand opening Saturday will be followed on Sunday by the second annual DC Scoop artisan ice cream competition from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.  There is no admission cost.  Market hours will be Friday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. until November, when the market will be open six days a week.

"We think that Union Market will be a terrific asset for NoMa residents and business," Robin-Eve Jasper, president of the NoMa Buiness Improvement District (BID) told DCMud. "For us, it is a first step in what is going to be a fabulous addition to the overall NoMa neighborhood."

Rendering courtesy of Edens

Vendors include Rappahannok River Oysters Co., a 100-year-old, family-owned oyster farm, Buffalo and Bergen, a soda shop / bar run by a mixologist named Gina Chersevani, a boutique curated by food writer Amanda McClements, Righteous Cheese, which launched a successful fundraiser on KickStarter to help start up its business, Peregrine Espresso, Lyon Bakery, Trickling Springs Creamery, Harvey's Market, Oh! Pickles, Almaala Farms, DC Empanadas, and TaKorean.

The grand opening also marks a renovation victory in the face of a fire which did serious damage in November, 2011. The fire displaced vendors, including Harvey's Market, a meat shop which will reopen in the new market.

According to Edens, the market's developer, it will feature space for up to 40 vendors and "the finest food artisans ranging from up-and-coming entrepreneurs to well-known restauranteurs" and will operate year-round.  Union Market is located in the former Union Terminal Market Hall, which was built in 1967, and has been renovated, although market activity on the site dates back to 1802. The architectural firm on the project is JCA Architects.

Rendering from Florida Avenue Small Area Plan, NoMa

The building sits on a cluster of six parcels which Edens, a South Carolina-based firm, owns or manages.  The building is the sole (for now) refurbished structure on the fringe of a 27-acre area known alternately as Florida Avenue Market or Capital City Market.  This larger expanse of parking lots, loading docks, and food retailers is comprised of 120 lots with dozens of different owners.

In 2009, the Office of Planning developed a Florida Avenue Small Area Plan with various site stakeholders.  In addition to a recommendation for a mixed-use area of commercial and residential spaces, the plan also sketches out a long-term vision for a walkable area linking pedestrians destined for the Florida Avenue market area with the New York / Florida Avenue Metro, NoMa, and neighboring Gallaudet University campus.

Gallaudet University, with its campus just across 6th Street east of the market, is another major property owner and stakeholder in the zone.  In 2009, it was a participant in planning talks for the area.   The University has recently submitted a campus master plan for DC Zoning Commission review, according to planning office officials.  Gallaudet owns four acres adjoining the Union Market site which is currently being used as a parking lot, but has no plans to redevelop its portion in the near future.

Rendering from Florida Avenue Small Area Plan, NoMa

“The opening of Union Market is great," Harriet Tregoning, Director of the DC Office of Planning, told DCMud. "OP looks forward to seeing our plans being implemented."

NoMa BID president Robin-Eve Jasper echoed those hopes.  "I think that the first piece coming to reality - the Union Market - will be a real catalyst as far as seeing those plans move forward."

Washington D.C. real estate development news

Columbia Heights Affordable Housing Designed for Deaf

There is a tree-lined section of Euclid Street NW in Columbia Heights where a mural of an ocean scene faces an empty, grassy lot.  That lot, at 1421 Euclid Street, NW (see map at left) near the corner of 14th Street NW and a BP gas station - is the site of a future housing development designed for the deaf.

The 28-unit, $11.5 million apartment building will feature an audio-video entry system and balconies with every unit.  The building will be the second D.C. apartment building designed especially to accommodate members of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community (Gallaudet beat them, by a bit).  The rental units will also meet the city's affordable housing requirements.

Justice Park Designed Especially For the Deaf

Buwa Binitie of Dantes Partners, the project's real estate developer, released new renderings of the project to DCMud this week.  "This is going to look and feel like any other high-quality market-rate housing," Binitie said.  According to project architect Zachary Schooley of Grimm + Parker Architects, the apartment design, in addition to a two-way, audio-video entry system - will feature open floor plans to facilitate visual communication and signing.

The building's design considers future prospective deaf and hard-of-hearing residents' greater "reliance on the visual and tactile senses," Schooley told DCMud.  "Spaces where the tenants can openly assemble together, open stairways, large amounts of glazing and the use of color all create a more stimulating (visual) environment." The design includes eight studio units, 16 one-bedroom units, four two-bedroom units, for a total of 28 units - 9 fewer than the original plan's call for 37 units.

Schooley said architects are working to amplify well-lit spaces and minimize the number of

Park view from future Justice Park apartments on Euclid St. NW

darkened, or sharp, corners.  He said the design team had also been experimenting with textural elements, such as wall coverings, flooring materials that will enhance residents' tactile experience of the space.

Binitie said Dantes has also brought on a new development partner on the Justice Park project.  Mi Casa, Inc., an affordable housing non-profit, has replaced former development partners Perdomo Group and Capital Construction Enterprises, turning the development triad into a duo.   The switch-up happened in April, Binitie told DCMud, adding that Dantes has "always been in the lead development role in the project."

Justice Park, rendering courtesy Dantes Partners

Dantes Partners won the contract to design, build, and develop the city-owned property in July, 2010, under the administration of former mayor Adrian Fenty. The city stipulated that the building accommodate renters who meet eligibility requirements for affordable housing.  Dantes Partners is the firm behind several other
recent D.C. developments including VIDA affordable senior housing in Brightwood and the long-running but embattled redevelopment of the West End library and fire station.   

Binitie said Dantes has worked with a variety of community stakeholders during the design stage of the Justice Park project.  According to Binitie, input has come from the neighboring condo communities of The Villaggio and Fairmont, among other locals.

Justice Park, rendering courtesy Dantes Partner

Another person involved with the project since its inception is Glen Sutcliffe, an agent with W.C. & A.N. Miller, who caters to D.C.'s deaf and hard-of-hearing community.  The child of deaf parents, Sutcliffe said he immediately welcomed the opportunity, and rallied members of his network to support the project.

He said the ubiquitous open floor plans featuring joined kitchen-living-dining areas have particular value to the deaf and hard-of-hearing.  "When you are designing a living space for a deaf or hard-of-hearing individual, you have to think: everything is visual," according to Sutcliffe. He said the design would feature a strobe light fire alarm with a flash "piercing" enough to wake anyone up from a deep sleep, which would be a benefit even to the hearing. "Things that are designed and developed for a deaf person could have universal use all the time." 

Although the D.C. metro area has a higher concentration of deaf individuals than almost any other locale in the world, Sutcliffe said, housing options for the deaf are extraordinarily underrepresented. "People might ask why we are doing this," Sutcliffe said. "Because a deaf person goes to buy a condo or a co-op or rent an apartment in the District and they have to do battle with the board, builder, or landlord to get accommodations."

Sutcliffe said even the simplest and cheapest feature is one that more builders could integrate into their designs:  the audio-video entry system. "It is my sincere hope that this building may serve as a model for other developers to design their building similarly as far as accessibility,"  Sutcliffe told DCMud. "What is necessity for the deaf community could be an amenity for the hearing population - if you look at it that way, it makes perfect sense."

But as stipulated by fair housing law, the apartments must be made available for rental to anyone eligible for affordable housing on a first-come, first-serve basis.  However, Binitie said, marketing will be "aggressively targeting deaf professionals." Renters must earn between 30 and 60 percent of the area median income (AMI), or, no more than $60,000 a year. Binitie says he expects ground-breaking will take place in early 2013, and the units will open to reservation until six months after construction.

"It will be first-come first-serve according to fair housing, but you have to understand that these are going to accessible units and we are going to try to accommodate as many (deaf) as possible," said Sutcliffe.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

Your Next Place

By Franklin Schneider

The house next door to mine has been sold at least three times in the six years I've lived here. After a while I just assumed it was haunted, but after the last owners moved out I was able to go inside for a visit and I found that no, it just sort of sucked. It was narrow, dim, and had the finishes of a Holiday Inn rent-by-hour conference room. Of course everyone moved out after a year or two.

Conversely, the best houses are almost never on the market. (Much like the best women - I know because I've been checking their Facebook relationship statuses daily for years.) This sprawling 1914 house is a perfect example of this principle. It's been in the family for decades, and when you walk through it you can see why. High ceilings, wide open spaces, miles of burnished hardwood floors, four fireplaces, and six generous bedrooms, all spread over three levels. I'd stay here for decades too. (Unfortunately, the open house ended at 5pm.)

Coming in, you enter into a large, open reception hall area off which all the main rooms branch off, so the house is really made for socializing, parties, etc. The centrally-located dining room is fantastic, the kitchen is unbelievably roomy, I loved the large, elegant library (books are the new vinyl), the master bedroom is "suite" (ha ha! puns!), and if I lived there I'd totally call dibs on the sunny, quirkily shaped attic bedroom. Outside, there's a truly epic backyard and (if there was an emoticon for "intense jealousy," it would be right here) an in-ground pool - this place really is the "too good to be true" house that every family on television lives in, except that it's actually real.  And like the hot women on facebook, it was off the market before I even had a chance at it.

3846 Woodley Road NW
6 Bedrooms, 3.5 Baths
Sale price: $1,623,000

Petworth Safeway Closing September 8th for Multi-family

Safeway officially announced today that it will close its Petworth store on September 8th to make way for the mixed-use development that has been long planned for the site.  The new store, to be developed by Duball, is scheduled to open mid 2014, with a 62,000 s.f. facility that will be the third largest in the city, triple the size of the current store.  Five floors of residential will sit atop the supermarket at 3830 Georgia Ave.  Torti Gallas designed the new building.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

107-Year-Old Cleveland Park Home Dodges Bullet

A 107-year-old home in Cleveland Park has received a last minute pardon from razing, after the property was sold to a new owner and plans to develop the site for the moment shelved.

"The raze application and the concept proposal have been withdrawn," confirms Steve Callcott, Deputy Preservation Officer at Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB). "We received notification from their attorney that the property has been sold to a different owner."

The saga of the marginalized home at 3211 Wisconsin Avenue was set to come to an abrupt end, as the last owners had sought permission to raze the house to make way for a six-story apartment building.

Previous developers at Hastings Development had proposed a wholesale relocation of the house, from its Wisconsin Avenue location in Cleveland Park to a vacant lot at 3118 Quebec Place NW.  A 2008 report from Hastings Development described the sad case of a home that had "lost its setting" and was "pressed between multifamily apartment buildings."  Pictures illustrating this point depicted a forlorn two story house dwarfed on each side by looming monoliths and fronted by a hectic thoroughfare.  Encroachment was gradual; to the south, an eight-story apartment building was constructed in 1958, and to the north, a (most unsightly) seven-story building went up in the Eighties.  In contrast, 3211 was a modest, two-story frame house, set back from the street with a small front yard.  

But the HPRB rejected this proposal, later saying that the "new location and context was inappropriate for the building," despite the fact that its initial report found the Quebec Place lot "would provide a more visually compatible context of similarly sized and scaled single family houses."  An HPRB report noted that the house was "deteriorating and vacant" and was "in need of substantial repair" as well as missing the original porches. Additionally, there was speculation that the original builder and architect of record, a Treasury Department bookkeeper named Donald Macleod (he built the house for his sister Euphemia), had simply copied the plans for the house out of a builder's manual or pattern book, theoretically reducing the house's value as a historical artifact.

Following the denial of the relocation request, developers changed gears and planned to raze the house and build a six-story apartment building much like the surrounding ones - that is, until the property changed hands at the last minute.  So what's next for the once-endangered house?

"We have no applications pending [regarding 3211 Wisconsin]," says Callcott.  "We're not exactly sure what's going to happen to it."

Washington D.C. real estate development news

Today in Pictures - Archstone's NoMa Apartments

Archstone's First + M apartments in NoMa was just the second apartment building to go online in the once quiet neighborhood, but thanks to its distinguishing design and sheer size, is helping transform the area that is now busy during the day and even sometimes at night.  Occupancy of the building began June 1, and the leasing office says that 162 of the 469 units are now occupied.

The building was designed by Davis Carter Scott and broke ground in June of 2010, and features 192 one bedrooms, 206 two bedrooms, and 71 three bedrooms – as well as a smidgen of ground floor retail.  Amenities include a communal "chef's kitchen" that opens onto an outdoor dining area, a 5000-square-foot 24-hour gym, a large interior courtyard, a “Rooftop Resort” that features a heated lap pool and sun deck, an internet cafe, a theater, two soundproof music studios, a bike workshop, even a pet spa.

Washington D.C. real estate development news