Two of the new offerings along Half Street just north of Nats Park are now open--Atlas Brew Works (with Andy's Pizza) and Cold Stone Creamery--even while Half Street itself is still very much not finished with its streetscape remodel. I also scoped out Toastique, which has moved into the old Juice Laundry space on 4th Street SE between Tingey and Water. (I completely forgot to get a photo of Bammy's, the "Caribbean-inspired" restaurant that replaced Whaley's in the Lumber Shed at Yards Park.)

The rest of the new-storefront news is pretty much in the Personal Care category (how apropos!), with the CVS at Half and I SE looking like it is seconds away from opening, in its spot next door to the new(ish) Medstar Primary Care office. Meanwhile, over at 4th and M, Pivot Physical Therapy has now opened. (And there are those of us who would say that the new Hill Spirits liquor store at Half and K next to BonChon also qualifies as Personal Care.)

And while there's no storefront to take a photo of yet, the news came out this week that Scissors and Scotch, the barbershop-slash-cocktail-bar "grooming experience every man deserves" is coming to the ground floor of the National Broadcasters Association headquarters at One M Street, SE.

Meanwhile, there's also a few public space updates worth including, even if the photos from late in the evening aren't really so fab. As mentioned above, the streetscape work continues on Half Street north of the ballpark, and there are indeed stringed lights being installed across it (old zoning restrictions be damned, I guess). And look, trees!

Over at the Yards, Tingey Square is finished (and you can also see the latest progress on the Chemonics HQ in the background). And the new walkway connecting the Tingey Square area to the Yards Park is now open as well, with rough/uneven stones clearly placed to discourage high-speed biking or scootering (watch your ankles, old folks). It also leads to a new plaza on the northwest corner of the Yards Park.

It should also be mentioned that the recent unpleasantness has not been without casualties, with the aforementioned Juice Laundry and also Peet's Coffee at New Jersey and M and the clothing store Willow at 4th and Water closing for good.

At some point I'll pull together a holes-and-skeletons-and-completions construction update, but not until I can do some daytime wandering with collapsing from heat stroke.

Let's start by peeking through some fences to look at the digging portion, where excavation is now underway at New Jersey/Canal and N/Tingey on the first office building to come to the Yards, which will be the headquarters for Chemonics International. (Yes, it's the project that chased the Trapeze School down to 5th Street.) The other two digging locations are Lerner's residential building at 1000 South Capitol and the CSX East site on New Jersey Avenue just south of the freeway, where a hotel and 800 units of residential will be coming. In order:

Next, we have three buildings that are above ground but not yet topped out. We'll start with the reconstruction of the Capper Seniors building at 5th and Virginia, which started just a smidge more than one year after the fire. With the pad not needing to be redone and the concrete-encased stairwells still standing, it isn't taking long for the wood-based construction to look familiar. (It is an odd thing to be watching the same building go up twice, 14 years apart--the first photo below was taken on Nov. 28, 2005, then after the fire in Sept. 2018 and March 2019, and now ).

The other skeletons are the new headquarters of the District Department of Transportation at 3rd and M Streets, which at this time of year can only been seen in sunlight for about one hour, from the west.. A few blocks away, on L Street between South Capitol and Half, the neighborhood's first "sliver" residential building (condos!) at 37 L is now a few floors away from its roof.

Beyond that we have a mere, oh, 12 additional projects that are topped out but not finished. Three of them are getting their faces put on (DC Crossing, Meridian on First, and One Hill South Two):

The rest have long since stopped looking particularly different while they plod toward completion, but there are updated photos on their project pages if you wish to see some. And yes, I'm looking at you, Thompson hotel and Estate apartments, Parc Riverside Phase 2, NAB HQ, Avidian, The Kelvin, Envy, the Garrett, and the Maren.

Now I'll turn my attention finally getting caught up on sliders. Wheeeee!

I'll go in order from newest to oldest, starting with peering down into holes that you might not be looking into yourselves.

Three residential projects that began excavating in the spring are already starting to climb upward, as you can see in the above photos from 1000 1st Street and the Maren at Florida Rock. Tishman Speyer's mystery residential project that covers all of what's known as Square 696 is a hybrid, with some excavation still underway while the eastern half is now starting to rise. (and no, we still don't have renderings.) Then there's phase two of One Hill South (Two Hill South? One Hill South Two? Return of One Hill South? One Hill South, Electric Boogaloo?), where digging is being hampered by complaints of fumes emanating from the site's past life as a gas station.

Next we turn to the neighborhood's EIGHT projects that are above ground but not yet topped out. (I could call it six, since there are two projects with two buildings going up concurrently, but let's call an eight an eight.)

Let's start with residential projects The Garrett at 2nd and I, Parc Riverside Phase II at Half and L, and the second phase of Novel South Capitol at 4 I, which was kind of a shocker to see go up since it was never really announced that the entire project would be under construction at once:

I'll note that the photo of the Garrett is a bit of a triumph, because it's the first one I've gotten from the northeast, now that the wrapping up of tunnel construction has given me some sidewalk access to the intersection at 2nd and H. (Which hopefully will be open completely by Oct. 18, the Whole Foods Day of All Days.)

Next, let's wander down to the Ballpark District, where the National Association of Broadcasters headquarters is a whisker away from topping out and its sibling the Avidian condo building is now well visble. One block away, 1250 Half is in its final minutes of not being completely above ground, as the portion closer to N Street is now right even with the street, while its northern portion has been skeletoning for quite some time. And at 3rd and Tingey, the combo project of the Thompson hotel and the Estate apartment building are beginning to change the feel of the western side of the Yards Park.

{Pant, pant.}

Now, a quick look at the buildings getting their faces on, since this is the stage when everyone is pretty much tapping their toes and waiting for the projects to be finished already. (There's a section of Virginia Avenue that qualifies for that, too.) May I present West Half at Half and N, the Harlow mixed-income building at 3rd and L, the Bower/Guild condo/rental buildings, and the new DC Water headquarters.

To wrap it up, there's one additional ghostly building to keep an eye on, though I don't wish to be flippant about it. Ward 6 councilmember Charles Allen is holding a hearing on Oct. 25 about the fire and response, for those interested.

And that's "it." Ha. Ha. I imagine the next major update will be in December, when I will spend most of the time complaining about how the low sun angle and a decade's worth of construction has made it impossible to take photos unruined by shadows. I may have to (gasp!) go out on cloudy days until spring.

But there's no way that these seventeen projects can be well surveyed in one post, so let's start with the five projects now that have arrived above the fence line or right at it in the past few weeks:

* First up is the one that's probably making the biggest splash, which is the new National Association of Broadcasters HQ at South Capitol and M. (Its sibling, the Avidian condo building, isn't quite keeping up, and is still below the fence line.)

* Meanwhile, up at Half and K, It's taken a while but the second phase of the Parc Riverside apartments is now visible from street level as well.

* Trekking over to the Yards, the Thompson Hotel on the south side of Tingey Street is visible, while *its* sibling, the 227-unit apartment building apparently dubbed The Estate, has rebar juuuuuuust poking up above the fence line, but not obvious enough to bother with a photo. (See, I'm not COMPLETELY OCD about this.)

* The last new arrival, the third portion of "The Collective" group of apartments known as the Garrett, is past the fences.

Stay tuned for more.

(Note that I'm giving Tishman a few more weeks before I craft my own rendering. And thanks to the 71 Potomac folks for the pretty wood fences with holes in them that are perfect for snooping bloggers to look through!)

Next, let's talk about the "hybrid" hole in the ground at 1250 Half Street, aka the old Monument Valley site just across N Street from Nats Park. This is where two cranes mark the slow beginnings of vertical construction at the bottom of the hole, while six-plus floors of construction are already complete at the north end of the project, since that part of the hole was dug and the foundation was completed back in 2007 when Monument thought it would be building out the entire block instead of just the 55 M office building. This is where a two-phase project with up to 440 units of residential and more than 60,000 square feet of retail will be built:

(I need this project to hurry up and get to ground level because it's impossible to get a shot of the bottom of the hole without going up to a nearby roof.)

Now we'll move to the corner of South Capitol and M, where the National Association of Broadcasters HQ is graduating from hole-in-the-ground to skeleton, while its sibling, the condo building Avidian, is still not quite yet visible above the fence line. I forgot to walk down to get a photo through the fence of the Avidian footprint, so instead I'll just include this very bad shot I took a few weeks ago of the first hints of construction on the new Douglass Bridge, because it needs to be documented.

Three more projects are on their way upwards, including the Garrett at 2nd and I and the co-projects Parcel L residential/Thompson Hotel hole at 3rd and Tingey in the Yards shown here. (I forgot to get a shot of the Parc Riverside II hole. Probably looks like a hole with concrete and rebar, like the others):

So, in case you're not counting, that's nine projects either still below ground or just at ground level (or 10 if you include the permanently below-ground Virginia Avenue Tunnel, or 11 if you include the currently below-water Douglass Bridge work).

Then you can add those to the eight other projects that are above-ground, topped out, or nearing completion, and you can understand why it's okay to feel like the neighborhood is still a perpetual construction site, and will be for a while yet. Here's shots of seven of them, in order of progress: the 99 M office building, the DC Water headquarters, the Bower condos and sibling Parcel O rental building, and additional residential projects 2 I Street, Square 769N, and West Half (alas, I haven't made it over recently to check out the status of the Emblem condo project at 8th and Virginia, so I'm one short):

No wonder I'm so tired.

* HELLO, AVIDIAN: After being burned multiple times over the years with projects being said to include condos during the design phase only to end up as rentals, it's nice to have confirmation via the purty new fence signage at South Capitol and M that not only that the corner will be home to the new headquarters for the National Association of Broadcasters, but that the sibling building immediately to the south that was oddly dubbed 10 Van is now known as the Avidian, and that it will be condominiums, "Selling 2018." The building should have 170ish units and will probably be completed in 2019.

* PEEKING OUT: We have three newcomers to ground level, as the 380-unit apartment building at South Capitol and I is now clearly visible from the street, as is the 190-unit rental sibling to the further-along Bower at Yards Parcel O on 4th Street. Plus, the 420-unit West Half building immediately north of Nats Park now has its first batches of rebar out of the ground, if your eyes know what to look for. (And yes, I'm still completely failing at catching the work underway on what's now known as the Emblem at Barracks Row, the 20-unit condo building at 8th and Virginia. One of these days.)

* ONWARD AND UPWARD: The new DC Water HQ continues to get its face put on, while the condo building known as the Bower at 4th and Tingey has completed seven of its 10ish floors, and at 2nd and L the next Capper mixed-income building is through Floor #4 of its own 10ish floors. {Trying to avoid any arguments about whether penthouses = floors.}

* DOWN ON THE CORNER: There's officially another project underway, as digging is now proceeding at 2nd and I for The Garrett, the third and final portion of WC Smith's "Collective" development that also includes the Park Chelsea and Agora (and this, of course). Meanwhile, there are still holes at the second phase of the Parc Riverside at Half and L (below), and at Monument Valley, which is impossible to get a shot of from street level so you'll just have to imagine it. And I forgot to look behind the fence at Parcel L.

There will probably be some new holes in the ground in coming months, as both the rumor mill and the permitting pipeline hint that at least three more projects will get underway: Dock 79's residential sibling at the old Florida Rock site, the large residential development on the old "Congressional Square" site at 1st and K, and Paradigm's 275ish-unit residential building on the old Market Deli site at 1st and L. (Though I'll note that each of these still do not have permit applications in the system yet beyond the initial shoring/sheeting/excavation step.) The number of still-empty lots keeps a'shrinking....

It turns out having a public roof space at a central location in the neighborhood is going to be veeeeery handy for me, as it allowed me to grab a great shot of the DC Water Headquarters construction that shows exactly how the new steel is wrapping around the existing O Street Pumping Station. It also allowed me to check on the progress of the excavations at 1250 Half, West Half, and the One M/10 Van combo project in a single shot.

Then there's the Any Minute Now retail offerings, with the Juice Laundry telling Instagram followers that they really are coming soon (really!), and representatives of the new Taylor Gourmet on 1st Street telling nearby office tenants that they expect to open on Aug. 23. We shall see!

Meanwhile, exterior work seems to be starting to wrap up at the 1221 Van residential building just north of the ballpark (and note all that retail space on the first two floors), while the 99 M office building is celebrating its topping out later this month. And while the neighborhood waits with baited breath to see exactly when the Whole Foods build-out will begin at Agora, there are now nice new sidewalks on the stretch of H Street SE that is in the process of materializing.

Finally, there are holes in the ground that now show evidence of the start of vertical construction, so these might be my final downward peeks into the two residential projects at the Yards Parcel O on 4th Street, the large residential project at 2 I Street, and the mixed-income Capper Hope VI apartment building at 3rd and L.

And, finally, while I have no intention of adding the new DC United soccer stadium to my lineup, I was surprised to see how visible it is from just within the JDLand boundaries at South Capitol and Potomac. So, here.

But this is just a very small sample. If you want to see a whole lot more of the shots I took, here's 333 of them. Or follow any of the above links, or click on the projects on the map at the upper right of any JDLand page to see the latest for those projects under construction.

* The first piles being driven for JBG's West Half residential and retail project;

* Some evidence of initial activity at Monument Valley, where Jair Lynch's 1250 Half Street residential and retail project is set to finally fill in the hole that has existed on the east side of Half Street since 2007; and

* Shoring/sheeting/excavation underway on the southern part of Monument's combination project of the new headquarters for the National Association of Broadcasters and a residential building at 10 Van Street (here's a closer shot).

Here's what West Half, 1250 Half, and the NAB HQ will look like when they are finished, perhaps in very late 2018 or probably 2019:

These three projects join the other buildings that complete the N Street lineup across from the ballpark--JBG's under construction apartment building at 1221 Van (at the upper left of the above photo) and the Hampton Inn that's been open at 1st and N since late 2015.

What this means is that we will now move from nine years' worth of complaining about how nothing has been built directly north of Nats Park to two years of complaining about construction noise and ickiness, leading into the inevitable future complaining about how these new buildings with all of the retail people have complained about not having end up ruining what views remained of the Capitol dome from inside the ballpark.

Progress!

And these are not the only projects just getting started. Piles have also been driven for the DC Housing Authority's latest Capper Hope VI mixed-income apartment building at 3rd and L, and digging is well underway for the new apartment building at the old McDonald's site at 2 I St., which I don't actually have a recent photo of and so one from February will have to do. I suck. Plus, digging sloooowly continues at the Yards Parcel O apartment/condo dual project.

On the bright side, we're about to have a long-watched hole finally graduate to above-ground construction, as Skanska's 99 M office building is at last reaching street level.

With the completions in 2016 and early 2017 of eight apartment buildings, and with eight more buildings looking to join them in the next two years, the neighborhood now has what can not-so-charitably be called a "glut" of new apartments, as Bisnow reported last week in its story on how the city is seeing a record number of residential units deliver in the second quarter of 2017. (I should of course give you hard numbers of total units, but see my earlier comment about my current state.)

However, if you are looking for a place to live in Near Capitol Ballpark River Yards, having multiple buildings vying for your business is certainly good news for you.

While actual construction isn't underway just yet, the shovel-wielding VIPs did their duty. Mayor Bowser, Ward 6 councilmember Charles Allen, DC delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, NAB chairman Gordon Smith, and other luminaries made remarks, and noted local radio personality Tommy McFly acted as master of ceremonies (his radio station is after all only a block away).

You can see all my photos here, if microphones and shovels are your thing. But here's a few, if that one extra click is more than you can handle:

It's expected that construction will get underway later this summer on both the 120,000-sq-ft NAB HQ (which will have about 4,800 sq ft of ground-floor retail) and a 163-unit condo building immediately to its south, also fronting South Capitol but with an address of 10 Van Street. Both are being developed by Monument Realty, and you can see my project page for more details. If both do get started this summer, the buildings would probably be completed in 2018.

The real work of construction, I'm told, is slated to start later this summer, but the NAB bigwigs were apparently going to be gathering in DC for a board meeting this month and so will take the opportunity to mark the occasion.

(And of course there is no statutory requirement that ceremonial groundbreakings take place x number of days before or after the start of actual digging.)

This headquarters will be a 120,000-square-foot offering with about 4,800 square feet of ground floor retail, and is expected to open in 2018. NAB and Monument announced the deal in April of 2015, calling it the "culmination of a rigorous search for a location with easier access to Capitol Hill that will allow NAB to improve its advocacy efforts."

Monument also tells me that the current plan is to also start this summer on 10 Van Street, the NAB HQ's 163-unit residential sibling immediately to the south, which you can see here and on my One M/10 Van project page.

And the big news that I'm burying all the way down here is that Monument tells me that the decision has been made that 10 Van will be condos, with a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units as well as multi-level two-bedroom townhouses facing both Van and South Capitol.

Once it gets started, the NAB HQ would be the second office project under construction, joining Skanska's on-spec 99 M a couple of blocks to the east. The 10 Van project will become part of the long list of residential projects currently being built, and will be the second in this block of South Capitol Street, along with JBG's 290-unit rental building at 1244 South Capitol that is expected to be completed in 2017. These will also be the first projects to get underway in 2016, unless the Yards Parcel O condo and rental buildings get started first.

I guess we'll know for sure that NAB/10 Van construction is truly at hand when the surface parking lot there stops accepting Nats gameday parking....