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Development teams offer school, ice rink and grocery store as Northwest One amenities

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Washington Business Journal by Karen Goff

Development teams have proposed everything from an indoor ice rink to a Lidl grocery store to pair with the residential redevelopment of the former Temple Courts Apartments in Northwest.

Eight developers have answered the District's request for proposals for the site at North Capitol and K streets NW, part of the Northwest One revitalization area. Planning for Northwest One began in 2005, but only a small percentage of the new development, including the Walker-Jones Education Campus and 314 housing units at 2 M St. NW, has been completed.

The 3.5-acre Temple Courts site was offered — this time around — to the development community in September by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development as part of the city's New Communities Initiative. New Communities seeks to revitalize areas of public and low-income housing with mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhoods.

New Communities requires that redevelopment proposals include one-for-one replacement of affordable housing at 30 percent of the area median income. In this case, that is 211 units, though all eight proposals offer dozens more apartments in the 50 percent AMI and 60-percent AMI range. New Communities also maintains a “build first” requirement so as not displace residents, but in this case that has already happened as Temple Courts was demolished in 2008.

A team led by developer WC Smith and The Warrenton Group was chosen by the District in 2009 to replace Temple Courts with an $80 million, 313-unit apartment building. But the recession combined with other hurdles to prevent much of the work from taking place. A pay parking lot now sits on the site.

The WC Smith-Warrenton team, which built 2M, is among the groups pitching a plan this time around.

Click on the slideshow above to read more about the redevelopment proposals.

A DMPED spokesman said the process is different now, and hopefully, the results will be as well. DMPED has held several community meetings on the subject through its Our RFP process.

"We came into office with a couple of focus areas, one is obviously to move longstanding projects forward," said DMPED spokesman Joaquin McPeek. "In this case, we have engaged the community early and often and have been open and transparent in the process. We want to engage the community in a way that did not happen before."

The 2016 RFP charges applicants with restoring the city street grid through Sursum Corda (the co-op that is undergoing its own potential redevelopment); emphasizing K Street NW as a main street connection NoMa and Mount Vernon Triangle; and maximizing private sector participation.

DMPED hopes to select a development team in June, McPeek said.

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2017/04/05/development-teams-offer-school-ice-rink-and.html