Washington Business Journal by Michael Neibauer
D.C. United and neighboring landowners have reached an “agreeable solution” to improve the Buzzard Point stadium design, avoiding one potential hiccup in the ongoing zoning process.
The agreement, said Matt Klein, president and CEO of neighboring landowner Akridge , will include the addition of outward facing retail to the First Street SW stadium frontage, among other changes sought by the stadium’s neighbors who feared what blank concrete walls would mean for their future projects.
“Ultimately we found a solution that worked for everybody and I think makes the neighborhood better from where the prior plan was,” Klein said. “I think it’s going to be better for D.C. United. I think it’s going to be a better front door to the neighborhood.”
On Monday, D.C. United’s land use attorneys asked the D.C. Zoning Commission to delay the scheduled Nov. 2 public hearing on the stadium project by two weeks. The team, along with the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development and SW Land Holder LLC, an affiliate of Akridge and its financial partners, “have been working diligently together to produce a solution to SWLH’s concerns that is mutually acceptable,” the attorneys wrote.
“The Applicant is pleased to report that the parties have arrived at an agreeable solution,” the attorneys wrote, but noted that there was not enough time to get revised plans and drawings to the zoning panel in advance of the previously scheduled hearing.
Lindsay Simpson, D.C. United spokeswoman, said the hearing has been rescheduled for Nov. 28. While she was confident that a deal would be reached, Simpson would not go as far as D.C. United's lawyers to say the deal is done.
“We are confident that we are close to an agreeable solution," she said.
Earlier this month, SW Land Holder LLC formally applied with the zoning commission for party status in the case. The stadium itself will be constructed partially on land seized from Akridge through eminent domain, though the developer still controls a large, developable parcel at 100 V St. SW, immediately south of the stadium footprint.
In its party status application, SW Land Holder LLC wrote that the stadium “was originally intended to stimulate economic activity and development in the surrounding neighborhood,” but as designed with its “blank building walls” to the south and east and its lack of outward facing retail, “the Stadium will not be as successful as it could be in achieving those goals.”
The design, according to that document, was such that occupants of future development south of the stadium would "look into the underside of the seating bowl and only see structure, the underside of stepped concrete, steel seating risers, and rooftop HVAC equipment. It discourages a walkable urban environment, and “creates an uninviting and hostile pedestrian scale development.”
“The Stadium design does not present a positive face to the surrounding developments to the east and the south, again making buildings on the [Akridge] Property less desirable, harder to sell or lease and worth less because of that,” SW Land Holder wrote.
D.C. United hopes to start construction on the $300 million-plus, 19,000-seat stadium this winter, with opening in 2018. But the zoning process has dragged on, and the big name landowners next door (Akridge, Capital City Real Estate, Western Development and others) aren’t the only challenge.
On Oct. 19, a group called the Near Buzzard Point Residential Advisory Committee also sought party status in the stadium case, specifically to oppose it. The unincorporated nonprofit group’s members, according to the filing, live and work in close proximity to the stadium site, and “will be directly and concretely impacted by increased noise, traffic, dust, pollution, land value destabilization, gentrification pressures, and other quality of life impacts, as well as impaired access for emergency vehicles and evacuation routes and impacts to current levels of public services such as utilities, sewer and water, and public transportation.”