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DC continues to move forward on the promise that every resident living in DC will be within a half (1/2) mile walking distance to a full-service grocery store. The mayor announced today that another of the planned 9 different grocery anchored mixed-use developments east of the river in Wards 7 and 8 is moving forward.
"The District has a preliminary agreement with a major grocer to open a 55K SF location at Capitol Gateway Marketplace, the long-planned development where Walmart backed out of a deal in 2016, Bowser's office said in a release Thursday."
"Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Wednesday that the District is moving forward to acquire the Capitol Gateway Marketplace site in Ward 7 and anchor it with a large grocery story."
“Today, District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a deal with Giant Food to become the anchor grocery tenant at Capitol Gateway Marketplace,” said Mark Federici, President of the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400 union, which represents Giant Food grocery employees in the DMV area.
Bowser said the city filed a Complaint in Condemnation with the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on June 2 to take over the long-stalled Capitol Gateway Marketplace, which is at 58th Street NE and East Capitol Street NE, near the Prince George's County boundary.
"It’s the music, drinks, games, and food component at Echo Street West project, a new hub of local art"
This isn't being built by Black developers in Atlanta, but I assume this being in a Black neighborhood will gear the programming to Black people and culture.
An introduction by W8CED preceded the panel, which was moderated by Washington Business Journal Managing Editor Michael Neibauer. The Q&A is edited here for clarity and space.
The participants:
John Falcicchio, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development
Thomas Skinner, managing partner, Redbrick LMD
Rahsaan Bernard, president, Building Bridges Across the River
Liz Price, vice president real estate and parking, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Let’s start with an update on the new hospital under construction on the St. Elizabeths East campus.
John Falcicchio: "The hospital is going to be really one of the biggest features of this campus. It’s over a $350 million investment. It’s going to be a regional medical center. And we’re excited because it’s not just about the hospital, but it’s about the health delivery system in wards 7 and 8 and beyond."
What about other projects?
Falcicchio: "We’re working with our partners in government on creating a microgrid to make sure that there’s more sustainability elements in this campus. That RFP is live. We know the great work that has come from having the Entertainment & Sports Arena here. It’s bigger than basketball. We also know that there’s new residences on the campus — in addition to the apartments, 252 units that delivered some years ago. We now have homeownership opportunities and townhomes here, which we’re really excited about. And then Whitman-Walker — having a headquarters here, having clinical space, but also having lab and research space to help us take on health disparities."
What about D.C. government agencies?
Falcicchio: "Mayor Bowser wanted to make sure that we were one of the first actors across wards 7 and 8 in terms of bringing more economic vitality. So she put together the East of the River leasing strategy. That meant that when District government offices where we lease space were up for renewal, that we first looked east of the river for that space. So, soon we’ll be bringing the Department of Behavioral Health to Congress Heights and may well be here on the campus."
Thomas Skinner: "As you know, the office market generally is pretty depressed right now. So what we have here is a situation where there’s a very limited supply of quality new office space. So if there is somebody who has a reason to be here, then, you know, they will come."
How are the townhomes selling at St. E’s?
Skinner: "The townhomes are performing very well. Clearly, as interest rates have moved in the last 90 days, 180 days, there’s a slowdown in the housing market across the country. And we’re not immune from that. But again, this is a location where, you know, where else in the city can you buy a beautiful new townhouse in a spectacular setting? It’s bucolic here. You’re right on Metro, walking distance to a bunch of major employers. I’m sure, once the new hospital is open, we’ll have people who are purchasing homes in order to walk to work."
Metro has long worked to redevelop the Congress Heights Metro. Where does that project stand?
Liz Price: "We were excited to close on Congress Heights earlier this year. And Amazon announced last week that they were also investing in that project. So, this is the south side of the Metro station at Congress Heights. It’s been a project long in the works at Metro. It’s one of our oldest projects. Standard Real Estate and other partners, Trammell Crow and National Housing Trust formed a partnership to come in and kind of reset that project. The project will include 180 apartments affordable at 30% to 80% [of the area median income], as well as a new office building, about 240,000 square feet with ground-floor retail. I’d love to see the District government and other agencies potentially locate there. And we’re also looking on the north side of that Metro station where we currently have a much larger parcel. It’s today dominated by surface parking and bus bays. But we’re in conversations with the city about how to reorganize our own facilities, make space on that side closer to the St. E’s campus, directly adjacent for more development."
Many of Metro’s underdeveloped Metro stations are east of the river or in Prince George’s County. What is Metro doing differently under your leadership to get those areas built up?
Price: "We published this year our strategic plan for joint development. And that’s just a kind of fancy word for TOD [transit-oriented development] or public-private partnerships. It’s complicated — projects that happen on our property involve private investment, private development, but also transit facilities. So we’re oftentimes integrating private uses with buses, with parking, with Metro entrances. So they’re complex, they’re expensive. That’s one reason why some projects haven’t moved or have stalled."
What are other reasons?
Price: "Washington has the most active joint-development program in the country. We’ve built 17 million square feet throughout the region on Metro property over the last 40 years. But sort of surprising to me coming into this role, we have a lot of pipeline left, so we have about 500 acres of land still available to be developed. A lot of it is outside of the core. So, further out along the station lines, we have large tracts and the challenges there, they’re more complicated. They’re in places with no infrastructure, oftentimes no roads. So the cost to bring those to market is considerable. So we have to have a different strategy. We often have to get out of our own way. We have to move our facilities to make room for private development."
Where does the 11th Street Bridge project stand?
Bernard: "I would say we’ve been pregnant for 10 years, the longest pregnancy that anyone can ever have. And yes, we’ve had some pains in that pregnancy over the years, but we definitely have a C-section date. And so we have something that is ready to be delivered. The project is at 100% design. And the big news is that the Commission of Fine Arts approved our project, our design, and we are looking to go to [the D.C. Department of Transportation] for a solicitation for our general contractor this fall. We’re hoping that our C-section date is in June of next year."
What is the greater meaning of the park?
Bernard: "We have a city that’s divided by 900 feet of water, which is the Anacostia River. Not only is it divided geographically by that water, but also racially, socially, scholastically, I mean, I can rattle off more. And we have a community that needs to have a mutual trust framework in order for this to work. Three of the commissioners of the Commission on Fine Arts mentioned in their writeup that this is the first time that they’ve seen a project that has been intentional about elevating community voices in such a way that the people that have shepherded the project all along are community members."
What is your organization doing to prevent displacement, to ensure that’s not a consequence of this new connection and building up this side of the river as it has been in other parts of D.C.?
Bernard: "We do not believe as a Ward 8 nonprofit, at 17 years old, that we have the silver bullet to stop market forces. Market forces are going to happen. However, the work we’ve invested in over the last 10 years, our equitable development plan, really has raised more money than the bricks and mortar for this park. We had the goal of bringing dollars to the community, that one-mile, two-mile walkshed of the park. Today, it’s $86 million that we’ve invested. LISC gave us $50 million to shore up small businesses, to start [homeownership] programs with Manna [Inc.] Today, we have 104 homeowners that were renters. Which means in many ways, when that tide raises, they get the benefit of staying in place."
Will Redbrick’s projects have the same benefits for the community?
Skinner: "There’s a number of areas that our projects are really critical in lifting up the community. So with Parcel 15 [on St. E’s], we’re working with Emerson Collective there. We have the interim retail pavilion that is now under construction — probably a first of its kind, certainly in the region, a David Adjaye- designed pavilion. We have a group called Incubate the Eight, which is eight local entrepreneurs who have their own retail space there to grow their business. Down at the Bridge District, we have the Sandlot, which is a wonderful interim use that we have going with Ian Callender. Very importantly as well is a project that we are working on at the Bridge District, looking to work with CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which will be over on the West Campus to develop a national center for cyber learning."
What is D.C. doing to turn business renters into business owners?
Falcicchio: "Money flows from this side of the river to the other side of the river, especially with residents’ disposable income. So when you think about that one mile walking distance from the 11th Street Bridge Park, what folks are also going to have when they visit the park is more opportunity to spend their dollars in this neighborhood, in Anacostia specifically. And in Congress Heights as well.
There’s a program we have called the Commercial Property Acquisition Fund, which provides down payment assistance to businesses that are operating in the District, that are businesses that are at least 51% owned by people who have faced racial discrimination or ethnic discrimination. And so it really helps diverse business owners. And the program itself provides $750,000, or 25% of the down payment on the commercial property that they try to buy."
Have you spoken with Amazon about a potential Amazon Fresh in D.C.?
Falcicchio: "We speak to everyone and anyone who wants to talk about how to deliver fresh food options in wards 7 and 8. So those conversations continue. For us, really, what we’re trying to figure out now with the Food Access Fund — $73 million that we have over the course of the next couple of years — and what we want to do is make our next round of awards, which will be happening soon, and then we want to see where we are. Literally map it out to see where we’ve actually helped people find accessible food options. And then we want to figure out how we fill in the gaps that still remain. We’ve seen a lot of energy around restaurants, which is really great, and we want to keep supporting that. But we also need to get more markets and supermarkets too."
What do grocers want to see before they sign up to open something new?
Falcicchio: "We’ve got to figure out how we converge our East of the River leasing strategy to show more daytime activity, more work on affordable housing and housing options. But really, how we make some moves on population density as well, because that’s what grocers are looking for."
Price: "I think that’s the issue we face at our Metro sites, because we also have aligned interest in density — bringing more riders, more residents directly to transit. And what we’re finding is that a lot of times, lower-density housing is what will pencil today. And so trying to figure out how to incentivize projects that we want to bring forward sooner to go mid-rise, which would be a better use of the land and leverage the location on transit. So it’s something that we’re looking at. We’re actively talking to the District about how to solve these challenges."
How has Redbrick’s relationship evolved with the community over the years?
Skinner: "What’s always interesting is when people say the “community,” I think the community speaks with about 200 different voices. So what’s very important is to actually listen to everybody and look for a synthesis of what you’re hearing. And, you know, it’s impossible to please every single party. What one person in one location might want might be in conflict with what somebody else wants. What people want in Congress Heights might be different than what people want in Anacostia. But we had, gosh, probably hundreds of different community meetings, both at the individual level and obviously at the agency level."
What is the status of Poplar Point, the part owned by the National Park Service?
Falcicchio: "There’s going to be an opportunity to bring some housing, some mixed-use development there. But there also is an opportunity for us to leave in the green space that’s there. We also should have a focus on connecting people to the river that’s focused on wellness. So I think there’s a lot that we can do. Where we are in the process, there’s some environmental remediation that’ll have to happen. We’re doing the work to be prepared for that. And then also National Park Service has their park police headquarters there with the helicopter pad. It’s not easy to site the helicopter pad, but we’re working with them to understand what would work to move that facility. Once we move that facility, we unlock the potential for us to really dive into the community planning process."
Can you give us an update on THEARC [Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus]? It seems to be constantly changing and growing, now with a theater?
Bernard: "In fact there are two theaters. We now have three buildings. Covenant House Washington, there’s an east building and the west building, 203,000 square feet, 14 partners in five sectors: health, education, arts, recreation and workforce development. At our size and scale, today we are the largest social service, multisector, nonprofit collaboration in the country. And so that unique position has allowed us to serve residents as we keep them in the center. The evolution of that campus has come because we’ve elevated voices. We’ve heard what people want."
What’s next for the campus?
Bernard: "Our founding partner, the Washington School for Girls, we’re looking to build them a one-campus solution. They currently have two campuses on different parts in Ward 8. We’re going to bring them all home. We’ll build a 33,000-square-foot building for them, which will be our fourth building on the campus. We’ll have the girls there. And really, it’s like a humanitarian mall, right? So it’s a one-stop shop for all of the girls, our courageous young women. They have access to every single partner and then their space will provide opportunity for other nonprofits who are seeking to join the collaboration and be catalytic for the community. So we’re really excited about what’s going on."
What is the District doing to ensure that residents of wards 7 and 8 are part of these efforts to expand wealth east of the river?
Falcicchio: "I’m pretty sure, but all of the Food Access Fund recipients that I talked about in Anacostia would identify as Black. So that’s going to be Black business owners who are hiring District residents, many of them Ward 8 residents. And there’s the Commercial Property Acquisition Fund. One of the key criteria for that is to be a person of color. The way that we get there is we actually are tailoring our programs to make sure that we can take that into account."
Bernard: "Jobs and wealth, there’s a dichotomy there. We are celebrating the fact that our Skyland Workforce Center had its 1,000 placement of Ward 7 and Ward 8 residents into jobs. A portion of that, however, are entrepreneurs that we have been able to really catalyze. And so we’re looking at building the entrepreneurship number. There is our technical internship program at THEARC with the two theaters, the largest theater east of the Anacostia River. And we have now a black box theater where we’re teaching technical theater to those young people who can go out and be entrepreneurs. But I agree. I think as we look at what has been done, there needs to be investment in people for entrepreneurship."
Bankhead Atlanta seems to be attracting development attention which should lead to an explosion of retail development soon. With Microsoft coming, I'm sure the area will be the next hot neighborhood in Atlanta.
Location: The Greatest city on Earth: City of Atlanta Proper
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutiny77
I've known others who have lived in older and newer rental units in downtown, Midtown, Atlantic Station, the stretch of Peachtree connecting Midtown, Buckhead, Lindbergh, etc.
You know what, this is a really good point. Those new "luxury" apartment buildings that have been popping up like wildfire are mostly the domain of college students, drug dealers, strippers, and transplants that are too dumb to know better than to fork over that amount of rent.
Like you stated, middle class and above young professionals in Atlanta tend to settle down in established buildings, townhouses, or fixers uppers. I know purchased a condo in a buidling built in the early 00s, mostly due to a super low association fees but also I didn't want to deal with the slipshod quality that often comes with those "luxury" prices.
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