One of the many awesome "roof decks" at Gangplank Marina. (Lydia DePillis)

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 your building is just a series of docks—especially when they're going through a transition as large as what's in store for the Southwest Waterfront. A year ago, the inhabitants of Gangplank Marina weren't sure what would happen to them when the ground finally broke. Would they have to leave, or could they hang on?

Now, it looks like they'll be able to stay put through the whole process. Provisions for the temporary relocation to empty or makeshift docks have been written into the planned unit development application that's now before the Zoning Commission, in a scheme not unlike how apartment dwellers might be transferred to different units as their building undergoes renovation. They'll also have access to the same on-shore amenities, although they might be temporarily relocated.

Some things have yet to be ironed out. For example: Currently, there are only 94 liveaboard slots, and liveaboard status conveys with the boat that inhabits each slip. That increases the value of those boats by several thousand dollars, similar to having a liquor license or taxi medallion. The Gangplank Slipholders Association is still working to figure out how that system will or won't change under the new regime. Also, there's the inevitable increase in rent: Ultimately, the residents will benefit enormously from the new development, and will probably end up paying more than the $11.50 per foot of boat length they pay now.

In the mean time, the residents decided they could benefit from a little more public exposure. On the day that the Council declared to be Liveaboard Boater Day in D.C., with some financial help from the Wharf's developers, the Slipholders Association hosted its first annual Boat Home tour. When you're at the mercy of a large corporate entity, a little public recognition of your existence can't hurt.

Bedroom by a staircase.

"We're really hoping that development takes place here and that people take a lot more interest in the area," Slipholders Association president Jason Kopp told the Examiner. "When people identify with an area they tend to take ownership of it, and though the waterfront is our backyard, we want people to think it is also their backyard."

If you didn't get a ticket this year—they did sell out—don't miss the Boat Home Tour next year. These little vessels are amazing, and always bigger than they appear.

The Alt Angler's auxiliary bedroom.

The Alt Angler's tricked-out kitchen.

Management Systems International, a USAID contractor, is headquartered in a fleet of about 10 barges.

Miss Behavin's spacious living room.

The Argo, owned by Gangplank Slipholders Association president Jason Kopp.

Someday. (Brooklyn Bridge Park)

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 ago was a Port Authority shipping depot, is too inspiring not to offer as the kind of route I'd like the Anacostia waterfront to take in the decades ahead. Kicked into action by a 2002 memorandum of understanding that committed funding for the area's transformation, over the last few years it's developed into an astonishing blend of commerce and recreation. The still-developing park, managed by a non-profit, packs restaurants, play areas, and public art into a relatively small area (though it's planned to encompass 20 acres by the time it's done).

Outside of the stunning Yards Park, and the tremendously exciting Wharf, it's hard to see that kind of model advancing on the other side of the river in the near future. The other planned waterfront-proximate projects get the need to connect the city to the river—the current plans for Hill East and Poplar Point, as well as a Cohen Companies project on Virginia Avenue—state that as a goal. But the first two are quite far in the future, with no financing on the horizon. The rest of the waterfront, sadly, is either private industrial land or owned by the National Park Service or the military, severely limiting its redevelopment possibilities, barring some federal change of heart.

Yeah, I wish the area around Benning Road bridge could be the next DUMBO. Realistically, though, there are a lot of other projects—most of them in other cities—ahead in line.

A single-site LEED-ND project, 3Tree Flats.

• Two of the projects certified in the LEED-ND pilot were actually single buildings: Jair Lynch's Solea, on 14th Street, and 3Tree Flats, which just opened up on Georgia Avenue. I wondered why Lynch chose to go for LEED-ND certification there rather than just the typical program for new construction. He says he participated in the pilot in order to shape the criteria in a more urban direction, rather than have the program just be tailored towards entirely new developments outside the city. "We felt that without single site, smaller projects, the LEED-ND institution could end up just being suburban walkable projects, and not urban projects that had a lot of the great bones already," he says. "If [we] didn’t apply, and the marketplace didn’t respond, they could have retreated to a much tighter definition."
• Another ND project: CityInterest's Parkside-Kenilworth development, which received a Promise Neighborhoods grant. If you want to see what a filled-out checklist looks like, here's something their consultant put together to determine their probable certification level.
• Remember that other column I wrote about why developer clusters are a good thing? Well, the LEED-ND piece is just another dimension of that. JBG, which didn't want to comment for my story on the strategy behind its U Street buys, at a USGBC lecture a couple weeks ago explained its practice of picking several parcels in one small area as a way to protect their investments that had turned into a way to create a superior public space. Now, they're doing a notable LEED-ND development at Twinbrook, and have similar sites up and down the Red Line with the same potential.
• Universities are another good candidate for LEED-ND certification, but none in D.C. have gone for it yet. Instead, American University is participating in a pilot of "LEED for Volume," getting two thirds of its building square footage certified all at once, but along "existing building" criteria, rather than the comprehensive neighborhood-oriented checklist. It's a much cheaper and more efficient process than getting each building certified individually, although many will require upgrades in order to qualify.
• The Southwest Waterfront has a few particularly ambitious plans as part of its LEED-ND qualification, including possibly a cogeneration plant–which would be, as development manager Matt Steenhoek put it, a "pretty big departure from the norm."

Or just check out a few of my favorites below.

The grand staircase coming down from 10th Street.

Maine Avenue section. Roomy bike lanes.

The full schematic.

Stan Eckstut shows design influences for Market Square. (Lydia DePillis)

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 include hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space and ground floor retail, three hotels, and 560 residential units, half of which will be priced at 60 percent of area median income (and half of those below 30 percent AMI). There are several distinct zones:

• Market Square next to the renovated fish market will have a year-round fruit and vegetable market, with what a consultant described as "a little hustle and bustle, clanging of pots and pans."
• The 7th Street park will be a large, grassy expanse surrounded by more upscale restaurants, corresponding with a long, curving pedestrian pier.
• The M Street landing area, connecting Arena Stage to the water, will be a family-oriented space that the consultant likened to Rockefeller Center in New York City: Fun, busy, recreational.
• The City Pier will jut out from 9th Street, accomodating the larger ships and serving as the staging ground for programming like concerts and fireworks shows.
• A grand staircase will connect the 10th Street overlook to the water.
• A large park at P Street on the eastern end of the wharf will be vehicle-free and available for larger-scale sports and games (dog parks and bocce pitches were mentioned).

It's a delicious array of options. But the most attractive element isn't any one piece of the planned development–it's the overall philosophy, as articulated by Stan Eckstut of master planning firm EEK (which counts Battery Park City among its accomplishments, and has also been retained to design the new McMillan development). Eckstut's concept is unabashedly urban; The photos that flashed across the screen as design inspirations included Hamburg, Genoa, Auckland, and–naturally!–Seattle's Pike Place Market, with its teeming pedestrian-centric hive of shops. Eckstut wants the new waterside wharf to be crowded, organic, and somewhat chaotic. "Cars are allowed to use it, when they must–it's not a thoroughfare, and all the cars have to behave themselves. Not us, but the cars," he said. "My vision is, the more congested, the more successful." Traffic along the waterfront will largely run along Maine Avenue, but even that puts alternative modes of transit on par with cars: The developers are working with the city to run a streetcar line through it, along with 10-foot-wide two-way bike lanes.

Eckstut, as well as developer Monty Hoffman, also heavily emphasized the resident-oriented nature of the plan: It's meant to be a neighborhood first, and a tourist destination second. "We're not National Harbor, and we're not Baltimore," Hoffman said, citing those waterfront developments' heavy reliance on chain retailers and outside visitors. In a sign of his commitment, Hoffman said that all those currently living on boats at Gangplank Marina–who had feared for their future in the new development–woud be able to stay, generating loud applause.

A less popular element of the plan, at least with some in last night's crowd, is the height of the planned buildings. Hisses emanated from the crowd when Eckstut said many would reach as high as 130 feet, or 11 stories. Eckstut mounted a staunch defense of tallness. The buildings will have setbacks from their first few stories, leaving the main massing largely invisible to pedestrians. And the density in height, along with underground parking, is what allows for the whole space to be 60 percent open to the public–the bulk is piled on top of itself, rather than horizontally. They're also fairly narrow; instead of the kind of 400-foot-long buildings that you see along K Street, the planned "miniblocks" won't be longer than 250 feet.

The full planned unit development will be submitted to the Zoning Commission in the next couple of months, with public hearings expected in the spring. In the mean time, the developers are taking suggestions for office and retail tenants, 20 percent of which must be local–so if you've ever wanted to set up shop on a world-class waterfront, now's your chance.

(Matt Bevilacqua)

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 stretch between Zanzibar and the Channel Inn, looking out on the Anacostia River until its slated closing in mid-October.

Modeled on sites in Paris, short-lived parks boost public optimism in the area while more permanent local projects gestate, according to Tyson Pitzer, director of investments at Madison Marquette, the District-based real estate company that helmed the venture along with PN Hoffman. In D.C., temporary uses are popping up at stalled developments all over the place, from the former Bruce Monroe school site to Rosslyn’s CenterSpace to movies on the parking lot at 5th and I street NW.

Made up to look like some semblance of a beach – with sand thrown down under a score of yellow lounge chairs and tables with umbrellas, all flanked by a few trees – 7th Street Landing will host jazz concerts each Thursday, food trucks each Friday (District Taco, DC Slices and Sidewalk Sweetsations all showed up for the opening festivities) and yoga sessions on Saturdays. This will go on, Pitzer said, for five or six weeks, after which construction will ostensibly begin on the several hundred housing units and retail spots that the companies have planned for the Waterfront.

A couple blocks away, on Sixth and I streets SW, a much older and quieter park has been enjoying a long-overdue tune-up.
Opened in 1972, Town Center Park West fills up a square block with greenery and a pond meant to attract wildlife. But it had gotten filthy. In April, a group of Southwest residents achieved “partner” status from the Department of Parks and Recreation, and set about forming a plan to clean and restore the space.

Bob Craycraft, coordinator of Neighbors for Town Center Park West, said that he hopes his organization can complete its short-term goal of cleaning the park by Oct. 23, when Arena Stage is supposed to open across the street. (Restoration, he admitted, will take at least a year to begin.)

The group has already repaired the Town Center Park West’s drainage system, which had not been cleared since 2007, and to which some believe a 2009 outbreak of the West Nile Virus could be traced.

It also convinced the city to hire a contractor that works with decorative ponds, instead of the pool company it had previously employed, to maintain the park’s fountain – which with any luck would help attract waterfowl back to the park, and maybe even make it habitable for fish once again.

“You never see more than two ducks at a time,” said Craycraft, “when there used to be several dozen years ago.”

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 staffing firm, KForce Inc, for unpaid contracts.

"KForce alleges it provided several workers to Struever Bros. in 2008, who worked as senior property accountants and in other positions," the piece states.

Struever owes nearly $100,000, plus interest, according to the suit.

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 to spend hours walking around the neighborhood construction site or posting whining questions on the local listserv. A web camera has been taking pictures of this project—the new Waterside Mall now called "Waterfront"—from two angles for more than a year. I just discovered this link today.

This is a shot taken at 12:57 p.m. Looks like a snow day for construction crews.

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 the Fish Market in safe and operable condition until the redevelopment occurs,” according to Nina Albert with the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.

Image by  Jean-Francois Chenier, Flickr Creative Commons

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 the year.

Though the developers face a tough financing environment, the project could bring 770 housing units, 700,000 square feet of offices, three hotels, 280,000 square feet of retail and 150,000 square feet of cultural attractions.

Meanwhile over at SWDC Blog, residents are already starting to compile wish lists of stores and businesses they'd like to see open as soon as possible in the area.