Via Gateway DC.
In October 2013, Mayor Vincent Gray and city representatives officially opened the Gateway pavilion on St. Elizabeths East, the first step in the redevelopment of the 183-acre campus in Ward 8.
“Today is an amazing day, because it marks the fulfillment of a major promise to the Ward 8 community,” Gray said at the time. “Cutting the ribbon on the G8WAY DC pavilion symbolizes the transformation that is happening across the city and the opportunities that are coming to the District’s East End.”
In its first nine months, G8WAY DC, as it’s officially stylized, hosted a free ice slide, the Broccoli City Festival and a monthly Whole Foods pop-up, as well as smaller monthly events. Currently, it plays host to a weekly movie festival, and next month it will be the site of the free Humanities, Arts & Technology Festival, funded by a grant from the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.
Catherine Buell, executive director of St. Elizabeths East, said the first nine months have been a “huge success.” About 20,000 people have visited G8WAY, mainly for the ice slide (approximately 5,000 people) and for Broccoli City (between 5,000 and 6,000). The Whole Foods market and smaller events have attracted hundreds of visitors.
“We quite frankly did not know what to expect when we opened G8WAY DC,” Buell said, “and we’ve learned a lot in the initial nine months of it being open.”
In the beginning, G8WAY DC programs were city-funded, like the ice slide which cost $220,000. “Historically, nobody had any reason to come to the campus,” Buell said, adding that, without a reason, it was difficult to attract groups.
But with some successes under their belt, St. Elizabeths East is beginning to attract “programming partners,” Buell said, to “shape what people can expect to experience from G8WAY DC, but also to give [it] a mission, a purpose and also an identity.” This includes expanding a partnership with Whole Foods to bring more programming and outreach to the site. (An important long-term partner, Buell said.) And this fall, G8WAY DC has already lined up some non-city partners for events, including a wine and jazz festival presented by musician Marcus Johnson.
The biggest lesson learned, Buell said, has been patience. “You are going to see progress over a number of years,” she said. “It’s not going to happen overnight.”
They’re measuring success, not only by rental income, as they originally planned — “If the pavilion were built in Georgetown, we could completely do that” — but by the number of first time visitors from Ward 8, other parts of D.C. and the surrounding area, and the quality of the programming being offered.
“The pavilion is built in St. Elizabeths campus where the public has never been,” Buell said, adding that to most people, its association with the former mental health hospital didn’t make it “a place where you’d want to spend your Saturday afternoon.”
“We’ve had a lot to do of convincing,” she said. Indeed, Buell said that some vendors who visited to check out opportunities originally thought the request “was a joke.”
Earlier this year, the city put out a Request for Offers to lease 2,100 square feet of cafe space inside the pavilion. Buell said they received one response by the June 20th deadline, but “didn’t get an overwhelming push for restaurants to move into Ward 8.”
“We still have a lot of work to do to make sure that we’re getting the numbers. That spot needs customers,” she said. “The campus is still a little ways away from being able to attract a major restauranteur.” While there were “major restaurants” interested in the space, it’s too small to accommodate them. “They’re looking at participating as part of the larger redevelopment,” she said, adding that there’s still work that needs to be done. Future plans for St. Elizabeths East include an Innovation Hub that will feature tenants including Microsoft Innovation Center, Citelum US and VIMTrek.
Still, Buell said they’re happy to see that at least the one respondent sees the opportunity as it stands now.
Another near-term challenge includes making sure that people know what’s happening at G8WAY DC and getting them to come out.
“The public is just starting to get to know us,” she said. “For us, it’s seeing the number of visitors increase year over year steadily. [Also to] increase the number of programatic partners that we have while maintaining the quality.
“And also to make sure that, while we’re keeping the programming partners at the forefront, that we’re also able to maintain G8WAY DC as a high-quality rental space for those who want to come in and put on their own private festivals so that we can continue to activate the space but not necessarily with the District providing the programming dollars.”
Awareness is also key. “Washingtonians have a different association with St. Elizabeths,” she said. “They’re so excited to hear that St. Elizabeths is coming back to life. … We recognized that people want to know. Our challenge is getting the word out.”
In some neighborhoods, she said, you have to use fliers, while for others you have to use social media. The website is being rebranded, the calendar made clearer and a third-party rental system will be added.
Publicity will also follow this fall, when the R.I.S.E. Demonstration Center will open in an old chapel space with a focus on technology and innovation.
Perhaps one of the biggest marketing challenges is making the public understand the difference between the west campus, with the troubled construction of a new Department of Homeland Security headquarters, and the up-and-coming east.
“There’s a challenge there trying to get over that hurdle,” Chanda Washington, spokeswoman for DMPED, said, “of getting people to understand that there’s two part of the campus. The District’s portion is moving forward.”
