District Issues New Development Rights Near Stadium, Buzzard Point

The DC government today issued a request for proposals for up to 300,000 s.f. of development rights near the ballpark and Buzzard Point, inviting developers to bid on land within the "Capitol Gateway" overlay areas of southwest and southeast DC.

The District of Columbia, through the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED), is putting development rights up for bid in the form of Combined Lot Development rights - additional square footage for landholders within the overlay.  The areas are designated for mixed use development, under the current regime developers are able to combine two lots and transfer density between them.  The initiative unveiled today adds an additional 300,000 s.f. of development rights within the zone, increasing the density within the high-growth corridor that lines the Anacostia waterfront.

The Request for Expressions of Interest was issued in an 8-page publication - a more streamlined version than past requests, reducing the technical compliance burden on developers. Responses to the request are due August 31st.

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A Kick Start for Buzzards Point?

Buzzards Point, the southern tip of the District above Anacostia, is about as desolate a neighborhood one can find in the DC region - empty lots, equipment storage fields, and an overall post-industrial decay that makes ballpark visitors quicken the walk back to their car late at night. An actual buzzard circling above would not seem entirely out of place. But all of that is going to change, and one local developer thinks that time might just be nigh.

The promise of the area is obvious, close to the Capitol and a focal point for DC's highways, the region is still secluded and private, and is surrounded by water, and the area's largest developers like PN Hoffman (along Water Street) and Steuart Investment (with more than 5 acres at the tip of South Capitol) and Akridge among them. But Duane Deason, who bought the empty 20,000 s.f. lot on the Anacostia back in 2004, when a new baseball stadium was maybe, just possibly, coming to southeast, has plans for an Eric Colbert-designed condominium, and thinks the time is right to start.

On the boards is an 80-foot high, 97 unit condominium nearly fronting the water behind the marina. "If you had asked me in the 3rd quarter of last year I would have said we were quite a ways away, but right now I'd say we are moving much faster...the market has notably improved, and I think its a good time to take advantage of that." Deason has an upcoming hearing before the Zoning Commission and is actively pushing ahead. "This is our first hearing before Zoning; there's no such thing as matter of right here, but we're sort of there, we don't need a PUD [zoning change] to do this."

Deason has little company at the moment, the other Buzzard Point developers are sitting on their hands, reasoning that there it makes little sense to develop in isolation without a pre-signed tenant. "Eventually I think it will be a great place" says one developer with skin in the game nearby that is choosing to wait. Deason is confident. "Eventually there's going to be other places, with the PN Hoffman development there, but there's a view of the water, the Coast Guard is there for another 5 years or so. There is the planned riverwalk, that will come. There are a couple of big landowners there that will cause a huge change." Deason says he paid under $1m for the property, including all costs associated with the acquisition, and that while he doesn't have a development financier, he has no financial pressure and will consider a joint venture partner.

"Being only 75 feet off there water, there's just not alot out there that currently that offers that, with a view of your boat...I love the waterfront and I just thought it was a fantastic location" said Deason. "The views are phenomenal because its on a point, almost every unit in the building will have an outstanding view of the water." Deason says most of the units will be less than 1000 s.f., and the new inclusionary zoning rules mean another 7200 s.f. of affordable housing.

While Deason may not have any immediate residential neighbors on the waterfront, another residential developer in southwest has the same sense of potential value and will break ground much sooner, you can read about that at DCMud this afternoon.

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Carr Hospitality Gets Hostel In Southwest

In an unlikely chain of events, Carr Hospitality has outsourced their design process to a futuristic parallel universe where Ridley Scott is devising hotel schematics for architectural firms instead of directing movies. And although sources for these facts remain unconfirmed, the early renderings of a proposed hostel in Southwest DC bare out these claims. Indeed, the half hostel, half hotel "officially" designed by Gordon Godat and his team at Baltimore-based JP2 Architects would be more at home on the set of Blade Runner than in DC's Buzzard Point. The preliminary plans for the Carr-developed 110 room hostel were presented to the Zoning Commission on July 29th under the guise of "Tiber Creek Associates, LLC"; and although a new hearing date was not set down, the Commission agreed to entertain the applicant's proposal as a contested case, as long as several minor conditions are met prior to the next meeting. More detailed plans are likely to be hashed out and presented later this fall.

Located at 129 Q Street SW, the six story, 73,975 s.f. "C Hostel & Hotel," rising sixty plus feet, will house nearly 500 beds for "youth travelers, families, and budget-minded groups." Half the rooms will be outfitted with a single queen or twin beds and blessed with private bathrooms, while the other half will be filled with dormitory-style bunk beds. With families as an exception, floors and communal showers will be segregated by gender. Hotel amenities will include an open air rooftop courtyard; a large communal dining area and complimentary continental breakfast will be provided, but guests will be encouraged to bring and prepare their own food for lunch and dinner using the hotel facilities. The dining area will also host evening social hours for travelers in search of friendly conversation and newly forged companionship. A library, cyber lounge, and game lounge are all also included in the early stages of planning. The building will rest atop a single level of below grade parking, offering twenty-seven spaces for travelers arriving by automobile. Upon completion, developers are ambitiously predicting a LEED Platinum Certification.

The mostly concrete building will take on a c-shape to allow for a central cutout that gives the building a more interesting look, as the change in depth breaks up the typical flat rectangle frontage. The landscaped rooftop courtyard is situated in the setback, amidst

the surrounding hotel walls. A subsection of each half of the building, making up the walls of the courtyard, is layered with "fiber cement panels" that take on a faux-wood grain pattern, contrasting with the largely gray color scheme. Colorful and oddly shaped windows, abstractly strewn across the building, give the building an ultramodern and artsy flavor. The ground floor facade is accentuated by aluminum framed glass store fronts that stretch nearly the entire block. The pattern of the building is asymmetrical, but very geometric and rigid in its strict adherence to the use of rectangles and right angles. Taking the place of a dirty, dilapidated auto shop, this unique design will be a bold addition to this otherwise neglected and under-appreciated part of the city.

Developers have admitted that the estimated $28 million project faces steep challenges before it will break ground, the main problem being the "need to overcome lenders' perceptions of the neighborhood." But the team remains confident that upon secured financing, the building will be delivered within 24 months.

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Recognition From HPRB A Long Time Coming For Neglected Southwest House

Formerly home to the Southwest Community House Organization (SWCH), a now defunct non-profit social organization that had served the encompassing low-income neighborhoods of southwest D.C., a historic black and white, detached brick house at 156 Q Street, SW is once again the James C. Dent House. Last week the Historical Preservation Review Board gave its blessing of historical protection to the property and recommended to the National Park Service that the home be listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The home is located on Buzzard Point, the urbanized sector of the peninsula formed by the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers.

The southwest quadrant of the original city of Washington has a long and storied past, and is home to some of the oldest buildings in L'Efant's originally planned cityscape. Often forgotten as an original site for the many large, gracious river front mansions that housed much of the political elite, the area is most frequently chronicled for its reputation as a shabby neighborhood of awkward racial diversity. In 1920, Washington Star journalist John Harry Shannon (aka "The Rambler") wrote of the areas frequently overlooked but nonetheless pedigreed heritage:

"It is not easy to name a member of an old South Washington family whose grandfather or grandmother did not live between the Arsenal and the two rivers. Thousands of men and women now living in the 'parks: 'heights' and 'terraces' will cast their thoughts back to the old family home on the Navy Yard or the Island. It was not many years ago that Northwest Washington was commons, pastures, bog, forest, rugged hill and steep ravine. What is now South Washington was then all Washington, with the exception of a narrow fringe of settlement north of the Avenue."

Early nineteenth century plans for the construction of stately homes and a bustling commercial district never quite fully materialized, and for over a century the southwest, consisting mostly of what is known as "the Island," remained a modest residential host to the rowhouses, tenements, shacks, and even the odd tent of blue-collar workers, the majority of them African Americans with a small portion being working-class whites (predominantly Jewish). Although the increasingly putrid James Creek turned Washington City Canal and a series of explosions at the Washington Arsenal cemented the area as one of the less desirable parts of the city, the neighborhoods were symbolic of the ever fleeting American dream for the newly emancipated, as many freed African Americans had looked to build new lives and legacies on these lands since the days immediately following the Civil War.

Perhaps no Southwest resident is more emblematic of this dream of social and economic ascension than James C. Dent. Born into slavery in 1855, Dent grew up a farm laborer in the tobacco country of southern Maryland. Dent eventually made his way to southwest D.C. as a laborer, mostly employed in a lime kiln, and married a Virginia seamstress. In 1885, his wife Mary and several parishioners founded the Mount Moriah Baptists Church. Several months after it opened the first pastor stepped down, and in May of 1886 Dent took his place and proceeded to take the church to prominence within Washington's black religious community - overseeing it's transition into several newer and nicer buildings (it is now located on East Capital Street, NE), and serving as pastor for over 22 years.

In 1906, in an unusual move indicative of the racial and economic disparity of the area, Dent hired a white architect to build a house to replace the modest, timber-framed dwelling he had lived in with his wife for many years. William James Palmer, a prominent rowhouse architect, was commissioned for the design. During the year of construction, Palmer, whose body of work was largely concentrated in Dupont Circle and Columbia Heights, was praised in the Washington Post for designing a row of houses in Mt. Pleasant that exhibited "architectural beauty, stability, and refinement of taste." A couple non-residential, Palmer-designed properties of note include Union Methodist Episcopal Church, as well as the Navel Lodge and AME Church on Capitol Hill. While Dent's home may seem rather average in appearance compared to the contemporaneous homes of the designated historic districts to the north and northwest, the detached brick edifice was no doubt a remarkable anomaly among the many surrounding shacks on Buzzard Point, and even more exceptional for having endured the "urban renewal" of the 1950's that saw many of the areas homes and churches razed.

As the setting of a unique American story, in which an African American man made the transition from slave to property owner to middle class professional within a single generation, the HPRB has designated the James C. Dent House a D.C. Landmark. In doing so, a small but unique part of the narrative of racial progress within the nation's capitol will be forever preserved. The building is now owned by PEPCO, and has stood vacant since SWCH left in 2004.

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