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99 M ('18)
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909 New Jersey Ave. ('09)
55 M ('09)
100 M ('08)
Onyx ('08)
70/100 I ('08)
Nationals Park ('08)
Seniors Bldg Demo ('07)
400 M ('07)
Douglass Bridge Fix ('07)
US DOT HQ ('07)
20 M ('07)
Capper Seniors 1 ('06)
Capitol Hill Tower ('06)
Courtyard/Marriott ('06)
Marine Barracks ('04)
 
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137 Blog Posts Since 2003
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Friday's print edition of the Washington Business Journal reports that developer Ron Cohen has purchased the entire block bounded by Half, K, L, and 1st Streets, SE (square 699N), for $55 million, with plans for a mixed-use project that may include 650 condos, a hotel with condos, a stand-alone 250,000 sq ft office building, and possibly retail as well. Tenants on the block--including the nightclubs Wet, Edge, and Club 55--have been told that the buildings will be razed in late spring 2006. Phase I of the project will have 250 condos, and hopes are to begin construction in October 2006, and to have the entire project completed in four years. A few pictures of the block in its current state are on my South Capitol Street Corridor page (you'll have to scroll down a bit for them--this project will eventually get its own page, but not just yet!).

 

I haven't covered a lot of the news over the sale of the Nats, since it doesn't really have much to do with the stadium itself--except when Vincent Orange gets involved, now that he has said that he will introduce legislation at the Nov. 1 council meeting that would bar city officials from signing a lease agreement with Major League Baseball for a new stadium until baseball selects an owner for the Washington Nationals. (He wants to ensure that a owner with strong local ties is picked.)

More posts: Nationals Park
 

The Oct. 13 Voice of the Hill (PDF here) has pieces on two Near Southeast items: the cleanup of the Virginia Avenue Park at 9th and Virginia in the East End (on page 4), and an item (page 14) on the vacant Washington Star/Washington Post building at 3rd and Virginia, and the Washington Canal Park project just to the plant's south. (Scroll to the bottom of my Canal Park page, and you can see rough drawings of how the building could look after a conversion to office or mixed-use.) The article mentions a target date of 2007 or 2008 for Canal Park, which is a pretty fair delay from the original 2006 completion timeline. You can also look at my Capper/Carrollsburg page for more information about the housing that will be going up around the park.

 

Here we go again. The Post reports: "The D.C. Council reopened debate yesterday over the financing and location of a baseball stadium for the Washington Nationals, prompting fears from some city officials that the timetable could be set back on the high-stakes project" ("Council Seeks to Revisit Stadium Deal"). Perhaps it's a touch of mayoral-race-jockeying between Vincent Orange and Linda Cropp that has the two of them getting all itchy: Orange "proposed a resolution asking Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) to allow the council to review an agreement with Deutsche Bank, which would provide some private financing for the stadium."  Then Cropp "responded by warning Orange that she could raise the ante by resurrecting an idea she broached last fall: building the ballpark at the site of Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. Locating it there, Cropp has said, could save the city as much as $200 million." The resolution, which passed 9-4, was nonbinding, meaning that the mayor can decide whether to send the financing deal to the council. CEO Natwar Gandhi "said the Deutsche Bank deal must be finalized by next month for the city to meet its goal of getting the stadium financing in place by the end of the year." And, just to add to the fun, "some council members also are seeking to review a lease agreement for the new stadium being negotiated between the sports commission and Major League Baseball. The lease negotiations have held up the sale of the Nationals."

More posts: Nationals Park
 

The construction companies Clark Construction, Hunt Construction, and Smoot Construction, which have banded together under the moniker Clark/Hunt/Smoot, A Joint Venture to win the contract to build the new DC baseball stadium, have launched the web site DCBallpark.com. No, there's no details there on the design of the stadium! Just general information on the companies, their experience in building stadiums, and their ties to the community.
More posts: Nationals Park
 

News Flash: CEO Andy Altman resigns from the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation, to take a private-sector job in New York. Details at the Washington Business Journal (reg. req.). UPDATE: The Post weighs in with "SE Development in Limbo as Official Plans to Resign" (a headline that sounds a bit more dire than the story itself): "Local developers said yesterday that the unexpected resignation of the District official who oversees development along the Anacostia River could slow down the multibillion-dollar initiative and hinder the planning of what should be built around the new baseball stadium in Southeast. [...]  The Anacostia group has a strong board of directors, including Eric W. Price, the city's former deputy mayor for economic development, and Mitchell N. Schear, a Crystal City-based developer, local developers said. And Stephen Goldsmith, chairman of the corporation's board of directors, said the organization will move quickly to replace Altman. 'We're going to keep our commitments. We're actually going to accelerate our commitments,' Goldsmith said. 'We've got a whole slew of really important things going on. It can't wait.' While Altman said the corporation is in good condition to weather change, developers said finding the right replacement, promptly, will be critical to progress on Anacostia development." UPDATE II: And one more WaPo piece on Altman's departure, from Monday's biz section.
 

This week's Washington City Paper's cover story is "Rich Fan, Poor Fan," all about how rotten the new DC baseball stadium is going to be for the average fan. One small nit: since the stadium design hasn't been made public yet, I'm not altogether sure what they're working off of (it appears to be a mix of HOK's original submittal when vying for the job, plus some of the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission's requests, plus tidbits from the AWC's Ballpark District ideas, and a June 30 sketch, but they make no mention of seeing what the current state of the design is...). But if you're looking for lots of bitching about the new stadium, and don't want to wait for it to be unveiled let alone constructed, this is a good place to start.
More posts: Nationals Park
 

The Post reports in Thursday's paper that Major League Baseball won't choose a new owner for the Nationals until negotiations over the lease of the new stadium are complete, but it appears that the lease negotiations don't have much of a chance of being finished until lead MLB negotiator Jerry Reinsdorf's Chicago White Sox are eliminated from the playoffs.

More posts: Nationals Park
 

DC is ready to begin using eminent domain by the end of this month to acquire parcels of land at the site of the new baseball stadium, according to today's Washington Times. City officials said they expect to file court documents to take over at least some of the 21-acre site in the coming weeks, and also say that the 24-month timetable for having the stadium construction begin in March 2006 and finish by March 2008 remains realistic. Also in the article, details of a squabble between the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation and the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission over where parking for the stadium should be located (AWC wants it underground, DCSEC doesn't).

 

Dear DC Government: I totally dig your web site, which makes so much information available to Interested Members of the Public. But maybe someday I could hope for an RSS feed of all of your news releases? Or at the very least a mailing list I could subscribe to? Because, not to put too fine a point on it, I'M GOING INSANE having to visit page after page after page after page after page after page after page each day checking for news!  I've actually built a workaround to preserve my sanity, but I bet I'm not the only one who'd want this.  Love, JD.
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A reminder that public scoping meetings for the 11th Street Bridges Environmental Impact Study are being held tonight (Oct. 5) and tomorrow night (Oct. 6) (see schedules and locations). The meeting presentation materials, as well as the Draft Purpose and Need Statement, have been posted on the study's web site.
More posts: 11th Street Bridges
 

In the Department of RFPs, the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission has posted a Request for Proposals for Program Management Services for the new ballpark (due Oct. 25). I didn't slog through all 77 pages, but I did note in the Project Schedule on page 4 that "schematic designs" are due Oct. 28. Does that mean that at the end of this month we'll finally see what the new stadium is supposed to look like (tick, tick, tick....)? And in the Department of RFP's Better-Late-Than-Never subdivision, I'll note that proposals are due today for the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation's RFP for a Transportation and Parking Study. Lastly, I'll mention that it appears that the stadium's utility relocation project is already underway, judging by the amount of digging going on at Potomac Avenue at Half Street....
More posts: Nationals Park
 

It's been a busy busy weekend here at the Near Southeast page. To reflect the true boundaries of the area I'm tracking, the map at right has been expanded, to 11th Street to the east and to South Capitol and S Streets in the south. I've also added two new pages to the site: the New South Capitol Street Bridge page, and the Near Southeast East End page, both of which have lots and lots of photos, and links to information about what's happening in those spots. I've also finally made my Navy Yard page more than an afterthought, adding many more pictures (although not so many from inside the Navy Yard walls, I don't want a visit from the Homeland Security folks). I know this makes the map smaller and a bit harder to read, but I also needed to leave some space for when more projects get underway. And, in the midst of all that, I added new photos to many of the existing pages: check out the DOT HQ, Washington Canal Park, Capitol Hill TowerFlorida Rock, and WASA pages to see them. (You'll also find a few new pictures on some other pages, but it'd be embarassing to mention them here when there's only one new photo on a page.)

 

Some Capper/Carrollsburg items: I hear tell that the construction contract for Capper Seniors #2 will be awarded soon (once the money aspect of the project gets settled, also "soon"). Also, word is that the Capper Community Center is to be demolished, Any Minute Now (we have a lot of those type of items, don't we?). In zoning news, the October Voice of the Hill gives details on the Sept. 15 zoning commission Capper / Carrollsburg agenda items--in addition to a second-stage approval being sought for a three-acre section of the project (presumably the "ribbon" between 5th, 4th, I, and M, which was demolished nearly a year ago), the developers are submitting a new application with modifications to several aspects of the original plans: they are seeking to increase the residential density to 2.34 from 2.21, and at the same time are proposing to reduce the parking spaces per unit to 1.38 from 2.1--these changes are the result of efforts to preserve some of the existing private houses that had been slated for redevelopment, according to a DC Office of Planning staffer. No date is yet announced for the public hearing on this.
 

Folks who have enjoyed the free ride when parking along Virginia Avenue in Near Southeast might want to prepare themselves--within the past few days, electronic ticket-type parking kiosks have appeared at 2nd and Virginia and 3rd and Virginia. No signs yet instructing parkers to use them, but I'm guessing these little green boxes haven't been put there for their asthetically pleasing look....
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More than half of the owners of land within the stadium footprint are planning to fight the price offers they've received from the DC government, according to the Post's "Battle Brewing for Stadium Tracts." Two examples of owners going to court because the offers they've received are too low: land assessed at $241,000 given a purchase offer of $1.2 million, and land assessed at $654,000 given an offer of $1.8 million. The article also mentions the problems some of the owners are having trying to find new locations for their businesses. UPDATE: The print version of this article (in the 9/25 Post) was accompanied by a map showing all of the parcels, their 2005 tax assessments, and what the city has offered; however, this graphic hasn't been posted on the web site. UPDATE II: I've created a list showing all the stadium parcels along with their 2005 assessments and the city's purchase offer. The city has offered $97 million to the 33 landowners, for land that was assessed in March of 2005 at not quite $39 million. (entry bumped up because this is an interesting list)

More posts: Nationals Park
 

I've been away for more than a week, so I apologize if my news items have been slow--I'm still catching up on some things, hope to get back up to speed soon. In the meantime, I'll pass along that the DC Zoning Commission approved the Capper Seniors #2 building, approved for setdown the Capper/Carrollsburg 2nd stage PUD (which I believe means that basically they've agreed that they should have a hearing at a later date), and deferred the final vote on the stadium text amendment to the Capitol Gateway overlay, presumably until their October meeting. I'd be able to give you more details on all this, but I mistakenly believed the DCOZ web site when it said that Zoning Commission meetings are streamed live, and, well, this one most assuredly wasn't. Waaah!

 

The Anacostia Waterfront Corporation has posted the draft summary of its Ballpark District Urban Development Strategy (PDF). This is an important document that should be read by anyone interested in the development plans around the stadium. It defines the Ballpark District as 60 acres surrounding the baseball stadium site, including the two blocks north of the stadium site, the western portion of the Southeast Federal Center, a few acres of the WASA site, the Florida Rock site, and additional land at the foot of South Capitol Street (currently owned by Douglas Jemal). The document describes its vision for a "vibrant mixed-use waterfront district":

· Shops, and restaurants and entertainment venues along Half Street, First Street and the Anacostia River;
· An engaging pedestrian environment with strong linkages to and along the waterfront;
· Major public gathering spaces along Half Street, at the ballpark, and at the foot of First Street at the river;
· A grand promenade along the Anacostia River and Potomac Avenue;
· Upper-level offices, hotel rooms and housing that create a diverse population of residents, workers and visitors; and
· A state-of-the-art ballpark that contributes to the life and identity of the neighborhood.

In all, the AWC envisions 465,000-785,000 sq ft of retail and restaurant uses, 350,000-1.6 million sq ft of office space; 1,900,000 to 3,600,000 sq ft (1570 to 2980 units) of housing; and 7,000 to 8,000 parking spaces. (We also find out that the traffic circle being planned as the terminus for the new South Capitol Street Bridge will be called "Potomac Circle.")  Vision documents are wonderful things, I look forward to living long enough to see what the reality actually ends up being :-).

 

Anyone who's lived in DC for any amount of time will be stunned to read today's Post story, "As Stadium Clock Ticks, DC Officials Bicker," detailing the difficulties of getting a design for the new baseball stadium agreed upon. Much of the trouble revolves around the desire (pushed most vehemently by Jack Evans) to have views of the Capitol Dome from as many seats at the stadium as possible. More from the story: "Evans argued that a view beyond center field of one of the city's signature buildings would give fans a sense of place and provide grand shots for national television cameras. At Evans's urging, city planners recently stopped work by Lerner Enterprises on construction of a 130-foot office building on M Street SE, one block north of the stadium. People familiar with the matter said the move angered the company, founded and run by Theodore N. Lerner, who is among those bidding to buy the Nationals. City officials said late last week that they will allow the company to resume work because it has abided by city building regulations. Company officials declined to comment. Evans also has discussed limiting the heights of buildings being planned by Monument Realty, which owns land on N Street SE that abuts the stadium site. City planners worried that such a move would inadvertently harm the creation of an entertainment and shopping district around the ballpark, which has been promised by another powerful player, the Anacostia Waterfront Corp." The article also says that groups are bickering over who has final say on the design. The stadium is supposed to begin construction in March, 2006.

 
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