Brookland's Colonel Brooks' Tavern Demolition Within the Month

Despite significant pushback from some locals, Colonel Brooks' Tavern in Brookland is set to be demolished in the next month, marking the end of one of the neighborhood's most recognizable landmarks.

"We anticipate the raze permit coming in the next thirty days," said David Roodberg, President at Horning Brothers.  (The application was filed on August 7th.)  "Of course, it could come sooner.  At this point we're thinking about when we're going to do the work.  We'll probably raze in October and then start in immediately on construction, which should take about two years."

The five-story project at 901 Monroe Street slated to replace the tavern will feature 220 residential units over five stories.  Jointly developed by Horning Brothers, The Menkiti Group, and owner Jim Stiegman, the Esocoff and Associates-designed project is said to be designed to blend in with the neighborhood's brick townhouse aesthetic, and will offer 12,000+ s.f. of ground floor retail space.  (And thanks to an agreement with the ANC, these commercial spaces will be leased to small- to medium-sized stores.)

The project has had a sometimes-rocky road to fruition, though, as community groups feared the new building would usurp the intimate scale of Brookland's commercial strip.  In deference to these concerns, developers revised their plans to shrink the new building's footprint by 12%, reducing its footage down to 197,000 from an original estimate of 220,000 s.f.  The development will also create 150 below-grade parking spaces and 66 bicycle parking spaces, as well as much wider sidewalks, thanks to 15-foot setbacks.

While the tavern will certainly be missed, tavern owner Jim Stiegman has said that business dried up after the tragic robbery/murders in 2003, essentially forcing him to sell.  Rumor has it that Stiegman proactively approached the Menkiti Group about development, and that Horning Brothers were brought in shortly after.

Brookland has seen a surge of development as developers woke up to the potential of a walkable, small scale neighborhood in such close proximity to transit and Catholic University.  The 901 Monroe project follows on the heels of Bozzuto's $200 million Monroe Street Market project that broke ground in late 2011.

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Your Next Place

Shiny new townhouses in an emerging neighbor- hood - what's not to like?  Come in, get a bargain, sell off in a few years for twice as much as you paid, use your windfall to buy a house in Bethesda, and for the next ten years of cocktail parties tell your story about "that one night in your old house you heard a gunshot, you're pretty sure it was a gunshot, though it might have been a firecracker or car backfire or maybe the tv downstairs, it's hard to say since you were sort of asleep at the time."

Seriously though, everyone knows it wasn't a gunshot.  But enough about that.  These two townhouses, collectively named Randolph Row, are total gems.  Three levels, beautiful brick facade, all the modern finishes you could possibly ask for.  Large rooms, large windows, tons of light, recessed lighting, hardwood floors.  There's an open-style kitchen with Carrara marble countertops and stainless steel appliances, and a beautiful wooden deck.  And the yard is massive; you could legitimately play a full 11-on-11 football game back there.

Brookland, of course, is home to Catholic University, and is going to see quite a bit of development in the near future.  Before you know it, it'll be a second Columbia Heights, though hopefully much much less annoying.  The metro is only a block away, and each townhouse also has a garage, so you can drive instead of taking the metro.  I hate taking the metro.  If I want to be in close physical proximity to unhappy people staring straight ahead, I'll just visit my family, thank you very much.

1222 Randolph Street NE
3 Bedrooms, 2.5 Baths
$599,990

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EYA Announces Construction Start for Brookland Metro Project

After last week's announcement of Bozzuto-Pritzker Venture's new alliance with Abdo in developing the $200 million project on Catholic's South Campus, every propogator of real estate news (including DCMud), was happy just to have something printable during a lazy August. But the cash infusion into the neighborhood was good for other developers too; namely EYA, which rebroadcast the news in advance of its own groundbreaking around the corner. The area's current access, or lack thereof, to quality, independent eateries and retail is regrettable, and any chance of more commerce, whatever the time-frame, is good news. Now piggybacking on these housing-market huzzahs, EYA has given the area's residents and real estate news junkies more to cheer about, announcing that their expansive LEED-certified residential development will break ground on Tuesday. As proof of the regional renaissance, EYA also notes "the massive 40+ acre Dakota Crossing development and the Rhode Island Avenue Metro redevelopment".

The 10-acre field of grass EYA purchased from St. Paul's College is now tilled, and come the first week of September foundations will go in and construction will start moving vertically. EYA expects to deliver their first townhouse models in February or March of next year. Upon completion the whole project will bring 237 Lessard Group-designed single-family townhomes to the former campus field. The townhouses are currently being offered from $470,000 to $590,000. According to EYA, only 206 of the total will be officially "luxury townhomes" while the remaining 31 will be marketed as "affordable dwelling units." Half will go to those unit-dwellers (a.k.a. humans) earning 50% Area Median Income (AMI) and half to those earning 80% AMI.

EYA began marketing their Chancellor's Row houses in May, before they had even finished constructing their sales center. Not to be misled by the subtle art of neighborhood cartography, neighborhood watchdogs have pointed out that the "Brookland Metro" development lies a few blocks west of the unofficial "official" dividing line (9th Street NE) of Brookland, in Edgewood.

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Abdo Gets Equity Injection, Catholic Plans to Demo University Buildings

This past winter the Zoning Commission exchanged self-congratulatory pats on the back and awkward hugs with Jim Abdo as they approved plans for a large mixed use development project in Brookland. In late July the Greenbelt-based Bozzuto Group announced it was pairing up with Pritzker Realty Group LLC of Chicago to form a $75 million joint investment fund in multifamily housing; and early this week the joint-venture revealed that a significant portion of that fund was being invested in Abdo's plans to develop Catholic University's South Campus. The new partners would not reveal the exact amount of their equity investment, but it's deemed healthy enough to move forward with plans for the $200 million development to break ground in spring of next year. As part of the brokered agreement, Bozzuto Construction will operate as general contractor and Bozzuto Development will partner with Abdo as co-developer of the site. While the rest of the working world has gone on August vacation, and projects across the metro area have petered out and evaporated in the sultry summer sun, the Catholic University project offers hope that the market is showing small signs of life.

Starving artists will be well fed with high-end studio space.

The center piece of the new project and first phase of construction will be the Arts Walk buildings across from the Brookland Metro Station. The 15,000 s.f. ground floor will consist of 27 studio spaces where artists can work on, display, and sell their pieces. The wide, open public space between the two structures (the "arts walk" itself) will allow this creativity to spill out of the studios and onto the sidewalks, and will also be a place to feature sculptures, public art exhibits, and kiosks for rotating studio-less artists. The arts walk will dead end into a public piazza with a bubbling water fountain and more public space for artsy festivities. The tree-lined Monroe Street, beginning at the Michigan Avenue intersection and running to the Monroe Street Bridge, will serve as the main street of the campus, the backbone of the development. The wide thoroughfare will be home to 83,000 square feet of diverse, pedestrian-friendly street-level retail, much of it student-oriented: coffee shops, pubs, book shops, bike shops, you name it. On top of all this, the development team will stack several floors of residencies, 720 apartments units in all (approximately 63,000 s.f. will be reserved as "workforce" housing). Also included in the works are 45 townhomes to be marketed for purchase. The townhouses will help transition the taller Monroe Street and Arts Walk apartment buildings into the abutting lower-rising neighborhoods of Brookland and Edgewood. A total of 850 below-grade parking spaces will accommodate residents and shoppers alike.

New South Campus main street: a place to shop, and tailgate?

On Wednesday, the District received raze applications for three South Campus buildings (Spalding, Spellman, and Conaty Halls), showing concrete efforts to make way for the development, and further proof that these guys weren't joking around and real progress is being made. Catholic University requested the permission to destroy the three dormitories, writing: "CUA's expectation is that the South Campus development project will provide a financial return to support the renovation and construction of residence halls on its main campus, [and] will provide amenities that will benefit both the neighborhood and the students and employees of the university." Although ground will not officially break until 2011, The Berg Corporation, experts in the art of destruction, have been contracted to demolish these three buildings in the near future.

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