Southwest's Big Day

Can anyone finance this?

District officials began demolition yesterday of Hogate's Restaurant on the Southwest waterfront, the first step of what will be a billion-dollar renovation of the area that will usher in a new neighborhood in a city-changing endeavor to connect DC to the river. Or, to the cynically inclined, it was a short-lived photo op for a project that has zero chance of starting soon.

Putting healthy skepticism aside, a completed project would be transformative, replacing careless architecture, mediocre food establishments and parking lots, all segregated by anti-pedestrian design, with an urban worthy mixed-use neighborhood featuring 14 acres of parks and "open space," 780,000 square feet of office and retail space, 3 new hotels, entertainment venues and 770 condos and apartments. Just picture throngs of happy pedestrians gazing over the marina while dropping Hamiltons like crazy at waterfront retailers. Add 3,000 new jobs and you have a minor stimulus plan in the works.

So just how close is the team, comprised of PN Hoffman, Madison Marquette, Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, McCormack Baron Salazar, ER Bacon Development, Triden Development, Paramount Development, Gotham Development and City Partners, to getting real progress? The ambitious project, first approved by the DC Council back in 2003, was never on fast-track. But despite the development team having been selected in September of 2006, the District's approval of $198m in revenue bonds supported by tax increment financing (TIF) in July of 2008, and ratification of the land agreement in December of 2008, numerous obstacles remain. District officials say that a master plan will be submitted in October, and though they acknowledge there has been no major headway on financing, actual construction is now estimated for a comfortably distant 2012. But in January of 2008 developer Monty Hoffman predicted that "District residents can see a shovel in the ground by 2010;" not a surprising miscalculation given, well, everything, but one that gives pause in relying on current estimates. PN Hoffman would not comment on the significance of the groundbreaking. It seems that for the near future it will remain simply a good spot to get cheap fish.

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