Ward 7 Gets a $10 Million Amenity in New Tennis Center

Image: courtesy Clark Nexsen

A multi-million dollar tennis and education center opened Saturday off of East Capitol Street in DC's Ward 7.  The complex adds a big amenity to an area of the District with one of the city's highest percentage of vacant or abandoned space, but that has lately seen new developments.

The Washington Nationals in July began work on a youth baseball academy very nearby at Fort Dupont Park.  In 2008, developers Donatelli and Blue Skye were selected to develop a city-owned lot at the nearby, Ward 7 hub of Minnesota Avenue and Benning Road, NE.  Work on the $65 million mixed-use retail and residential project started this summer.

New Courts at Stoddert Pl SE. Photo courtesy WTEF

These developments mean that land in Ward 7, which, according to the Office of Planning, has 32 percent vacant or abandoned space compared to Ward 1's six percent, is seeing more construction.

The force behind the $10 million project is the Washington Tennis and Education Foundation (WTEF), an organization that specializes in a unique combination of tennis training and tutoring to serve school-aged youth from East DC who might not otherwise get tennis lessons or school help. Clark Nexsen is the architect on the project.

The new center sits on 7.5 acres rented under a 40-year lease with the District Department of Parks and Recreation.  It is located at the Benning Stoddert Recreation Center at 200 Stoddert Place SE,  and includes nine outdoor tennis courts.  The 64,800 s.f. of indoor space includes six indoor courts, a community room, four classrooms, offices, and a 50-seat computer training room.   The site, which already had a field, a playground, and some tennis and basketball courts, also got enhancements, including lighting and better paths.

Image: courtesy Clark Nexsen

"It is envisioned as an additional community resource," Frank Kaye, architect with Clark Nexsen, told DCMud.  He said designs for the facility considered how to save trees, improve existing spaces, and how to best facilitate overall project goals of tennis training and mentoring.  Designers met with community leaders, as well as with the United States Tennis Association to make sure the facilities met their guidelines.

Eleni Rossides, director of WTEF, said fundraising for the center began during the recession, but that donors pulled through to raise almost all of the money for the project privately. 

Photo courtesy WTEF

In addition to work at 23 schools, WTEF had, until now, worked out of a facility on K Street NW and bused kids there from east DC.   With the new facility, students in WTEF's fee-free programs will be able to get tennis training and tutoring in their own neighborhood. Rossides said the center will be open to programming for adults and seniors, organizational collaborations, and someday maybe advisory neighborhood commission (ANC) meetings.

"For us, we really looked at this as a family community center and we really hope that it can help to transform this community," Rossides said.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

Net Positive by Pigment

Q and A with Miche Booz 
by Beth Herman

Swiss-born and French bred (that's bred, not bread), Miche Booz of Miche Booz Architect spent a peripatetic childhood navigating the neighborhoods of Jordan, Pakistan and Indonesia.


















With a developmental economist father (also an admitted closet interior designer who coveted Danish Modern), and writer/ illustrator/ painter mother, Booz grew up in the shadow of iconic architecture like the Taj Mahal and Eiffel Tower, and without television, which left considerable time to cultivate his own artistic DNA. Though the young Miche trained his pencils and brushes on favorite military tanks and boats, as an architect he has turned his attention to painterly (and/or colored pencil) executions of design, much in the manner of Le Corbusier. DCMud spoke with Booz about his art and how he has applied it to his latest project: a 2,000 s.f., 3-bedroom, 2-bath net positive residence scheduled for momentary groundbreaking in Clarksville, Maryland.

DCMud: Why do you draw and paint as opposed to using 21st Century technology?

Booz: I went to art school and got into watercolor, and liked the medium a lot, before I came to architecture at age 32. It's not the only medium I use, though I find it the most evocative and it helps me design and understand things in a more tactile way. There's something that goes on when you actually have a colored pencil or a brush in your hand that connects you to the architecture and helps you work out design solutions.

DCMud: When does technology come into play?

Booz: We're an office of four, and the three others here use it more than I do: AutoCAD and SketchUp. I don't design on the computer at all.

DCMud: So with all that, how did the Clarksville net positive project come into your orbit?

Booz: I've known Ed Gaddy, a solar energy engineer for spacecraft, since 1980. We've had dialogues over the years about doing an energy efficient house. A few years ago he found a 1 1/2-story Cape three minutes' walk from where he works. As an environmentalist, among other things he wanted to walk to work to conserve his carbon footprint.

DCMud: Describe the property.

Booz: It's 1.2 acres on a south-facing lot. The existing house was not very energy-efficient, and we determined we could not effectively renovate it into such. There is that truism that the greenest house you build is the one you don't tear down; in this case we'd have had to disassemble it so much it would've been akin to tearing it down. That said, we are actually keeping the first floor deck and the basement underneath for storage, and building a platform with a sculptural, prismatic object that we're putting the solar array on. The house will be built next to it and is a composition of two squares: A public square and a private square. The kitchen/pantry/living area has a taller roof, and then bedrooms and bathrooms are under the lower roof.


DCMud: What about the net positive aspect of this house?

Booz: It may be a little tongue-in-cheek, but Ed's special goal is to have the most energy-efficient house in Maryland -- he's going for the trifecta of certifications. He wants to have a Passive House (Passive House Institute U.S., or PHIUS) - a German performance-based certification program whose principles have a long history in the U.S. that addresses air tightness, insulation and energy use. PHIUS is less interested in materials and site strategies than LEED and Living Building Challenge are. But he's also going for LEED Platinum, and for the Living Building Challenge.

DCMud: Rather ambitious objectives. With all of that, how are you going to achieve net positive -- to build a home that produces more energy than it uses?

Booz: For one thing, we rotated the house directly south, which is one reason for building a new one, for purposes of solar gain. It has architecturally integrated solar panels, and we also have a couple of thermal solar panels on top of a shed behind the house for hot water.

The exterior is concrete block and corrugated metal. The roof is a standing seam Galvalume, and it all sits on a polished concrete slab.

DCMud: Tell us about insulation.

Booz: It's going to use very little energy to heat and cool with highly insulated walls, roof and slab insulation: R-Values are 68, 100 and 38, respectively. In fact the R-Value of the Zola window glazing is 11.1 -- comparable to the R-Value of 3.5-inch thick fiberglass batt that's found in many homes.

The one thing this house does is avoid thermal bridging, where you have structure or components of the house that conduct either heat or cold through the wall out into the environment or from the environment back in. It takes an insulated covering that wraps not only up and down the walls and around the roof, but down in front of the foundation wall and under the footing, so the footing doesn't touch the earth. It's sitting on insulation. The entire house is wrapped, which is different than the way most houses are built.

In fact one of the challenges was finding an HVAC system that's small enough to heat and cool this house as it takes so little. We're using a Mini-Split Mitsubishi system, which is the smallest one they make. There's an ERV and 0.6 air changes per hour -- an extremely tight envelope

DCMud: From your paintings it appears there is extensive fenestration, including a huge south-facing exposure with all that this can imply.

Booz: We have high performance windows facing south that offer shading, and an innovative system of translucent exterior roller shades that automatically deploy over these windows to prevent overheating.

DCMud: Interesting you should talk about these key exterior shades, as we did a story with Mark McInturff where they figured prominently into the design.

Booz: The architect who has influenced me most strongly is Mark McInturff, under whom I worked for nearly six years. His language is contemporary architecture and he has a wonderful sense of design. His buildings are light-filled and sustainable, and also very beautiful -- he has a wonderful sense of color and proportion and extreme attention to detail. With his work, the closer you get the better it looks, as opposed to a lot of modern architecture where you get the Gestalt right up front but the closer you look, the more banal it gets.

City To Open Bids for Lot at Florida and Sherman Avenues

The District government is releasing its request for proposals for a long-term ground lease for a city-owned lot at the corner of Florida and Sherman Avenues.  The solicitation could go live as early as today or Monday, a city official told DCMud (Update, since original publication of this article the city has published the RFP).  While one developer reportedly already has detailed plans for the site, the open bid puts one of the District's more visible sites up for bid in a neighborhood where developers are already planning extensive construction.

City-owned lot, corner of Florida and Sherman. Image: DMPED

The request from DC's Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) for proposals for its 1.4 acre lot near DC's fast-growing U Street Corridor and Howard University is much-anticipated.

According to the Washington Post, developer JBG plans to bid on the lot and has announced a collaboration with national food retailer Harris Teeter that - if JBG wins the bid - would bring a grocery store to the site.

JBG already has a stake in the grocery store business in the area.  In July, the DCist broke news about the company's plans to build a Trader Joe's in its apartment building now construction at 14th and U Street.  JBG also controls the adjacent Atlantic Plumbing parcel, as well as the Florida Avenue parcel just a few blocks away, planning nearly 1000 apartment units in all, leaving little question as to its qualifications.

The area has so far not seen competing supermarkets.  Howard University had plans with CastleRock Partners to put a grocery store at a planned mixed-use development, Howard Town Center, located at 2100-2146 Georgia Avenue.  But the Howard Town Center project has suffered delays and there is no date to break ground in sight.  There is also speculation about whether a grocery store at Florida and Sherman could hurt plans for a grocery store at Howard Town Center, and of course Shaw will soon have its own refurbished Giant in 18 months.

Florida Ave. Reconstruction Project. Image: DDOT

But with the U Street neighborhood surging, stakes on just about any lot in this fast-growing neighborhood are coveted.  And private developers aren't the only ones who are turning a focus on the area.  This summer, the city's department of transportation finalized a plan for a massive overhaul of Florida Avenue between U Street and the Sherman Avenue intersection where the city-owned lot sits.  The Florida Avenue Reconstruction Project calls for adding more bike lanes, widening sidewalks, and planting more trees.  The city also just finished a reconstruction of Sherman Avenue.

The solicitation is likely to bring proposals from multiple bidders.  Six bidders are competing to develop a nearby, city-owned lot called "Parcel 42"...and they are just the ones who made the short list.

Update:  The city has now released the RFP, available in this link.

Washington, D.C. real estate news

Canal Park Opens Today

After nearly 2 years of construction, work on Canal Park, the jewel of southeast Washington DC, will wrap up when its supporters celebrate completion of the park today.  The 3-block park features an ice rink, stormwater management, interactive water fountains, a 135 foot fountain that serves as a "rain garden," and interactive sculptures, much of it designed for children.

But the most iconic feature will be a pavilion with 9,000 s.f. cafe and seating area, topped by a lightbox with translucent acrylic panels that will illuminate the pavilion at night on the southern (M Street) boundary, matched by a smaller, similar lightbox on the northern block.

Operated by the Canal Park Development Association (CPDA), the park is technically owned by the federal government but placed under the jurisdiction of the District government, which put $13.5m into the project and in turn licences the CPDA to run and program the park, with Blake Dickson handling the retail leasing.

Far from being a strip of grass like parks of old, beneath all that seemingly simple design lies the mechanics that make it happen.  Olin, the Philadelphia based landscape architect, worked with pavilion architect Studios Architecture to create and integrate mechanics for the park and cafe to drain the park's stormwater naturally, as well as that of neighboring developments which now drain into the city's stormwater system.

Brian Pilot, a principal of Studios Architecture, says the public won't be able to see the complex systems that went into making the park ecologically friendly, visually appealing, and functionally interactive.  "The infrastructure of the park was incredibly complex," said Pilot, noting that 2 40,000-gallon cisterns, buried beneath the park, collect and store the rainwater, calling that feature "one of the primary objectives of the park's design," and will treat and reuse the water throughout the park.  Geothermal wells will heat and cool water for the south pavilion (see diagram below), and other mechanics, "including soil stabilizing rammed aggregate piers, extensive rink, fountain and stormwater piping," will help the park function.

Pilot notes that the pavilion, which his firm designed, had to feature the usual mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, but with translucent walls and without the interior space to accommodate equipment.  "There's no back of house to building, every facade has an important relationship to the street, even the roof was actually an important elevation."  Considering the overall park, Pilot says the stormwater rain garden is "one of the major anchoring components of the design," running along the east side of the park, "undulating from north to south."  The "south pavilion grows out of the rain garden, so one can get an elevated view of the skating rink.  The middle pavilion is designed to float above the stormwater rain garden," and that the "two lanterns bookend the site, its one of your first impressions from whichever direction you enter."  The park is designed to achieve LEED Gold certification.  See recent pictures of the park under construction.

Washington D.C. real estate development and retail news

Bozzuto Celebrates Start of Cathedral Commons

Demolition to make way for Cathedral Commons is now underway both officially and physically.  Bozzuto held a press conference this morning to celebrate work that began quietly this week to demolish two city blocks and replace it with a mixed-use development and Giant supermarket.  The 4-acre, $130 million project will add an improved, larger Giant as well as 137 apartment units, 8 townhouses, and a concourse with 125,000 s.f. of street front retail space.

What remains of the SunTrust building

Construction work on the project has been expected for the past year, and evidently close when construction fences went up last month.  The project was designed by JCA Architects of Reston. According to a press release:

Cathedral Commons will include 137 apartment units and eight townhomes, more than 500 parking spaces, and 128,000 square feet of vibrant retail anchored by a 56,000 square-foot state-of-the-art Giant Food, which will include full-service floral, bakery, meat, seafood and deli departments and an expanded offering of fresh produce, natural, organic, and gluten-free products as well as international items. Resident amenities in the spectacular community will include a boutique hotel-style lobby, lounge areas and library, fitness center, clubroom, conference room, and residential courtyards.

Bozzuto to Begin 460 NY Ave. This Winter

Image: WDG website

Work on a 63-unit condominium building at the corner of L Street and New York Avenue NW, will begin in the first quarter of 2013, a representative with Bozzuto Development Company told DCMud.  WDG Architecture's design for the building adds an 8-story, contemporary structure directly on top of the existing warehouse.

According to Lauren McDonald, Bozzuto is in the process of applying for permits to start building the 11-story structure at 460 New York Avenue and anticipates completing the building in the spring or summer of 2014.   The condominium building, built on a small 9,059 square foot lot in the fast-growing Mount Vernon Triangle, will add more density to a neighborhood that, until the last five years, was landscaped by mostly parking lots and warehouses.  The new building will face the Safeway in the CityVista condominium building, which opened in 2007, and back up against The Meridian apartment building.

Image: WDG website

An existing three-story warehouse, dating to 1902 and vacant for years, will be preserved and incorporated into the condo, a change from earlier demolition plans, will be preserved and incorporated into the condo as an adaptive re-use of the structure.  Original plans released in 2010 called for relocation of the three-story structure, but that same year Bozzuto asked for a two-year delay on beginning construction.  Bozzuto then changed plans, reducing the size of the building from 13 stories and 86 units to 11 stories and 63 units.

Image: WDG website

The latest incarnation of the project includes 36 parking spaces accessed via a mechanical lift that will hoist cars up to be stored suspended vertically over each other to save space.   The building's design, in line with a developer trend toward building smaller units, will feature 63 "studio, one, and one bedroom/den units," according to a project architect description on its website.  Plans emphasize "efficient design", amenities like large common areas, large windows, and balconies, and the "unmet demand from smaller households for stylish but economical living," according to WDG.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

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