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Near Southeast DC Past News Items: 1015 Half
See JDLand's 1015 Half Project Page
for Photos, History, and Details
In the Pipeline
25 M
Yards/Parcel I
Chiller Site Condos
Yards/Parcel A
1333 M St.
More Capper Apts.
Yards/DC Water site
New Marine Barracks
Nat'l Community Church
Factory 202/Yards
SC1100
Completed
Thompson Hotel ('20)
West Half ('19)
Novel South Capitol ('19)
Yards/Guild Apts. ('19)
Capper/The Harlow ('19)
New DC Water HQ ('19)
Yards/Bower Condos ('19)
Virginia Ave. Tunnel ('19)
99 M ('18)
Agora ('18)
1221 Van ('18)
District Winery ('17)
Insignia on M ('17)
F1rst/Residence Inn ('17)
One Hill South ('17)
Homewood Suites ('16)
ORE 82 ('16)
The Bixby ('16)
Dock 79 ('16)
Community Center ('16)
The Brig ('16)
Park Chelsea ('16)
Yards/Arris ('16)
Hampton Inn ('15)
Southeast Blvd. ('15)
11th St. Bridges ('15)
Parc Riverside ('14)
Twelve12/Yards ('14)
Lumber Shed ('13)
Boilermaker Shops ('13)
Camden South Cap. ('13)
Canal Park ('12)
Capitol Quarter ('12)
225 Virginia/200 I ('12)
Foundry Lofts ('12)
1015 Half Street ('10)
Yards Park ('10)
Velocity Condos ('09)
Teague Park ('09)
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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83 Blog Posts Since 2003
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(Not Quite So) New Photos: 1015 Half, 55 M
I was remiss in not mentioning earlier this week that I also posted updated photos on Saturday of the construction underway at 1015 Half Street (you old-timers can enjoy the shots of Nation one more time) as well as the all-but-completed 55 M Street (though the utilty work on Half Street prevented me from getting any photos other than of the northern part of the building).
For additional photos other than the ones on the project pages, check the Photo Archive for Half and I, K, L, and M, Van at M, and Cushing at L and M (which will also show you updated pics for other nearby projects, like Velocity).
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More posts: 1015 Half, Development News, officespace, square 697
 

New Photos: Capitol Quarter and Freeway Views
I took advantage of this beautiful February (!) day to grab some quick photos. First up are the action shots at Capitol Quarter, showing the brickwork underway on the southeast corner of 4th and L and the framing continuing on the north side.
And, for the first time since August, I've updated my views of the neighborhood from the SE Freeway. Clearly I'm out of practice because I kind of screwed up the angles, but you can still get the idea when you compare these new images to their "before"s. This is one of my favorite galleries, since I do have one grainy photo from 2000 (when 80 M was still under construction), and some others from 2005, before the vertical rush really began. You can also see that 1015 Half Street is about to really dominate the view, probably permanently obscuring the view of 55 M from the freeway. Remember to click the See All Photos of This Angle icon if you want to see all the photos between the "before" and now.
I also updated the one shot I have from the freeway at New Jersey; watch the progression from 2005 when Capitol Hill Tower was the dominant building through the construction of Onyx and now with 909 New Jersey and Velocity on display.
You can see all photos from today paired with their "before"s on one page, if you don't feel like clicking around and if you don't mind waiting a bit for it all to load.
(Alas, despite attempts to clean my lens just before taking these shots, they all look like they're being filtered through Vaseline. I'll just pretend I was being arty.)
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More posts: 1015 Half, Capper, Capitol Quarter, square 697
 

New Construction Photos: Teague, Capitol Quarter, 1015 Half (and More)
I took a nice tour of the action spots around the neighborhood today, getting updated photos of the very showy progress at Capitol Quarter and 1015 Half Street.
I also snuck across the river (don't tell) to get a peek through my zoom lens at the goings-on at Diamond Teague Park, plus I took a photo or two through the fence at First and Potomac. It looks like the gangplank from the shore to the pumphouse has been dismantled; and there's definitely "in-water" work going on.
I also got a good batch of updated photos for 55 M, and gave my Monument Half Street page a badly needed refreshing--there's also this shot of the construction on the extension of the underground garage (and the shored-up hole on the south end of the block), as seen from Nats Parking Garage B.
I even took my first(!) set of photos at 11th and L, where the Southeast Freeway bends toward the 11th Street Bridges, to get an official "before" baseline in advance of the reconstruction and reconfiguration of it all. (And I found this plaque on one of the flyover pillars, which might be worth a chuckle or two.)
If you want to see the entire batch of new photos on a single page, here they are, though it's about a hundred of them so be patient. But the links above are better if you want to see them matched with their "before"s.
(Oh, and that dinky little For Sale sign at 10th and M by the Exxon that I wrote about on Friday is gone. Drunken property advertising?)
 

Post Surveys the Commercial Real Estate Slowdown Near the Ballpark and Elsewhere
The front page of Tuesday's Post has "Building Slowdown Turns Grand Visions into Vapor," a look at projects in the DC area that are on hold because of the slumping economy: "The economic boom of recent years promised to deliver gleaming homes and high-end retail to struggling and newly forming neighborhoods across the Washington region. But that quest is running headlong into a withering economic slowdown and paralyzed credit markets, bringing new construction to a virtual stop and fueling anxiety among those who dreamed that their neighborhoods were the next frontiers."
Among the examples in the article are three delayed projects near the ballpark--WC Smith's 250 M Street office building, the residential and hotel portion of Monument's Half Street project, and also the Corcoran's Randall School development at Half and I, SW (which Monument pulled out of recently): "Perhaps no area is more central to the District's long-term ambitions than the streets around Nationals Park. At every opportunity, Fenty talks of a cosmopolitan destination featuring new parks, offices, stylish apartments and restaurants, all of it along the Anacostia River. Yet, how soon that vision materializes is fraught with uncertainty."
(Full disclosure: I provided a bit of basic status on ballpark-area projects for the piece, hence the "contributed" line.)
Some additional perspective: Certainly there's a slowdown afoot. (It's almost like there's some sort of cycle of boom and bust in commercial real estate!) I've been joking that I should just put a "Gone Fishin'" sign up here at JDLand during 2009, and come back in 2010 to see what's cooking, because other than the first offerings at the Yards and perhaps Canal Park {cough}, I'm not expecting much to get underway in the next little while. On the other hand, Capitol Quarter is moving forward, 1015 Half Street is now out of the ground, Diamond Teague Park is expected to open in the spring, and 100 M and 55 M and 909 New Jersey and Velocity will all be opening their doors before long, and perhaps the lure of another season of baseball will get some retail into the empty ground-floor spaces of those buildings and 20 M.
So, it's not like tumbleweeds are blowing down M Street or vines are growing on buildings a la Logan's Run--and it would be hard to make the case that it's the neighborhood's fault or the stadium's fault when the entire region is feeling the pain. The expectation would be that when the market improves, development in Near Southeast should pick up again. But we'll all just have to wait and see, won't we?
 

Updated Skyline Photos (And Street-Level, Too)
Before the front blew in on Monday I made a rooftop visit to get some new shots of the changing skyline west of New Jersey Avenue and north of M Street. You can see the new shots paired with their "befores" in my Overhead Photos Archive; hard to believe that less than three years ago we didn't have Onyx, or Velocity, or 70/100 I, or 909 New Jersey. (And the next time I take these shots, 1015 Half will be visible, too.) I also made the rounds and took street-level photos from the usual spots, which you can see on those project pages or all in one group; I'll also note that the new Half Street photos show the first floor of 1015 Half now underway. As always, click the for all photos in the archive at a specific location.
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More posts: 1015 Half, square 697
 

Hit-or-Miss Batch of New Photos
Before the storm clouds arrived yesterday (literally and figuratively), I got out and took an incomplete smattering of pictures along Second, New Jersey, First, Cushing, and Half. (Use those links to see all the before-and-nows of these latest shots.) These new photos are mainly of 909 New Jersey, Velocity, 55 M, the empty skyline where 1015 Half is just about to reach ground level, and the final "after" photos from the demolition of the Merritt Cab building at First and K on Square 696. The sun disappeared before I could get over to Capitol Quarter, so new photos from there will have to wait a few days, and since the afternoon remained cloudy (and busy), I didn't take an afternoon batch (i.e., no photos looking east).
And, if you haven't wandered through them for a while, the gallery of my favorite before-and-afters is a striking walk through the past few years, as the memories of the old Near Southeast start to get just a wee bit hazy.
 

Updated Photos: First Frames at Capitol Quarter, Vertical Construction in the 1015 Half Street Hole
I took a lot of photos today, but let's start with the ones showing new construction phases underway. First off, we have the first framing at Capitol Quarter (top), where the wood outlines of the first four houses east of the Fourth and L intersection are now up. (At least the photos are more exciting than the ones a few weeks ago of the concrete block foundations.)
Then there's 1015 Half Street, the 410,000-sq-ft office building under construction on the old Nation nightclub site. The crane arrived within the past week or so, and I finally got to a spot where I could see down into the hole to confirm that the first pillars are underway. So, by Thanksgiving, there should be the beginnings of yet another new addition to the skyline.
More photos in the next few days.
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More posts: 1015 Half, Capper, Capitol Quarter, Square 697n
 

Late Night Update on Hood Happenings
* As I mentioned below, the garage that housed both the Merritt and Four Star cab companies started getting brought down today. They didn't get it all on Thursday, but I imagine by sundown Friday the rest will be gone. (See pictures from midmorning, though it's hard to see much in the way of a difference from First and K, since they took out the back of the building and only a smidgen of the K Street facade.)
* Only a few hours after I said that Capitol Quarter framing would start "in the next few days," lumber went up on the first house on the south side of L east of Fourth. (No pictures yet--this weekend!)
* Sometime this week the crane was put up at 1015 Half Street, so we should be seeing vertical construction before too long.
* Building permits for the external renovations to 900 M Street are now winding their way through the bureaucracy. No word yet on any retail tenants.
 

Dept. of Agriculture Looking at Near Southeast
From today's Washington Business Journal print edition (subscribers only): "The Department of Agriculture, in search of 330,000 square feet, has been poking around the ballpark district. Michael Stevens, executive director of the Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District, says the government has heard proposals from Opus East LLC, planning 411,000 square feet of offices at 1015 Half St. SE, and the mixed-use project planned for First and M streets SE by Potomac-based Willco Cos., which will have 350,000 square feet of offices. The agency is looking to relocate 1,255 employees from seven other locations, at a max rate of $47 per square foot." The Willco space is the current location of Nats parking lot F, on the southwest corner of First and M; and of course Opus isn't *planning* office space at 1015 Half, they're already digging the hole. The blurb also says that the FBI is looking for 180,000 square feet of new space, and that Akridge pitched their as-yet-untapped three-block space on Second Street SW in Buzzard Point.
Also in the WBJ, a story on two small investors who spent 18 years amassing a batch of 23 small properties in Southwest, who are finding that the new ballpark still hasn't brought anyone calling to meet their $12 million asking price for the lots, which are encircled by the Syphax Gardens and James Creek public housing developments. They apparently are hoping that the city would decide to redo the two projects (a la Capper), but the DC Housing Authority says that they don't currently have the funding, and that the residents would have to be really supportive of any redevelopment plans as well.
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More posts: 1015 Half, square 697, Square 701
 

New Photos from On Top of 20 M
Since it's such a rotten day, I'll go back to when the sun was shining (Tuesday), and give you my first-ever photos from the roof of 20 M Street. (I've taken a few photos from inside the 10th floor going back to April of last year, but from the roof I don't have deal with the pesky glass reflections.) Here are these new photos matched with the oldest ones from the same angle, so you can compare 13 months' worth of changes easily; you can also look at all the photos if you want to watch the progression of changes. There's views to the north (above), showing the digging now underway at 1015 Half Street along with the construction progress at 70/100 I, 909 New Jersey, and Velocity (plus the site-clearing at 23 I). To the south is the increasingly-shiny 55 M, as well as the ballpark, of course. I also tossed in some photos toward the west, showing the skyline of Southwest.
 
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