While blocky, gray architecture is part of our city’s architectural heritage, Events DC has a different future in mind for the colossal Walter E. Washington Convention Center at Shaw’s southern end. Those plans include a redesigned Metro entrance surrounded by steel and glass, large-scale public artworks, and a series of new retail offerings, along with jazzed-up light fixtures, planters, and seating.

“Shaw has taken off tremendously,” says Max Brown, the chairman of Events DC’s board of directors. “While the building is amazing on the inside … the exterior doesn’t map and match to the neighborhood as it exists today.”

When the 2,300,000-square-foot Convention Center opened in 2003, it was considered a major upgrade from the hulking concrete behemoth that preceded it (located a block away, the old convention center was demolished in 2004). With blank walls surrounding much of the building and little in the way of an interesting streetscape, though, it still feels like a gaping public space between downtown and the rest of Shaw.

Events DC, the city’s quasi-private sports and convention authority that operates the building, plans to change that, in part, by adding nine small retail kiosks to the exterior. Brown throws out some ideas for what might go in: an upscale newstand, a coffee shop, a Monocle store, a florist. “We’re not trying to get a Tiffany’s or a Harry Winston, we’re looking at what fits in thematically,” he says.

The plans also call for a 4,000 square-foot rooftop addition to the Convention Center, new lighting in the M Street tunnel, and a livelier entrance to the Mt. Vernon Square Metro station.

But first, Brown says, they plan to go to the community for feedback and input, akin to the process surrounding the redevelopment of the RFK site. If all goes as planned, work would begin in the spring of 2018, with different aspects of the project phased in through 2021.

The changes to the Convention Center’s exterior also come as Events DC has leased the historic Carnegie Library for the purpose of an enormous Apple Store. These activations aren’t happening by coincidence. “As the neighborhood continues to evolve and build out, this is the next step,” Brown says about efforts to increase retail offerings.

Officials haven’t yet come up with a total cost yet for the Convention Center project, but the plan is for it to entirely be paid for out of Events DC’s budget.