NoMa's Capitol Square Hotel to Break Ground This Summer

 Phase One of JBG's long-delayed Capitol Square mixed-use megadevelopment is finally set to break ground, with future phases scheduled for completion over approximately the next five years.

"The first phase of our Capitol Square project, a 200-room Hyatt Place hotel, is scheduled to start construction this summer and be complete by the end of 2013," said a source at JBG.  "The office, residential, and retail will follow in future phases."

Capitol Square will go up on the triangular wedge of land bounded by New York Avenue, First Street, and North Capitol Street, currently the site of the defunct New York Avenue Car Wash, nightclub Mirrors, a Covenant House youth shelter, and an older office building, also named Capitol Square (a name so catchy they had to use it twice).  Phase one, represented by the aforementioned hotel, will be located on the west end of the site, adjacent to where Covenant House is currently located.  The massive new office-residential-hotel-retail project will eventually bring over 2 million square feet of leasable space to NoMa, including 85,000 square feet of ground floor retail space.  Capitol Square is one of four properties in the District being developed under the umbrella of JBG Urban, a multibillion-dollar joint venture between JBG and real estate investment management firm MacFarlane Partners.

The project represents a major step in the continuing revitalization of NoMa which, despite all the hype, is still very much a work in progress.  While various real estate brochures and promotional literature like to cite the area's sizeable daytime population (NoMa BID estimates 40,000), this number glosses over the fact that after the proverbial closing time whistle, NoMa still becomes eerily quiet, though this and many other projects in the works will do much to amend that reality.

The area's bottleneck entrance from the north will presumably be alleviated by street improvements that are part of the Capitol Square project, as well as MRP's upcoming Washington Gateway project at nearby New York and Florida Avenues, which promises a "European plaza experience," featuring widened sidewalks, promenades, and sidewalk cafes.  NoMa has come a long way from when the term "neighborhood" could barely be applied to the area, but for now it remains a work in progress.