Arlington's "Not So Big House"

Q and A with Krista Minotti Schauer
by Beth Herman


Descended from a designing family, Principal Krista Minotti Schauer of KMS Architecture believes the profession is in her genes. At age 18, her grandfather labored on NYC's Chrysler building and then became a builder; her father studied architecture and building sciences at Clemson University; and her mother is an artist whose finely detailed work informs Schauer's.

In an effort to modernize and make more functional a 1923 3-bedroom, 2-bath farmhouse in Arlington, Virginia, without adding a lot of space, Schauer said she was inspired by architect and "The Not So Big House" author Sarah Susanka, having heard her speak at an AIA Convention. Though some additional square footage was required, Schauer, like Susanka, elected to scale back the amount of new space favoring quality and function over quantity.  DCMud spoke with Schauer about the project.

DCMud:Tell us about the home and program.

Schauer: The original home was minimal in terms of any detail, but it had the character they liked -- 8'6" ceilings -- that old farmhouse motif. This needed to remain, but it needed to live in the 21st Century and accommodate a family of four. There was an addition on the back off the kitchen -- a full bathroom -- something useless and quirky.

The project started as the homeowner's idea for a family room on the back, not planning to redo the kitchen, and for a second floor master suite leaving the existing bedrooms intact. But once we got through the design portion, they understood that the flow/circulation of the house needed to change, which would involve the kitchen.

DCMud: But even with that information, much more changed for the homeowners at that point, correct?

Schauer: It certainly did. In 2009, during a time of inflated appraisals, though we already had a contractor on board and permit in hand, the client's financing suddenly fell through for the construction loan as the house didn't appraise the same way. The construction industry was also not on board with green building, which was a goal here. While we'd originally designed for the existing 3 bedrooms and 2 baths upstairs, we had to creatively change it to a 5-bedroom, 2.5-bath.

This was done by reworking a smaller enclosed porch on the side of the house, which had ultimately appraised for no value and which a previous owner had turned into a den. In the original design, we were going to take that living space and turn it into a long covered porch along the side of the house. We'd have had an extension on the back, and then the long covered porch.

DCMud: So how did this change?

Schauer: As the appraisal considered square footage over most anything else, along with number of bedrooms and number of bathrooms, we abandoned the porch idea and maintained the first floor's square footage by creating a TV/office space and half bath, so it could actually read as a spare bedroom. We then added more second floor to the existing second floor, on top of that space, creating another bedroom there. The result was two existing front bedrooms, the new one, and then the master -- a total of four upstairs.While it did add square footage to the second floor, it did not add to the property's footprint which made it cost and environmentally effective.

DCMud: Speaking of the environment, what sustainable elements are found in this redesign, along with choices of color, etc.

Schauer: Fairly early on, the owners wanted wide reclaimed oak flooring with color variation and a rough-hewn texture. We knew it would be a feature and focal point of the home. And going back to the Shaker-like minimalism of a farmhouse, I'd initially envisioned a neutral palette, interior and exterior. We replaced the exterior with Hardiplank because the original was in such bad shape. And it's got so many massing elements on the back, painting it white brought a cohesiveness to the home. Accordingly, I thought the interior would be the same -- light-filled and a light palette so as not to compete with the wood floors. But the owners wanted black cabinets in the kitchen, which did provide a nice contrast.


DCMud: The walls appear to be bold jewel tones, not the quiet colors you mentioned.

Schauer: When it came time to paint, the owner's vision was different than mine. She wanted lots of color, and she was right. We did one accent wall in a really dark green - almost black. That same color is in the TV room, but there's a glass door from the living room into the TV room, so that black becomes a background and visually balances the TV room with the black cabinets in the kitchen. With small spaces and small houses, having a visual window, so to speak, from one space to the next makes it feel much larger and more open. In this house, the dining room is a defined space off of the living room, but it's got a wide cased opening between the two so you still get that visual connection from one to the other. When you're in one space, your eye is borrowing space from the adjacent space.

DCMud: What did you take away from this project, which was apparently full of economic and architectural twists and turns.

Schauer: A piece of architecture works as a whole: the interior and exterior have to relate to one other. And, the most successful projects are a collaboration like this one when contractor, owner and architect work together under evolving circumstances.

New Renderings for Ballpark Project

With plans now officially on the table for Square 701, the block-long development just north of the ballpark, new images reveal additional details about the project that will add an 11-story office building, 170-room hotel, and 2 residential buildings to the ballpark area.  Work on the buildings is still at least 6 months away; developers Skanska USA and Grosvenor Americas closed on their purchase just last month and are now working on details of the by-right development.

Skanska will build the office building, designed by Gensler, and Grosvenor will build the hotel and 285 residential units, designed by Hickok Cole.  55,000 s.f. of retail space is also planned.  Since that announcement, new renderings have surfaced, see below.  The new office building is being designed to earn a LEED Gold platinum rating.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

Onward, Upward for Mega-development in Pentagon City

Arlington is set to gain more height as Kettler moves forward on the Acadia, a 19-story residential building in Pentagon City.  Construction on the Acadia has already begun, according to Virginia-based Kettler.   The building, located at 575 12th St. South in Arlington, is the latest project to break ground in Kettler's mixed-use mega-development called Metropolitan Park.

The Acadia, Rendering: Kettler

A LEED Silver-designed building, the 677,154 s.f. Acadia will include 433 residential units, 16,350 s.f. of ground floor retail and three below-grade parking levels.  The granite and limestone skinned building also will have a gym, a cafe, a business center, and other amenities including a pet grooming room and an innfinity edge, saltwater rooftop pool. Dorsky Yue International (DYI) is the project architect.

When completed, the eight-stage, planned unit development (PUD) will include ten buildings, a nearly historic size when added together. Architect Robert A.M. Stern is the master planner for the grandiose project, which developer Kettler describes as a "16-acre urban village in Pentagon City."  Work on the project, which has already delivered the 300-plus residential buildings The Gramercy and The Millennium, marks the continued upward development of this land at the nexus of Crystal City, Pentagon City, and Pentagon Row.  The Acadia will make a triad out of the duo of mega-buildings already on the site, which also includes a park and is bounded by 12th, 15th, Eads, and South Fern Streets.

The Acadia, Image: Kettler website

The Gramercy was completed in 2008 and the Millennium in 2010.  The planned development will be the largest of its kind in the DC area and, step by step, is replacing the parking lots and six warehouses that once occupied the site.  Kettler bought the 11 acres of land for phase 1 through 3 of the project from Vornado in 2007 for $104.4 million.  Vornado is another developer and the firm behind many recent development in Arlington, including what will be the tallest building in Crystal City.

 Kettler this week announced KBR Building Group as the general contractor.

“KBR Building Group’s commitment to providing quality construction services is affirmed as we begin work on the third phase of this important mixed-use development,” a press release quoted Mike Sloan, executive vice president, as saying. “Having collaborated with the project’s developer, Kettler, since the inception of this project, we will continue to manage this project to the utmost standards as KBR Building Group progresses towards completion of Metropolitan Park.”

Arlington VA, real estate development news

Bigger, Greener: Skyland Files Another Zoning Amendment

Skyland - the very name implies the ever distant horizon - is back for another zoning review to fully entitle the real estate development project, this time to fit Walmart into the equation.

The most recent change regarding the large ‘town center’ complex is a PUD amendment that was submitted late last week by the development team behind the project. The original PUD was approved by the Office of Zoning in September 2010, but that was before Walmart signed on as the development’s anchor store last fall. The inclusion of the mega-retailer necessitated a number of changes to the plan—though nothing particularly substantive, according to the application. “The proposed PUD modification application is NOT proposing significant changes to the approved PUD project,” reads the document.

That means the development will continue to include 450-500 residential units, some of which will be townhomes and/or affordable housing, and retail space leasing will increase only slightly, from 311,000 s.f. to 342,000 total s.f.

The most serious change appears to be a decrease in the number of parking spaces needed. The total number will be down by about 300 “which meets one of the Office of Planning’s goals,” Matt Ritz, a vice president at William C Smith &. Company, pointed out.  Smith is one of the members of the development team, along with The Rappaport Companies, Harrison Malone Development, the Marshall Heights Community Development Organization, and the Washington East Foundation.

Other changes include lowering the height of parts of the building Walmart will occupy, slightly reducing the number of townhouses, and topping a section of the project with solar panels and a green roof, rather than with a final layer of parking as originally planned.

The revamped development should include slightly more green space, and the application hints at more ‘green’ elements to come: “Walmart has several sustainable goals for this project which will be achieved by the following features: use of water efficient faucets and toilets; implementation of an energy management system; high-efficiency HVAC design; LED lighting; sun shading devices on the roof; and a construction waste stream management program."

Ritz is hoping the project will get a hearing with the Zoning Commission before the end of the year and a public hearing sometime around March 2013. But it’s all up in the air. “The dates are with a grain of salt,” he said. “It’s all contingent on the Zoning Commission.” And the company is still a very long way from soliciting construction bids.

Still, as slowly as it’s going, there is definitely movement occurring at Skyland. In September, the city celebrated the start of a demolition process of some of the buildings in the existing shopping center. And of seven legal cases that were pending in early 2011 - all linked to the city's use of eminent domain on the project--only one is still unresolved.

Washington, D.C., real estate development news

Douglas Development's Parking-Free Tenleytown Development Provokes Kerfluffle

An unusual two-night Zoning Commission hearing last week about Douglas Development's five-story, 60-unit, Shalom Baranes-designed development on the Babe's Billiards site in Tenleytown centered mainly around the developers' decision to seek relief from minimum parking requirements, as several Tenley residents came out to oppose Douglas' plans for a zero-parking building.

The first opposing witness, a Tenley resident and member of "Neighbors for Neighborhoods" said the Babes development "just doesn't make sense."  According to her, the building will draw students, so tenants will constantly turn over in a neighborhood where "people reside for decades."  Other witnesses objected to the height, pointing out that most homes are two or three stories, and will be overshadowed by the new building, and another warned the commission against encouraging  "sterile, canyon-like Bethesda-style development" (it would be shorter than Cityline next door).

But the refrain of the hearing was whether the developer would build a parking garage.  Bemoaning "parking spillover," one witness said he supported the idea of the building, but warned that Douglas' proposed prohibition on tenants owning cars was unenforceable.  (He might have a point.)  Another came out strongly against bicycling as a "requirement, not a choice."  Pointing out the various perils of bicycling (traffic, weather), she urged the city to require parking for the building.

Combined with the first night's vociferous pooh-poohing of the very idea of, say, grocery shopping on a bike, the second night's opposition witnesses illustrated just how deeply ingrained car culture is in the District.  The dissenters (and some of the zoning commissioners) just couldn't conceive of a carless/post-car city (it may be germane to point out that all six dissenters appeared to be at least fifty years of age), and insisted that whatever rules or promises were made in regards to carless/ post-car tenants, once the Bond opens, the streets of Tenley would surely be overrun by disingenuous faux-bicyclists who secretly own cars.

The zoning code, which dates to 1958, requires a one-to-one (to four) ratio of parking-spaces-to-dwellings.  But this has become an onerous requirement. Harriet Tregoning, Director of the DC Office of Planning and leading proponent of smart growth, has pointed out that minimum parking requirements have forced developers to overproduce off-street parking spaces that often go unused, taking up space that might have been used for retail or tenant amenities. With enrollment in car-sharing programs like Car2Go and Zipcar skyrocketing along with the number of bikes and bike lanes, cars (and their spaces) are becoming increasingly hard to justify in cities across the country, and lately in Washington D.C.  And yet, as this hearing demonstrated, there is still a vocal segment of the population still very much attached to the idea of driving as a right.

Having received approval from ANC 3E already, the odds are good that the Commission ultimately approves Douglas' zero-parking Tenleytown development.  But the intensity of some of the opposition towards carless development in general, and bicyclists specifically, was a reminder that, logical or not, there is real hostility out there towards bicyclists.

The commission will take up the issue again on January 14th, 2013.

Washington DC retail and real estate news

Today in Pictures - Washington Harbor

Georgetown's Washington Harbor is coming back to life.  A flood devastated the retail pavilion in March of 2011, when high water in the Potomac filled the parking garage and nearly submerged several restaurants, but restaurants have since been revamping and only one retail bay remains vacant. With several anchor restaurants on the lower level having reopened last month, the harbor is slowly returning to its former glory, or perhaps better, as the fountain - never the best part of the complex - has been reconfigured into a winter ice skating rink.  Owner MRP Realty expects work on the complex to be completed by Thanksgiving.

Tony & Joe's

Tony & Joe's

Washington DC retail and commercial real estate news

Intervention as Art

Q and A with Steven Spurlock of Wnuk Spurlock Architects 
by Beth Herman

Fostering a relationship that began more than 30 years ago, Steven Spurlock of Wnuk Spurlock Architects was commissioned to create a new 5,250 s.f. hybrid art studio/woodworking shop/office/gallery/storage space for maverick artist Sam Gilliam, a significant force in the former Washington Color School. Commandeering a small industrial building in the District's Brightwood neighborhood that had seen its share of rather disjointed incursions, Spurlock and project architect Marcy Giannunzio proceeded to transform the ragged space through a series of artful interventions. It went on to receive the AIA's 2012 Award of Excellence in Interior Architecture. DCMud spoke with Spurlock about the process.


DCMud: Describe the site as you found it.

Spurlock: The city square that it sits on is trapezoidal in shape, facing 14th Street with Longfellow as a side street, then Colorado cuts diagonally across the back. There was originally a brick masonry commercial structure of some nature on the southwest corner of the property.  At some point it was converted to a gas station. Later, using the two existing masonry walls on either side, someone built a wall on the backside and one on the front side and put a roof over everything, which essentially created an office area in the front a big warehouse area in the back. There aren't a lot of uses for that kind of space in the city, so it was one of those wonderful finds for Sam.

DCMud: What gave you the idea to employ, in your words, "multiple programmatic freestanding interventions" - essentially to accord each entity (studio; woodworking shop; gallery; office; etc.) its own personality?

Spurlock: The client definitely wanted something that had a rawness or an edginess to it - not to have it look all pretty and new. For instance we took the old masonry structure and made it into storage. As some of his pieces are constructions -- he sometimes will paint on pieces of metal or plywood, and introduce pieces of canvas with that -- the need for a separate woodworking shop was imminent to fabricate the wood pieces. And you cannot have the wood shop and a paint shop in the same places for dust issues.


DCMud: The office space with its bamboo flooring appears to be more of an oasis.

Spurlock: The office intervention is kind of a box in a box. It was meant to be a freestanding element that you dropped into the space. As we stopped to think about it, we realized the whole building should look like a container with little interventions introduced into it so you could read a history of how the space evolved: the tension between the old and new parts. Above the office we put a balcony and glass rail. This was done compositionally to make the office box look more attractive, and the artist also likes to go up and see things from a different perspective as part of the creative process.

DCMud: Describe the artist's studio space.

Spurlock: It was the block wall when we first started, and because he's in there all the time we knew we had to insulate it. We used canvases of white painted drywall to provide a neutral backdrop for the composition and display of art, as Sam likes to hang what he's working on to contemplate it. We cut windows into the drywall to reveal sections of the old masonry in between for contrast. At the party walls, the drywall is partial height and pulled away from the corners so it appears to float in a wall of masonry. At the exterior, it goes full height for improved thermal insulation of the building. All of the walls are built with studs, covered with plywood, and then there's drywall on top of the plywood to allow him to hang heavy items anywhere he wants. It was a nice contrast to the old brick - to create that juxtaposition of the old and new.

DCMud: Artists usually require a prodigious amount of light. How was this addressed?

Spurlock: We grouped 10 skylights in the center to control the natural light - didn't want them washing out the walls at all times. Along the perimeter, where the hanging walls are, we put in a lot of high tech lighting fixtures to illuminate the pieces on individually-controlled dimmers. For evenings or cloudy days, there are color temperature-corrected fluorescent lights that we installed in a playful pattern to make the space less static. Solar voltaic panels on the roof allow the artist to generate his own electricity to satisfy his interest in energy conservation.


DCMud: Was there some, perhaps more personal element of the  design that came as a surprise?

Spurlock: One of Sam Gilliam's early breakthroughs as an artist in the 1960s was a stained canvas that he draped from the ceiling, or over things. In his former studio, he didn't have enough space to do that and he'd not done it in years.When he got into the new space, he realized he could once again do that, which was a really nice benefit for him to be able to go back to his roots if he wanted.

photos courtesy of Anice Hoachlander

City Again Rules to Save Historic Mt. Vernon Triangle Houses

The DC government has ruled three nineteenth-century row houses in DC's Mount Vernon Square Historic District must be preserved, giving some resolution - at least for now - to a long-running saga that spotlighted tensions surrounding urban church parking and historic preservation.

1232, 1234, and 1236 New Jersey Avenue, NW. Image: HPO

On Thursday, the city released its most recent ruling that the Third Street Church of God, located in DC's Mount Vernon Square Historic District, must continue to preserve three nineteenth century row houses it owns at 1232, 1234, and 1236 New Jersey Avenue NW.  Last year the Church petitioned the Historic Preservation Office (HPO) for permission to totally demolish the homes, built in the 1860's, to make way for parking.  It argued saving the buildings would constitute an "economic hardship."  The HPO rejected the permit, so the Church requested that the office of the Mayor's Agent hear the case.

The Church first announced plans to demolish the structures last year, but the HPO recommended only partial demolition, as it stated in a staff report that parts of the houses still had structural integrity to justify saving.  The Church changed its plans to comply with the HPO's recommendation, and the Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB), the HPO's decision-making body, approved that permit.  The church went forward with the demolition, but then decided to make the case for a full demolition permit again.  It was that permit that the city again rejected on Thursday.

Mayor's Agent hearing officer J. Peter Byrne wrote in the ruling released Thursday that historic preservation trumped the Church's economic hardship argument.  Byrne wrote that the church's plans to use its property to serve its programming deserved "great respect," but that the Church "must pursue its facility goals within the constraints of the Historic Landmark and Historic District Protection Act, which benefits both the surrounding neighborhood and entire District of Columbia."

According to public record, the Church bought the row houses over 20 years ago for $98,400, but their 2011 assessed tax value was more than $500,000 - almost the exact same amount as the church's annual revenues.  In any case, the city ruled, the church's economic hardship argument doesn't stand, as securing the buildings for the Church's original estimated cost of $77,420  "does not seem prohibitive in light of the Church's revenues and assets."  The best option, the city suggested, might be for the church to avoid any expense to itself at all and just sell the row houses.

Washington DC real estate news

10 Questions with Yolanda Cole

10 Questions is a weekly feature in which we interview some of the leading District figures in real estate, architecture, development, and planning. This week's subject ... Yolanda Cole, principal of Hickock Cole Architects.

Through over 25 years of experience in building and interior design, Cole has had a hand in many award-winning buildings (senior designer for Australia's Chifley Tower and New York's Capital Cities/ABC headquarters, to name just two), and been consistently recognized as a leading figure in the business community.  Originally a partner at leading woman-owned interior design firm LyrixDesign, Cole is now a senior principal and co-owner at Hickock Cole Architects, widely acknowledged as one of the leading architectural firms in the area, having designed the new NPR headquarters, the CSIS building on Rhode Island Ave., the DC AIA architecture center, among others.

1.  What's a typical day for you?

Go to the gym, get to work, check email, and attend any combination of meetings on:  projects, RFPs, proposals and interviews; marketing and business development; corporate issues like budgets, employee reviews and staffing; and meetings and presentations for industry organizations. And then there’s more email. It's go, go, go!

2.  What or who is your biggest influence?

The "what" would be that I am internally driven to make things happen, so I am my own engine. The "who" would be my inner circle:  my mother, my daughter, my business partner, and my significant other.

3.  What neighborhood do you live in?

The 14th Street corridor, and I love it!


4.  What is your biggest DC pet peeve?

Taxation without representation and Congress meddling in DC affairs.

5.  What is the #1 most played song on your iPod?

I'm a shuffler, so no one song gets greater play. I go with the flow by my moods and my playlists.


6.  Favorite DC haunt?

Muleh for clothes, Rasika for dinner and Bohemian Caverns for music. I also enjoy just being at home.

7.  What's your favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon?

Play my flute, write, or do a little bit of nothing. I'm not very good at the latter.

8.  If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Italy. I would love to learn to speak Italian. The food is pretty awesome, too.



9. If you couldn't be an architect, what would you be?

An astro-physicist. I am amazed by the wonders of the cosmos.

10. Name one thing most people don't know about you.

I'm an introvert!