Washington Business Journal by Michael Neibauer
The District has an expansive vision for the 183-acre St. Elizabeths East, one that would eventually bring 1,300 residential units, 1.8 million square feet of office, 206,000 square feet of retail and at least two hotels to the sprawling Congress Heights campus.
According to a presentation being distributed to Ward 8 community groups, the St. E's master development team, led by D.C.-based Redbrick LMD and Gragg Cardona Partners, would limit its first phase to the 15.8 acres nearest the Congress Heights Metro station.
The development team's plan includes 60 townhomes, 250 mixed-income apartments, a 171,000-square-foot office building with 47,000 square feet of integrated retail, a retail courtyard, and 100 underground parking spaces. Separately, but also part of phase one, the District will develop a $55 million, 5,000-seat sports and entertainment complex for the Washington Wizards and Washington Mystics.
It is quite a step down from the initial Redbrick LMD proposal, which called for 2.5 million gross square feet of development, including 716,000 square feet of commercial space, 425,866 square feet of innovation uses, 122,000 square feet of retail, 1.1 million square feet of residential (20 percent affordable), and a 150- to 180-key hotel.
The D.C. strategy — incremental, starting small — is reminiscent of how the District handled Hill East, specifically the transformation of the 67-acre Reservation 13, home to the former D.C. General Hospital and a host of shelters and clinics.
In 2008, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty released a solicitation for a master planner to tackle the entire reservation with roughly 5 million square feet of mixed-use development. But the project was ultimately scaled back in the face of a tanking economy and questions about the viability of such a massive feat.
Four years later, Mayor Vincent Gray’s administration released a revised request for the redevelopment of only a pair of Reservation 13 parcels totaling 9 acres closest to the Stadium Armory Metro station. Rather than waiting years for economic conditions to improve, the District went smaller. It received a single bid from Donatelli Development and Blue Skye, who are now preparing to begin work on 354 apartments and 40,000 square feet of retail. Groundbreaking is expected in the fall of 2016, with delivery in 2018.
The focus of the first phase of St. E’s is largely along Alabama Avenue SE at the Congress Heights Metro station, moving northwest along the campus edge, but stopping before Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE. The multifamily units are to be located in six restored historic buildings currently located in the CT Village. The townhomes will sit south of Dogwood Street SE, fronting Alabama Avenue. The office-retail building and retail courtyard would sit immediately across from the Metro station, while the sports facility would sit behind the multifamily community.
The plan was presented Wednesday night to a Ward 8 advisory neighborhood commission. Attendee Sheila Bunn, a Ward 8 resident and former candidate for the Ward 8 council seat, tweeted several slides from that presentation. One pledged down payment assistance for Ward 8 homebuyers, the creation of 1,500 jobs, locally sourced hiring, seed funds for local businesses and student internships.
The other was a timeline. The development agreement will be forwarded to the D.C. Council this month, according to that slide. The District hopes to break ground on infrastructure work and the townhomes in September 2016, on multifamily in the spring of 2017 and on office and retail in the fall of 2017. An asterisk at the bottom of the slide notes the timeline is “dependent upon the timely completion of infrastructure improvements.”
View the slideshow here.