It's always going to be hard to say whether any given plan for Douglas Development's Wonder Bread Factory on 7th and S Streets NW will be the last, given the number of iterations it's been through. But the company's Paul Millstein seems pretty confident about his latest proposal: A 60,000-square-foot speculative office building (which means [...]
When developers come to community groups asking their support for necessary favors like tax exemptions and zoning variances, they better be prepared with box of goodies for the neighborhood. Douglas Development has had to do this more than most, with the number of extensions on zoning applications and breaks from vacant property taxes it's needed [...]
Here's the lesson of Gibson Plaza, the 10-story Shaw behemoth housing mostly Section 8 tenants: If you suffer through bad conditions long enough, you might just be there when a fantastic upgrade comes around.
The 217-unit building hadn't had a major renovation since it was built, back in 1974, by the development arm of First Rising [...]
It's always puzzling to see properties sit vacant in fast-developing neighborhoods. Sometimes there are bureaucratic reasons for the delay, and sometimes owners are just absent. In the case of 905 R Street NW–one of the most painful eyesores in Shaw–the District transferred the house as part of a group of properties to the New Columbia [...]
D.C. Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper’s office, on the fourth floor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, is in some ways a reminder of failure: It’s too big, and a set of fraying modernist chairs, original to the 1973 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe building, have grown too delicate to sit on. Cooper, a [...]
It's a tentative plan, but a plan nonetheless: Lincoln Westmoreland Housing Inc. is moving forward with a 50-unit apartment complex on 7th and R Street NW, right next to the 10-story behemoth constructed right after the 1968 riots.
The new building, designed by Shalom Baranes architects, could not be more ideally located: It sits directly above [...]
You may well choose to believe it when you see it, but the word is that Metropolitan Development has finally pulled together the financing it needs to demolish the old Kelsey Gardens apartment complex on 7th Street and begin work on Addison Square, starting in the third quarter of next year–putting [...]
When you stare at buildings and streetscape designs enough, you start to notice certain architectural elements show up over and over again. Also, it must be easier to get away with repetition in different jurisdictions, which would tend to yield repeats of District projects in the suburbs. Just two examples I've noticed lately:
The small square [...]
Building most anything in the District requires many levels of review by commissions, councils, and boards, to comply with regulations imposed by overlays, Acts, and districts. In Shaw, there's even one more more hurdle to clear: The Shaw School Urban Renewal Plan, a document adopted by the National Capital Planning Commission and sanctified by HUD [...]
Despite the criticism they've come under in recent months, the as-yet-unnamed Arts District team has forged ahead with its branding process, presenting four banner concepts yesterday that will be narrowed down to one design and installed on lampposts by the beginning of December.
The designs are the result of a feedback gathering process that, when it's [...]
