In the District, laws around apartment living are pretty clear cut. In buildings constructed before 1975, rent can only increase so much per year. You can only evict someone under certain circumstances. If a landlord decides to sell the building, residents have the right to try and buy it.
Everything gets a lot more murky when [...]

I'm usually not one to engage in "I wish X looked like Y" thinking. As helpful as it can be to imagine an unsatisfactory status quo as something wholly different, that's not much use if there's no feasible way to make it so.
But the vision offered by Brooklyn Bridge Park, which only a few years [...]

My column this week is about the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED for Neighborhood Development certification, which D.C. has more of than any one other city–because most of the city is shaped along their criteria anyway. As usual, there were a few interesting bits I couldn't fit. So here they are in a blog post:

Two [...]

For those who like pouring through giant PDFs with conceptual drawings of what large swaths of the cityscape will look like in a few years, click here, courtesy of Madison Marquette.
Or just check out a few of my favorites below.

Last night at Arena Stage's Kreeger Theater, with nearly every seat filled by nearby residents and development types, P.N. Hoffman and Madison Marquette unveiled the framework of their plans for the 27-acre Southwest Waterfront. The vision was breathtaking.
Southwest Quadrant has a great rundown, so I won't go through every detail. In a nutshell: The plans [...]

With all the attention given to The Yards Park these past few weeks, development on two of the Waterfront area’s smaller green spaces has gone largely overlooked.
About a hundred people gathered on Water Street SW yesterday evening to attend the opening ceremony for 7th Street Landing, a “temporary park” that will occupy the modest flat [...]

The big development plans for the Southwest Waterfront aren't generating much news these days. But I keep hearing little tidbits about Baltimore-based Struever Bros Eccles & Rouse, one of the project's backers, which has been having money troubles (loan-defaulting troubles, more specifically) lately.
Today, the Washington Business Journal reports the group is being sued by [...]

People are constantly griping about development projects in their neighborhood. Is anyone ever working on that damn thing? Is there any progress being made? When was the last time a construction crew came out? I purchased a condo in this damn half-finished building two years ago...

Well for those living in Southwest, there's no need [...]

Changes are already coming to the Southwest Waterfront, though not the ones everyone's excited about. Some buildings down by the Maine Avenue Fish Market are going to be razed, DCmud reports. The Virgo Fish House will soon be gone, as well as another building which held a crab house."The intent of these small moves is to keep [...]

Yup. It finally happened.  
From the Washington Business Journal:
The D.C. Council unanimously approved a land deal for a $1.5 billion redevelopment of the Southwest waterfront Tuesday, conveying 16 acres of city property to a development team led by D.C.-based PN Hoffman and Baltimore-based Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse on a furious last day of voting before the end of [...]