Next Stop: Bikestation

Great buildings often serve to rouse us from our torpor; “WAKE UP! PAY ATTENTION!” No building does this more grandly than a great train station. Emerging into the grand hall of Union Station, the space is like a fanfare of trumpets announcing the king’s arrival. In the 1960s and 70s just as our cities fell into disrepair, so did many of their great train stations. Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station was torn down to make way for a modern sphincter of a train station. Our own Union Station was in jeopardy of a similar fate for many years. Washington was lucky to wake up from that fever dream with Union Station intact. Stations say volumes about the health of a city, more than a remote airport ever could. And so it is quite exciting that an important and beautiful new station has opened in Washington.


Last October, Washington’s first Bikestation opened at the west end of Union Station. Developed by Mobis Transportation Alternatives and designed by one of Washington’s most innovative architecture firms, KGP Design Studio, the diminutive, 1700 square foot kiosk has great ambitions: to remake Washington’s transportation infrastructure. This Bikestation, the first of its kind on the East Coast, is the beginning of what advocates hope will become a network of similar stations across the city.

You’ve heard these promises before—probably from a shabbily dressed, middle-aged man with granola stuck in his beard. But this time the message is delivered by Washington’s sexy, triathlete mayor. The Bikestation is not merely some utopian effort to reduce traffic, or our dependence on foreign oil, or the distance between our asscheeks—although it will accomplish all these.

The Bikestation solves what urban planners call the “last mile” problem. In New York, the average distance between subway stations is just over a half mile, about three Manhattan blocks. In Washington, because of building-height restrictions, our population is more spread out. Washington’s Metro was designed with a station every mile and a quarter, roughly the distance between the Capitol and the Washington Monument. Most American’s won’t walk across the room to change the channel. The rule of thumb for planners is that American’s won’t walk more than quarter mile for anything. So this leaves much of DC hopelessly remote for anyone not behind the wheel of a car.

Enter the Bikestation. With covered parking spaces for 150 commuters’ bicycles, lockers, restrooms, changing rooms, and a small bike repair and rental shop, it contains everything one needs to travel that last mile, as long as that last mile is within a mile radius of Union Station. So if you’re headed to a Senate subcommittee hearing on the obesity epidemic in America, you can grab a bike at Union Station and pedal over in less time than it would take a cabbie to navigate the barricades on Capitol Hill.

Washington’s Bikestation is far more than a noble urban idea; it is also an exquisite jewel of a building. Waiting expectantly at the west end of Union Station’s grand beaux arts facade, it’s overturned prow, all glass and steel, looks like the Acela has pulled in on a side track. One boards the building midway along its fuselage, just a few dozen paces from the top of the Metro escalator. If the exterior is a glass boat, the inside is all boat too--unadorned steel structure and rigging. Its louvered hull of a roof is suspended by three massive steel keels spanning stem to stern. All the glass makes the interior feel larger than it appears from the outside.

Each of the glass louvers opens to allow breezes to wash through the building, carrying the sun’s heat away. The glass is fritted with white ceramic lines to reflect much of the sun’s heat away from the interior and reduce the greenhouse effect, a risky gambit in Washington’s August swelter. The building is certain to become an example of high-performance, passive sustainable design, but we won’t know for another few months whether it is an example of success or failure.

Nattering historic preservationists may be scandalized by this sleek object’s proximity to Daniel Burnham’s beaux arts masterpiece, but KGP’s strategy is straight from the National Trust’s playbook: make the new distinct from the old while respecting the scale of the historic building. From the west, looking at the broad side, the Bikestation looks strangely at home against the backdrop of Burham’s ornate portico. Tilted and curved, it takes a moment to realize that the west wall of the Bikestation echoes the exposed roof trusses on the end walls of Burnham’s unpretentious concourse building to the north of the more ornate main building.

Others will complain that the building’s $4 million budget is wildly overpriced considering a shipping container would have done the job. In fact, $3.2 million of the budget was funded by grants from the Federal Highway Administration, which views the project as a critical experiment to gauge the viability of bicycle transportation in American cities. Most other Bikestations—all on the west coast—are little more than sheds and reflect the attitudes of the car culture toward bicycling. This investment in this Bikestation gives Washington its best chance of establishing the bicycle as a critical facet of Washington’s transportation network.

As DC plans other Bikestations, we should hope that they continue to ennoble them with such great architecture. KGP’s building is not only a test case for bicycling in Washington, it is a test case for ambitious, modern, sustainable design in Washington. Hopefully both will succeed.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

The Giant Mess of Greenbelt Station

If it continues on its current course, the planned, $2 billion Greenbelt Station development may well go down as one of the biggest - though certainly one of many - debacles of mixed-use, high-density construction in the region.

Greenbelt Station is the brainchild of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) and the late A.H. Smith Jr. whose estate still owns most of the land that hugs the beltway just south of where I-95 blends into the beltway.

It was Smith's father who first began mining the land around the (then) rail road tracks in 1916 and created the asphalt plants that supplied the I-495 portion of the Capitol Beltway the raw materials that built it.

In 1996, WMATA announced that it would be redeveloping its part of the land adjacent to the Metro. Smith Jr. approached Metro about combining their efforts and creating a ginormous, high-density, townhouse and shopping development. Lessard Architectural Group was brought in to create a site plan, showing the nuts and bolts of how the separately-owned portions of the development could link together. And with that, the ill-fated Greenbelt Development was born.

For his part of the project, Smith took on a partner, developer Daniel Colton. Together they formed GB Development to develop the South Core and, until 2007, their townhouse/retail/multi-family residential project seemed to be on track for a 2008 groundbreaking. But then things got messy.

The development was supposed to be the apotheosis of a from-scratch, mixed-use community, with retail, entertainment, office space, hotel, and literally thousands of new homes in the heart of Prince George's County.

Designed by SK&I, the 240-acre parcel was to be split between a South Core of Pulte Homes townhouses and a North Core consisting of 2.3 million s.f. of office and retail space, plus 2,200 new homes. Built between neighborhoods where pickup trucks populate the driveways of unassuming one-story homes, and where there is no architecture to speak of, the development would replace a large mining operation still in use, a large surface parking lot, and at least some of the forested hills - with died-in-the-wool neocontemporary suburbanism at a Metro station.

But then everything that could go wrong, did. And today Greenbelt Station finds itself tangled in news of bankruptcy, allegations of fraud, dissolving partnerships, and inaction. Assistant Planning Director for the City of Greenbelt, Terri Hruby, tells DCMud that as far as she knows, the Smith portion of the development is "basically on hold," adding that to date "what's been approved has been a concept plan and one portion of the townhouse site plan. Another plan has been submitted, but hasn't gone anywhere."

In the northern part of Smith's parcel, Urban Design Supervisor Steve Adams, from the Prince George's County Planning Department, says that his department has "heard through the grapevine now and then about various commercial enterprises that might be trying to get something going in the northern part," but adds skeptically that, "nothing has come in to date."

Hruby speculates that "with the financial times being what they are," it's unlikely movement is going to happen in any part of the development any time soon and says that "there are still over-arching issues the developer needs to address." Like how to get someone to finance a gargantuan new suburban development project, for instance.

Bottom line: It's unclear if the developers even have the financing they need to move forward and they won't be getting a green light from planners unless they can make assurances that they are financially viable enough to follow through with road improvements and other existing land covenants.

This all brings us to the question: Who's developing this mixed-use masterpiece, anyway? On paper at least, the developer for the Smith parcel is Metropark LLC. But who are the entities behind Metropark? That's a question that leaves even city and county planning officials scratching their heads.

In December of 2007, Smith died at the age of 74, leaving the project jointly in the hands of his estate and with his business partner, Daniel Colton.

According to a 2008, WUSA News 9 Now report, Patrick Ricker, a developer working with Colton on the Greenbelt Station development, became the subject of an FBI raid aimed at high-level officials with ties to fancy development contracts. That same report revealed that Colton had once served time in prison for bank fraud and that the Greenbelt Station Development itself had also become part of the FBI's investigation.

After the fallout, Colton filed for bankruptcy in 2009, severed his ties to the project, and left the community at large even more exasperated and confused.

Hruby can tell us that original partner in the townhouse project south of the tracks, Pulte Homes, is now officially out of the project, but says that "there have been several town home developers and I don't know who the current players are."

Edward J. Murphy, Town Administrator for the adjacent Berwyn Heights community responded in much the same way, saying that as far as their town planners know, "the developer for the entire Smith project hasn't changed," but "the people that run the development have."

Murphy was equally fuzzy on details about who's now running Metropark LLC, which is not so surprising when you take into account that since 2006, at least nine different partners and LLC's have been cited as partners in the joint Smith-Metro Greenbelt Station project.

Now it's time for some more bad news: the saga over the Smith family parcel is matched on the WMATA land, where developers are suing Metro for backing out on an agreement that would have allowed Greenbelt Ventures the rights to develop the Greenbelt Station Towne Centre.

For its part, WMATA representatives have failed to respond to DCMud's inquiries into where its part of the development stands now. When a public agency won't return your phone call about very public project, assume the worst.

Maryland Real Estate and Development News

Unamusing Dupont Follies

Five Dupont townhouses, vacant since 1998, got another zoning hearing on their fate today, and may actually be near approval. Some blame the cantankerousness of DC real estate tycoon Morton Bender, who obtained the property 1988 through his N Street Follies (NSF), first planning the site as an office, then as residential, and now a hotel. Throughout it all, the site has had a history of community opposition, law suits and copious ill will.

Recent spurts of progress, such as approval for a planned 98-room hotel from the Dupont Circle Conservancy, have been sullied by bouts of reticence as the project team sought repeated delays in scheduled zoning and historic reviews. Fear not Dupont, something will give in the ongoing saga of N Street Follies. The Board of Zoning Adjustment (BZA) just completed a hearing on the case and, pending additional documentation and responses, will issue a decision on June 8th; the Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) will likely issue a decision this spring as well. Just one problem: the neighboring Tabard Inn is in a fight to the death against the planned hotel, which would allegedly diminish the quaint charm and revenue of the boutique inn.

Andrulis Janezich Architects, the latest in a series of architects to have worked on the NSF plan, presented a design that will leave the historic townhouses at their current height, but will add a five-story rear addition, bringing the building's height to 57 ft., short of the maximum height of 65 ft. The architect says the planned rear addition will not be visible from the street; though the street is not what concerns Tabard. The hotel would have a 3.99 FAR (the max is 4.0) and will occupy 87% of the lot.

An Office of Planning (OP) staff report indicated that the "mass is broken up by a 2,400 s.f. interior courtyard, which is enclosed with a glass curtain wall," and recommended approval. The Tabard team naturally challenged the helpfulness of the courtyard from the perspective of the street. But since originally filing an application, the team has reduced the number of parking spots from 98 to 58 and may be compelled to reduce that number further by the BZA. NSF argued that the proposed design has been scaled down and designed "with the Tabard in mind," though comments from BZA members trended toward skepticism on that score. Ultimately, the NSF team pointed to approvals by the OP staff report and the HPO staff report, suggesting that the BZA follow suit.

Represented by Arent Fox, the Tabard argued that the height of the proposed building, especially the rear addition, would dwarf the neighboring inn, blocking natural light to the outdoor dining area, parts of the indoor dining room and to guest rooms facing the new structure, making some "unrentable." Citing business concerns, Jeremiah Cohen, the General Manager of the Tabard Inn, said that the outdoor patio with its diffused natural light is a unique wedding venue; wedding business is about 15% of hotel's total revenue. Not to mention the lost customers and guests thanks to construction noise and dust should the project be approved. At least one BZA member noted that just because the NSF plan does not max out the allowable height and density does not mean the design is deferential or compatible with neighboring structures.

The BZA review was full of courtroom-style drama without the suspenseful sound effects of Law and Order (though it could have used some after more than a dozen hours of testimony). A June decision date, however, may not resolve anything. HPRB will likely issue a decision in May, but if BZA in denies the application, a new design may have to go back for HPRB review all over again. This battle might end, but the war is likely far from over.

Washington, DC real estate development news

Four Years Later, Arts District at Hyattsville Chugs Along

Hyattsville in PG County is not exactly the center of "urban chic" in the DC Metro area, but a mixed-use project, lead by EYA with retail by StreetSense, is vying to stake a claim to being Maryland's H Street. Most of the residential in the West Village, the first phase of the Arts District at Hyattsville that began in 2006, has sold. After several years of threatening to do so, the development team this month broke ground on the retail element of the second phase, the East Village, and has signed on tenants: Tara Thai, Busboys and Poets and, most recently, Yes! Organic Market. Construction on the one-story retail element is scheduled to begin in earnest in May and to complete by fall 2010 with occupancy in late 2010 or spring 2011; construction on the East Village residential element is expected to begin late this year.

The $200 million Arts District is a new, 25-acre residential neighborhood off of Route 1 in PG County (a.k.a. Rhode Island Avenue in D.C.), just two miles from the District border and two miles from the University of Maryland. Jack McLaurin, a Principal at Lessard Group architects, said his firm tried to create a "depot main street architecture" for the project, hearkening back to old railroad towns, since a railroad line runs along the property. Lessard "tried to funk it up" to make the new project look like "someone had come in and revitalized an area that had been there for a long time." Faux adaptive reuse?

The project is delivering in two phases: the West and East Villages (i.e. East or West of Route 1). The West Village includes 132 townhouses, 10 of which are live-work space for artists, and the rehabilitated Lustine showroom, which serves as a community center with an art gallery and gym. Aakash Thakkar, a Vice President at EYA, said 102 of the residential units are settled, most are built, and the team "hopes to have it sold and completed by the end of 2010." To put it in perspective, sales began on the West Village in 2006.

The East Village will include 41,000 s.f. retail, 275 multi-family units and 183 townhouses. The project originally was to have fewer multi-family units, but EYA recently received approval from the Prince George's County Planning Board to add an additional 198 units in one, four-story building and to reduce by 21 the number of townhouses. Thakkar said at this time EYA has not decided whether the multi-family units will be rental or condos and that construction on the three buildings will not begin until early next year. The townhouses, however, should start sales as early as this April, with construction set to begin in the 3rd quarter of this year.

McLaurin said the West Village has more of an art deco feel than the updated design for the East village, where the team simplified the design to reduce costs. "No vinyl siding" the architect assured DCMud, but "we tried to work with interesting color combination with the brick and hardie panel." The multi-family buildings are broken up to look like a series of taller townhouses, and to keep with the depot idea, the multi-family buildings have space for ground floor retail or artists work spaces, with "larger window patterns" and "doors on ground level units." McLaurin said he wanted to create a "distinct" feel, so that people would know they were not in "anywhere U.S.A."

Guy Silverman, Managing Principal at StreetSense, said his company is the majority owner on the retail, but has been working closely with EYA so that the two developers are "very aligned...in terms of how we envision the Arts District." Silverman said this will be the first location for both Yes! Organic Market and Busboys and Poets and that the choice of Hyattsville "speaks volumes" about the project and the developers' efforts to create an urban neighborhood feel. Tara Thai is also signed on, bringing the total spoken-for retail space to 60%. StreetSense is now looking tenants like a yoga studio, a drop off dry cleaners, a small spa or maybe even an organic pet food store to fill the remaining space.

Hyattsville real estate development news

Law Firms Dive Headlong into the Green Lagoon

Used to be the word “green” had a decidedly negative connotation: green Jell-O; green at the gills; green-eyed monster; Kermit the frog’s famous lament, “It’s not easy being green.”

Increasingly in the 21st century, and especially in the built environment, green has card-carrying cachet. It’s a buzz word; a badge; a blessing; a great big ticket to ride. Being green, or sustainable, buys one membership in a formerly elite but increasingly accessible, not-so-secret society to which more and more aspire; not being green may elicit a strong shaking of the head and that distinct sound when the tongue and the palate click repeatedly.

That said, and once bitten, what remains is to decide what shade - or level - of green fits one’s framework, something Jim Allegro, a founding principal of Fox Architects, took quite seriously in his mission to facilitate the greening of three D.C.-area law firms.


With a dozen law firm projects in Fox Architects’ passbook and at least two more on desk, Allegro said that Reno & Cavanaugh PLLC, Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP and Delaney McKinney LLP were “the first three that had some dimension to them that was sustainable," two being LEED projects where Fox Architects were actually going to certify them through the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The other, which was not a LEED project, “was the most green of the three,” Allegro said, noting the project was “predominantly a recycle of an older design, but made to work for a law firm.” The client’s goal was to do things the right way, and if they could salvage and reuse, or find materials that could be recycled or had a high recycled content, they fully endorsed it. At the same time the three firms were all very different projects with three very different looks. “Each is a testament to what that individual client’s goals were,” Allegro said.


Reno & Cavanaugh PLLC – Preserve and Protect

Using their own management and employee survey to determine what mattered most, the D.C. office of the 10,000 square-foot Reno & Cavanaugh PLLC focused on preserving resources for employees, clients and the community, in the kind of environment that would reflect their work in the affordable and public housing arena. The process resulted in pending LEED certification, components of which include optimized performance lighting control credit by allowing employees to control their own workstations and lighting.


A reported 37 percent of Reno & Cavanaugh’s materials were sourced regionally, with 50 percent of the construction diverted from a landfill. While 30 percent of the furniture and furnishings were reused, new features were Green Guard certified. Carpet, paint, adhesives, sealant and building materials are made of low-emitting materials and have a high recycled content.



Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP – Scrap and Silver

Among the goals for the 37,000 square-foot D.C. office of the Kansas City-based behemoth Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP was to continue sustainability, a component in creating an environment that attracts and retains cutting edge talent. Moving from 14th Street to the revitalized Penn quarter, materials for the structure - a confluence of history and modernism where four historic buildings flank an atrium-connected, newly constructed glass tower - included low-VOC paint, composite wood, recycled millwork and carpet, reused furnishings and Virginia Mist (a local entity) stonework. The firm made sure more than 75 percent of construction waste was recycled or sold as scrap, diverting it from a landfill. Shook, Hardy & Bacon ultimately achieved LEED-CI silver certification.

Delaney McKinney LLP – Coffee and Consequences


For the 14,000 square-foot Chevy Chase, Md-based Delaney McKinney LLP, a coffee bar Fox Architects had formerly designed for the Mills Corporation that was already in the building was initially located where the entrance to the suite would be. “It was probably going to end up in a dumpster somewhere,” Allegro said, consequently moving it around a pillar in the coffee area location to become a centerpiece. The firm, which specializes in domestic relations, wanted an environment that was warm, subdued and relaxed, the café feature emblematic of that.

Eschewing LEED status in favor of maximizing best practices, results for Delaney McKinney included recycling centers in the café and workroom as well as reusing and salvaging much of the existing space. The inclusion of an atrium and outdoor terrace where people can gather precludes the need for indoor lighting on those occasions.

“It’s about doing what’s right and trying to specify things in a very diligent and responsible way,” Allegro said, anticipating Fox Architects’ sustainability work on the next two law firms this year.

North Bethesda Market's First Residential Units Will Be Ready by Summer

The best views in Montgomery County will be up for grabs when JBG begins leasing MoCo's tallest building in the coming days. According to The JBG Companies' Marketing Manager, Julie Contos, the first of North Bethesda Market's 397 rental apartments are scheduled for delivery the Summer of 2010, but will become available for lease by "late Spring" but the group has not finalized the rates yet. In case you haven't heard, North Bethesda Market is the mixed-use development located off Rockville Pike across from the White Flint Mall; at 24 stories a dwarf by NYC standards, but that nonetheless made its way into the (local) high-rise record books after topping off last August. HKS Architects designed the 187-unit tower, as well as a 6-story, 210-unit apartment building and 200,000 s.f. of retail that make up the Everest of local architecture. In a discussion with DCMud, Mike Nicolaus, Managing Director of the DC office of HKS, says the project and the designers behind it are at "the front-end" of a "broader transition" taking place throughout the beltway, a shift to "higher-density, more walkable, transit-oriented communities." And in an effort to achieve what Nicolaus calls a "more urban street grid," Executive Boulevard was extended to connect with Rockville Pike.In addition to serving as home to the Food and Drug Administration's offices, two of JBG's Office Buildings at 11400 Rockville Pike and 5515 Security Lane act as partial anchors to the development. Look for an additional Whole Foods and LA Fitness anchor to open later in the Summer or early this Fall. As for the names of the additional retailers setting up shop along the Pike: Nicolaus can only tell us that JBG is "working on getting new deals in place." A spokesman from JBG was equally cryptic but promised that news on that front will be coming available "in the next couple of weeks." 

Bethesda real estate development news

Donatelli Breaks More Ground in Petworth

Developer Donatelli Development broke ground this past week at 3801 Georgia Avenue, until now a vacant lot in DC's Petworth neighborhood. The 49-unit, 7-story project will rise across from the Petworth Metro, and across the street from Park Place, Donatelli's last project. Originally the project was a joint venture between Willco Residential and Donatelli, but a source at Donatelli says Willco is no longer involved in the building. Eric Colbert & Associates has designed the heavy-gauge steel and concrete building. Donatelli reports that the project will not have a retail component. Given its proximity to Metro and retail components in the neighborhood, this could be the beginning of a more "downtown" Petworth, which has lacked a concentration of sustained retail, even along the busy Georgia Avenue corridor. While the groundbreaking was more ceremonial than real, actual work on the project is expected to get underway within weeks. The building will take up most of the empty lot, though the northernmost section of the land, at 3825-3829 Georgia Ave., will not be built out at this time. Donatelli plans a smaller project on that portion, with first-floor retail and "a small amount of residential" on the upper floors. That project will be designed by Bonstra Haresign Architects. In addition to proximity to Donatelli’s recently completed Park Place, the corner will also soon be home to a new CVS, and just next door, a historic rehab-turned-restaurant, a project that kicked off just two months ago. There should be no shortage of affordable housing in the neighborhood, as just a few blocks north is the Georgia Commons Project, creating 119 of its 130 apartments as "affordable," while just to the south is the ambitious Park Morton project, a massively subsidized 500-unit community in the final planning stages. 

Washington DC commercial property news

Banneker Ventures Questioned on Development Process

Pressure on Mayor Adrian Fenty heated up today as questions increased about the Mayor's developer selection process amid news that WMATA may be backing away from Banneker Ventures as a development partner. Banneker has been awarded numerous projects worth tens of millions of dollars by the Mayor's office despite its perceived lack of development experience.

Today, the WMATA board removed the Banneker project "The Jazz @ Florida Avenue" at 8th and Florida Avenue from the agenda for the real estate committee next Thursday, at which time it would have taken-up a joint development agreement for the WMATA-owned property. Today's move comes after WMATA issued a 120-day extension on the agreement in September 2009. Banneker was chosen for the project in June of 2008, but has not yet started work on the site. More than a year later it announced it would partner with Bank of America and had petitioned for government funds, advances that were to have moved the project forward. The developer had already been pledged a $7m TIF grant from the District.

The move by WMATA likely comes in response to questions raised first by this publication about justification for awarding so many projects to a team with so little apparent experience, then by the CityPaper and Washington Post about the how the relationship between Banneker's founder and D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty may have affected the selection process. The two men attended Howard University and were in the same fraternity.

In addition to the WMATA site on Florida Avenue, the virtually unknown Banneker has been selected by the District on numerous multi-million dollar projects throughout the city, despite a large roster of construction and development firms available for such projects as private financing for construction was drying up. Banneker's luck began in late 2007 when it was selected by the District to be part of the $700 million Northwest One project. Around the same time, Banneker was named as a master planner on the monstrous Park Morton project (see DC's summary). Despite lack of movement in those two projects, or on its private projects (see more below) it was then selected for a string of projects such as the WMATA site in June of 2008, and by DC for the iconic Strand Theater in July of that year, then in October to head the $33m Deanwood Community Center project. In October of last year the District named Landex Corp, Spectrum Management and the Warrenton Group as developers of Park Morton. The Warrenton Group is run by a former Banneker member that has also had a contentious relationship with the city.

Park Morton raised eyebrows at the Mayor's development process for yet another reason; the District announced just last October that the Mayor had selected its team members for Park Morton in part because that development team said it controlled and would bring the Central Union Mission site into the development plan, increasing its scope. DCMud learned a few days later that the Missions' owners had never agreed to transfer their property to the development team, calling into question the District's selection process and the claims made by the development team to secure the project. Banneker is also being considered for its development offer at Hill East, a massive 50-acre parcel on the Anacostia River. Banneker's publicly-funded projects at the WMATA site, the Strand, Park Morton have yet to break ground.

In a contentious radio interview on the Kojo Nnamdi show following the announcement, Omar Karim, founder and principal at Banneker Ventures, called out the WMATA board for further delaying review of the agreement on the RFP awarded in 2008. In the interview, Karim, who dismissed suggestions that the board had legitimate concerns, argued that WMATA continued to "move the bar" on his project for "political" reasons. The Jazz @ Florida Avenue would theoretically bring 124 apartment units above 20,000 s.f. of ground floor retail and a 61-space parking garage to 3 flea market-sporting lots.

Tom Sherwood, resident analyst at NPR, asked Karim how many contracts he had received prior to Fenty taking office, to which Sherwood ultimately answered his own question with "none." Asked specifically about his experience, Karim answered that he had solid development experience at a large firm prior to starting Banneker, but would not name the firm or elaborate on the experience. As for Banneker's experience, Karim could only cite that his firm held an office building in Silver Spring and an unspecified site in which he "has been in conversations with Safeway about developing." At the time of publication, Safeway was unable to confirm or deny these conversations.

So what about that Silver Spring office building? That would presumably be 814 Thayer Avenue. Banneker purchased the site in May of 2006, submitted plans later in the year, and in July 2007 obtained Montgomery County Planning Board approval of a preliminary plan for a 52-unit residential building, a plan that was reviewed in November of 2007. The next step would be site plan approval, but, to date, the team has not even submitted a site plan to the planning staff for certification. Banneker will need a certified plan before the group can file for any construction permits for the property, making the September 2010 ground breaking date seem, at best, optimistic.

The 5-story Thayer project, designed by Sorg & Associates, would entail construction of a 53-unit condominium, in place of National Association of the Deaf office building. Joshua Sloan, a staff reviewer at the MNCPPC, provided an update on the project, "my understanding is that they want to amend their proposal, but I have not seen anything. I suppose it is "officially still pending." Sloan and his comments are the last stop before Banneker can proceed, a process which "can take a week or a year...depending on the Applicant’s response time to comments."

Banneker's website also boasts the Pattern Shop Lofts on the Waterfront, a project led by Forest City Washington that has not yet broken ground. Banneker registered with the District government as a small, minority-owned business in 2005.

Washington, DC real estate development news

Capitol Hill Condo Opens Saturday

Capitol Hill's newest condo opens for sales on Saturday. 15 East is expected to be ready for occupancy by mid April. The 4-story building, by Macy Development, will offer 4 one-bedroom and 4 two-bedroom condos for sale on the corner of 15th and C Streets, SE. Prices will start at $289,900 for the one-bedroom units and $389,900 for each of the two-bedroom condos.

Located 3.5 blocks north of the Potomac Avenue Metro station, near the new Harris Teeter, construction on the new building began in late 2007 but halted during the financing drought. The project was revived earlier this year, with completion scheduled within the next 4 weeks. Two-bedroom condos will come with the option to purchase parking, and all will have some private outdoor space. Two bedroom condos feature a corner living room with a wall of glass facing south and west. Sales and marketing by DC Real Estate.

15 East

285 15th Street, SE

Washington DC, 20003

Washington DC real estate development news

District to Give Money to Start Rhode Island Mixed-Use

Today the District government announced it will provide financing for development team Urban Atlantic and A&R Development Corp, meaning plans can now move forward to transform the 8.5 acre surface parking lot at the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station, one of DC's most stalled projects, into a sizable mixed-use neighborhood, Rhode Island Station. The District will provide $7.2 million in financing through a PILOT note toward the $108 million project, which will bring 274 residential rental units above 70,000 s.f. of retail in two buildings. Additional financing will come from the federal government in the form of Federal New Market Tax Credits and a traditional HUD-backed loan. Today's announcement marks a significant step toward the execution of the District's Great Streets Plan for Rhode Island Avenue.

The developers today also closed on their ground lease agreement with WMATA, which has been working with the development teams for almost a decade since Metro's initial Request for Proposal in 2001. As part of the exchange with metro, the development will provide a 215-car WMATA garage alongside the busy Rhode Island Avenue/Brentwood Metro station.


According to a release from the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development's office, the residential project will include 54 (or 20%) affordable housing units at 60% area median income. Rhode Island Station - formerly Brentwood Town Center - will also include a community center and two private parking garages for residents. Designed by Lessard Group Architects, the project will feature ground floor retail with sidewalk cafes and "heavy landscaping" along the streets.

The development team originally won final zoning approval in April 2007 and were initially scheduled to begin construction July 2008. Clearly that time line did not work out. A ground breaking is not tentatively scheduled for May of this year and construction could complete in summer of 2013, if everything goes according to plan this time around.

The surrounding area has had many plans in the works over the years, see Brookland Square for example, which have not been able to get past the planning stage.

Washington, DC real estate development news

Notes from the Underground

DC Mud is pleased to announce it’s new architecture column, “L’Enfant Terrible” by Andrew Cocke. Though he left his urban heart in Manhattan years ago, Andrew is a Washington native, returning in 2007 after living and working in New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Shanghai and Hong Kong. He studied architecture and planning at Virginia and Yale, is LEED accredited, and teaches architecture at the Catholic University of America. He started his practice, HERE design in 2006 which specializes in high performance sustainable design.
More from L'Enfant Terrible...


Could it get any worse for Michael McBride, manager of MetroArts, Metro’s Art in Transit program? After numerous snowmageddon delays and a derailment last month crowned Metro’s abysmal safety record, the agency cheerfully announced the latest acquisitions for their Art in Transit program, prompting many Washingtonians to ask why Metro is spending money on art when it can’t even keep its passengers and employees safe. And then came the insult to injury: McBride, along with dozens of other Metro employees, was laid off in an effort to close Metro’s forty million dollar budget gap.

To set the record straight, artwork in Metro is funded entirely by private donations, and McBride was promptly reinstated by Metro’s board. But McBride’s greatest challenge remains: how to place art in such an overbearing, dark, inhospitable place.

Don’t get me wrong. This critic, like most architects, loves Metro, but it is a decidedly difficult venue for art. If you ask architects to name their favorite architecture in Washington they will mention the White House, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol; the usual suspects. In 2006 the American Institute of Architects asked their members (and civilians too) to name their favorite architecture in America and surprisingly Harry Weese’s brutalist design for the Metro system was ranked number 14 among buildings in Washington (and 106 nationally). And if the poll had been limited to architects, Metro might well have ranked higher.

Weese’s great innovation was to design the stations not as a series of ever deeper basements but as a single subterranean nave into which the mezzanine concourses are loosely inserted like ships in a bottle allowing fluorescent lamps at the base of each curved wall and between the tracks to wash the entire volume with light. Weese rejected the white-glazed ceramic tile that had been used in New York, Paris, and London subways in favor of raw concrete, dark bronze and dark red quarry tile. The advantage of these unfinished materials is that they hide the inevitable: the cracks, water leaks, discarded bubble gum, and subway grime all disappear against the rough textures in Weese’s rugged palate.

But as surfaces for displaying works of art, they are totally unsuitable which explains why much of the art in Metro is clustered around station entrances, before one descends into the totalizing aesthetic of Weese’s underworld. The only flat surfaces inside the cavernous

stations are the end walls. But Metro trains are rarely as long as the platform so most riders never see the end walls of the station. It has probably been years since anyone looked at Constance Fleures’s, “The Yellow Line” which hangs forlorn on the south end wall of Gallery Place’s yellow line platform—its yellow neon unlit, its Miami Vice checkerboard and triangles hopelessly dated.

The biggest problem however is that much of the artwork chosen by MetroArts is merely decoration, intended to dress up a space that is utterly resistant to decoration; the visual equivalent of Vivaldi played in a steel mill. Hazel Rehold’s “Ribbons and Jewels” at Metro Center might be perfectly suited to a richly-appointed hotel lobby, bathed in the warm glow of their light, but the stained glass sconces are mounted too high on the wall to make out their intricate detail and are too small to have much impact on the cavernous Metro Center.


While size does matter, in the right places very small works can make a big impression. New York’s subway system boasts a better collection contemporary blue chip artists than most museums, but some of the most wonderful moments in New York’s subways are small, whimsical surprises by less well-known artists like Tom Otterness whose bronze alligator crawls out of a manhole on the platform to grab a hapless sculpture or this delightful installation in Stockholm’s art-rich subway encouraging riders to use the stairs instead of the escalator.

Artwork in Metro must be prepared to do battle with Weese’s design. Jorge Martin’s imposing marble piece at the entrance to the Archive-Navy Memorial station picks up and then warps the rhythm of Metro’s typical concrete panels as if Weese’s walls have been torn away to reveal some ancient boat hull entombed behind the concrete. There is an even better precedent in Washington: Leo Villareal’s wildly popular LED installation “Multiverse” which transformed the tunnel between the east and west wings of the National Gallery of Art. One hardly notices I.M. Pei’s signature P-shape passage because of Villareal’s leap into hyperspace. How many commuters would happily miss their trains to watch Villareal’s mesmerizing patterns wash across the Weese’s vaulted ceiling.Washington D.C. is not, let’s face it, an art town. There are many serious artists in Washington, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at our Metro stations. Penguin Rush Hour at Silver Spring and other large-scale murals and mosaics are a perfectly pleasant relief from Metro’s waffled concrete monotony, but few if any will stand the test of time like the great WPA murals.

Just as Metro is taking a close look at its safety procedures, it might be time to reexamine MetroArts’s selection process to encourage works that stand up to and enhance the overwhelming aesthetic of Weese’s architectural vision. And its well past time to enact some procedure for decommissioning works that haven’t aged well. Most importantly, Metro should redouble its art acquisitions efforts. Not every piece must be a work of art so to speak, but each should at least be engaging and provocative because as much as we all love Weese’s stations, they need to lighten up.