For years the McMillan Sand Filtration Site along North Capitol Street NW was fenced off and largely inaccessible. Large concrete silos punctuated a grassy expanse whose plans for redevelopment were mired in legal and political squabbling.

But on Monday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and other city officials toured the community center in-the-making on the southern end of the 25-acre site. When done in early 2024, the center will be the first part of the broader $100 million mixed-use redevelopment that will include housing, a grocery store, and office buildings for the nearby Washington Hospital Center.

“This is indeed a momentous occasion and one that has been long in the making,” she said, standing in front of the shell of what will be a 17,000-square-foot center that includes a pool and 6.2-acre park. “As it happens sometimes with projects that have bumps in the road, they just keep getting better.”

Bumps in the road, of course, is something of an understatement. D.C. purchased the decommissioned sand filtration site from the federal government more than three decades ago, but long-expected plans to redevelop the shuttered site were blocked for years amidst opposition and lawsuits from critics, some of whom objected to the city’s convoluted process to give away a large portion of the site to private developers and others who more broadly said the only appropriate use for the entire parcel would be to turn it into green space and a park, as it had been before World War II.

Bowser broke ground on the McMillan project in 2016, but the act was symbolic at best, as it would take until late 2022 before the sale of the land was finally completed and actual construction could begin in earnest.

Speaking at the event on Monday, Bowser directly addressed the site’s tortured history.

“The argument that we were not going to have a park here was always wrong,” she said of the opponents of the projects, who had dubbed the site “McMillan Park” in reference to its use almost a century ago for that purpose. “Holding up development that’s going to create affordable housing and bring more jobs was also not good. But we’re here now, and we stand here with a project we’re all going to be proud of.”

While the city’s community center and park will be the first part of the development to appear in early 2024, D.C. officials say that some of the 146 planned townhouses for the site — now dubbed the Reservoir District by developers, after the nearby McMillan Reservoir — will be quick to follow, and an expected grocery store could arrive by 2025. Some 467 apartments are also expected. Many of the site’s historic concrete silos will be maintained, while some of the underground cells where water was filtered are being incorporated into the design of the community center. A D.C. official told DCist/WAMU that at least one of the cells will be kept open to the public in some capacity, likely for historic tours.

“My parents have been waiting, my kids have been waiting to access this site,” said Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (I-At Large), whose parents bought a rowhouse he now occupies across the street from McMillan in 1952. “This is a day a lot of people have been waiting for, literally, for more than a generation.”