Results tagged “development”

This week's steady rains appear to be to blame for a construction site in the 100 block of 15th Street SE being declared unstable this afternoon. Saturated ground there has caused the walls of a row of commercial buildings currently undergoing renovations to separate, according to D.C. Fire/EMS spokesperson Pete Piringer. Rescue crews responded to the scene at about 2:45 p.m., and made the call to evacuate the area, including several nearby commercial buildings at 112 and 115 15th Street SE, as well as 1500 Independence Ave. SE. No injuries have been reported.

   

Renovation work began late last week on the exteriors of several long-vacant properties owned by Shiloh Baptist Church in the 1500 block of 9th Street NW.

The hugely delayed Washington Convention Center Hotel deal, which in July appeared to be back on track thanks to a city-brokered public financing deal with developers, is once again in trouble. Developer JBG Cos. is suing to stall the start of construction, claiming that the contracting process that gave a 99-year lease to Marriott was not up to snuff, the Washington Business Journal is reporting. The lawsuit could very well mean that the sale of bonds for the project could be delayed, which would in turn push back ground breaking on the project. The city's only hope to keep things on track will be if a judge agrees to toss out the case in short order, as construction has been slated to begin this fall.

It's been a year since D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty shut down the Franklin Shelter, and while homeless advocates are still fighting in court to get the historic Franklin School reopened as a shelter, the Fenty administration is moving ahead with its redevelopment plans. As Ruth Samuelson recently reported over at Housing Complex, the Franklin School RFP seeks "Highly-qualified development teams with experience in planning, financing, building, and operating small to medium scale mixed-use, commercial, hotel, residential, or retail use development projects and experience in working with community stakeholders are strongly encouraged to respond to this RFP." The Business Journal followed up today with a story of its own.

We missed this one from the Washington Business Journal earlier this week: Harris Teeter is looking at a fourth location in the District, this time at the mixed-use Capitol Riverfront development The Yards, nearby Nationals Park. The lease has yet to be signed and the BizJo estimates it would take at least three years before the store could open thanks to the current financing market, but word of a grocery store coming to the area understandably elicits breathless comments from neighborhood officials. '“We're thrilled there's going to be a Harris Teeter in the neighborhood,” said Michael Stevens, director of the Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District ... “They all bought into the vision of the neighborhood and a grocery store is part of that vision,” he said.'

The big scoop everyone's buzzing about today is that Wal-Mart is sniffing around for a location in D.C., maybe in Poplar Point, maybe elsewhere. Jonathan O'Connell first reported the news in the Washington Business Journal, and has since updated with more comments from Wal-Mart, in which the company basically says that it's looking, but it's not likely to happen in the immediate future.

Washington City Paper reporter Ruth Samuelson ably answers the questions I've had about just what the heck is going on with the Dupont location of Results Gym. Word has been spreading like wildfire in recent weeks that the Results will be shut down at some point in the near future, to make way for a larger, hugely expanded Vida Fitness, which will include a rooftop pool. I had always assumed that the two chains were somewhat related, since both of them offer similar amenities and are often paired with Bang Salons (full disclosure: I'm a member of Results, though I usually frequent their Mt. Vernon location). Turns out the two men who own the separate chains—Results's Doug Jefferies and Vida Fitness's David von Storch—used to be business partners, but they've had a major falling out. And since von Storch, who also owns the various Bang Salons, is the one who actually owns the Dupont Circle property that houses Results, he's decided to push the gym out to make way for a Vida Fitness. Quite the local business scandal!

That's according to the Washington Business Journal, which reports that Madison Square Garden LP is looking for a space to open up a rather large new theater in the District. At least one source of the BizJo's puts the size the potential venue at "6,000 seats or more, requiring up to 100,000 square feet," which, just for comparison's sake, would make it almost twice the size of DAR Constitution Hall. Steve Moore, executive director of the Washington, D.C. Economic Partnership, told the paper that he has been pitching the company on sites near the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and in the area around Nationals Park. Can you think of any other locations something that big would fit in, that's also close enough to Metro?

The D.C. Council has gone ahead and approved $206 million in public financing for a Marriott Marquis hotel adjacent to the Washington Convention Center, the Washington Business Journal reports. The key approval makes way for construction on the long-stalled development to finally begin, after the financing fell apart amid the current economic crisis. Construction could begin as early as next fall, says the BizJo. “We went from a 100 percent publicly financed hotel to a deal that requires the developer to fund the majority of the costs," said At-large Council member Kwame Brown in a statement. "While it’s not the ideal result, in these tough economic times we can now look forward to revitalizing the Shaw neighborhood and putting District residents to work.” Brown, Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), and CFO Natwar Gandhi were all involved in negotiating the arrangement with the Convention Center.

Ward 6 D.C. Council member Tommy Wells is first out of the gate with a statement admonishing his colleagues for considering diverting funding away from longstanding projects in order to fund the construction of a new Convention Center Hotel. Word of such discussions, which would involve taking away dedicated subsidies from projects like the Southwest waterfront, the Capitol Riverfront, the Skyland Shopping Center and the O Street Market, first surfaced earlier this week.

The Washington Business Journal's Jonathan O'Connell follows up on the ongoing Washington Convention Center Hotel saga to report that city officials are discussing taking roughly $700 million in subsidies that have already been passed for other projects and diverting them to the hotel. The argument goes that a number of high profile development projects, including the Southwest waterfront, the Capitol Riverfront, the Skyland Shopping Center and the O Street Market, have long been stalled by the collapse of the lending market, so those allocated subsidies are sitting dormant in the meantime. But such a course of action would of course be very tricky for D.C. Council members who represent the neighborhoods that would then lose their public funding for those projects. The scheme could pose particular problems for Ward 2's Jack Evans, who would be forced to weigh the hotel, which is in his Ward, against longstanding promises to make the O Street Market project a priority. In May, Evans pushed through a $1 million grant to the developers of the O Street Market in Shaw.

The long, long saga of the empty warehouse space at 14th and T Streets NW has come to an end. Upscale furniture retailer Room & Board has finally gone ahead and bought the building, after dropping out of negotiations for a while and then eventually coming back and making another offer, Housing Complex reports. The building at one time had been targeted as a comedy club/yoga studio/lounge combo, but all those pipe dreams have at last gone up in smoke. From the press release:

Room & Board, a 29-year-old company offering handcrafted, American-made home furnishings, announced today it will open a new store in Washington, D.C., in the early spring of 2010. The store, located in the historic Taylor Motors Building at 14th and T, will be Room & Board’s second store on the east coast and eleventh store in the U.S.

Continue reading "Room & Board Finally Buys the 14th & T Building"

Resident Jeff Davis shared the news with the Cleveland Park listserve this morning that the years-long battle to allow Giant Food to remodel its store at Wisconsin & Newark appears to have finally come to an end. The project dates as far back at 1998, though it was revived in its current form in 2006 before being derailed once again by NIMBY concerns over traffic and parking. You'll recall that more recently, the Cleveland Park Citizens Association experienced a coup/meltdown in the wake of the impending Giant plan approval.

Written by former DCist Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent

Written by former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent

You may already be following the story of the Capital City Diner, a new restaurant planned by Trinidad resident Matt Ashburn (City Paper wrote about it yesterday). Ashburn and his partner, Patrick Carl, bought a Silk City Diner, one of those original 1940s era sleek modular diner buildings, in upstate New York and planned to install it on the site of one of the former used car lots shut recently shut down by Mayor Fenty. Great idea, right? We were definitely intrigued by the news, and had already set up a time for a photographer to go down there this weekend to check the place out.

My favorite blogger economist scoffs at his fellow Brookland residents who doubt the small area plan and comes up with a genius way to capitalize on their misconceptions: "[I]s there a market for NIMBY insurance? That is, I’d love to collect tiny premiums from residents looking at potential development near their homes, in exchange for which I’d take responsibility for the change in value of their home relative to homes outside of the directly affected area. If their property does poorly relative to other homes, then I’d shell out for the difference, either at an agreed upon time after development or upon sale. If it does better, well, the gain would accrue to me." I'm not a homeowner but I'm thinking about taking out a rental policy against the chance that Solea, the new condo building at 14th and Florida Ave NW, will sink both U Street and Columbia Heights into the ground by the sheer appalling weight of its horrible ugliness.

Remember 2020 Martini, the three-story, 10,000-square-foot brick oven pizza/pasta/sushi/martini restaurant and bar planned for Old Engine Co. 12, the 112-year-old firehouse at 1626 North Capitol Street? We were deeply skeptical of the concept when NextGen Development first announced its deal with Twyla Garrett of Cleveland-based Garrett Entertainment Corp. last year, and now it seems with good reason. The Bloomingdale blog reported recently that the deal has long since fallen through (hat tip to Arts & Real Estate), and the building is now on the market, listed at $1.5 million.

If the thing weren't solidly anchored to the ground, we might expect to find the District's new baseball stadium hiding somewhere in a corner. After all, the last few months have seen enough bad news for Nationals Park to make even the most confident of publicly financed ballparks a little glum.

As we told you last week, the city is moving forward with its proposal to redevelop the Saint Elizabeths Hospital campus. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton held a public meeting on the plans already, and tonight it's Mayor Adrian Fenty's turn to host his version. The deadline to register to present testimony at the public hearing has already passed, but anyone may attend tonight from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at 2700 Martin Luther King Jr Avenue SE. The DC Office of Planning is running the meeting, so call (202) 442-7600 with any questions.

If you work anywhere near the intersection of Connecticut Ave. and K Street NW, you've been following the spectacular demolition of the two buildings formerly located at 1701 and 1725 K Street NW earlier this year. Now that the corner is a big, gaping hole in a prime downtown location, we've been eagerly awaiting the word on when construction would begin on the new 12-story office complex that is planned to replace it. But this morning, the Post broke some bad news: the parcel's developer wants to turn the whole thing into a parking lot, at least for a year or two.

The developer demolished two office buildings at the intersection's northwest corner this year after winning D.C. approval to replace them with a 12-story office complex designed by the architecture firm founded by I.M. Pei.

Continue reading "Valuable K Street Land to Become Parking Lot? Ugh."

To follow up with those of you who reacted strongly to our photo gallery yesterday of the abandoned St. Elizabeths West Campus and the plans that are in the works to relocate the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Coast Guard there, Mayor Adrian Fenty and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton held an impromptu press conference this morning to unveil the city's plans for its share of the nearly 200 acres of land in Southeast Washington, D.C. Wire reports.

                     

While the East Campus of St. Elizabeths hospital is owned by the District and still in use as a mental health facility, the West Campus, built by Congress in 1852 (originally under the name Government Hospital for the Insane), was by and large abandoned by 2002. It's still under the control of the U.S. General Services Administration, but few people these days get a chance to explore the abandoned 176 acre hospital grounds, which through time served as mental health facilities for the Army, Navy, and District of Columbia, provided a hospital for Civil War soldiers, and at one point housed the likes of Garfield assassin Charles Guiteau and writer Ezra Pound.

The Washington Post is reporting on Mayor Adrian Fenty's announcement today that the city has scrapped any plans to build a new main library at the old convention center site, and instead has reached an agreement with a developer to construct a four-star, 400-room hotel.

        

We can hardly believe it ourselves, but the Harris Teeter in Adams Morgan celebrated its grand opening this morning. The ribbon cutting ceremony for the store, only about five years in the making, took place at a little after 10:30 a.m., with Mayor Adrian Fenty, Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham, and countless Harris Teeter officials on hand to deliver run of the mill remarks and welcome to the store to the neighborhood.

The third floor will be devoted to the Mocha Fusion Coffee Lounge, an espresso bar. And finally, a rooftop deck will offer tapas. Sounds a bit ... over the top, to be sure. But aesthetic issues aside, there's some serious questions about the sustainability of such an ambitious project in this neighborhood. The property is being developed by Brian Brown of NextGen Development, and Twyla Garrett of Cleveland-based Garrett Entertainment Corp. Garrett has already built a similar, Italian-themed multi-story restaurant complex in a similarly gentrifying area of Cleveland, which has a music and flash heavy web site you can check out at your own risk. But when you look at the numbers quoted in the Business Journal story, it's hard to imagine how this venture could possibly add up. Brown purchased the property for $600,000, a perfectly reasonably price, but plans to put in $2.4 million for renovations. Garrett plans to add another $1 million herself. How many tables would you need to fill every night to service $4 million of debt every month? It would have to be in the hundreds. It's just hard to imagine a restaurant of that style, in that neighborhood, being able to attract that large of a crowd every night.