Post updated 12/23/2017 to add information about the Bertie Backus Food Hub

Lots of movement on the development front in Riggs Park this year.

Art Place at Fort Totten

In September 2017, residents began moving into The Modern at Art Place, the first phase of Art Place at Fort Totten, located at 400 Galloway Street NE. On November 27, 2017, Mayor Muriel Bowser cut the ribbon to officially celebrate the opening of this development. Leasing for the 520 apartments is being done in phases. The retail portion covers about 100,000 square feet. Lots of rumors abound, but the retailers we know about for sure include X-Sport Fitness, Ramadans Pharmacy, Shining Stars Pediatric Dentist, and T-Mobile. Those will open some time after the new year.

Explore! Children’s Museum

The Explore! Children’s Museum is still slated for the second phase of Art Place at Fort Totten. There have been questions about the news that the National Children’s Museum will be opening up downtown in the Reagan Building in 2019. The Explore! Museum and the National Children’s Museum are two different children’s museums. Plans are still afoot for the Explore! museum to come to Riggs Park in the future. Earlier this year, Explore! established a partnership with National Portrait Gallery. The museum has also held well-attended, quarterly festival events in the neighborhood in Riggs Park for the past couple of years. Look for a larger festival next year.

Fort Totten Square 

Culture Coffee Too opened at Fort Totten Square at 300 Riggs Road NE on November 13, 2017, bringing a much needed gathering space and cultural offerings to Riggs Park. The coffee shop joins Walmart, Subway, Petco, and Five Guys to complete retail leasing for Fort Totten Square.

Fort Totten South

JBG, developer of Fort Totten Square, has teamed up with EYA for the second phase to Fort Totten Square, known as Fort Totten South. We previously wrote extensively about this project because it involved the sale of District-owned property to the development team. The council approved the sale earlier this year.

EYA has changed the design since the first iteration, which previously involved building approximately 180 back-to-back townhomes atop a podium with retail on the ground floor. The latest plan has 160 homes, with only 65 back-to-back homes atop a podium and the remainder traditional townhomes with garages. There will be fewer two-bedroom homes. The majority will be three-bedroom. Though they have reduced the number of homes, there will still be approximately 29 below-market rate homes, both two and three-bedroom.

Ground floor retail space remains at around 20,000 to 23,000 square feet. There will be underground parking for the retail and the townhomes on the platform instead of a structured garage as in the previous plan. EYA is considering two alternative color schemes, red brick and what they consider a more modern, lighter color. A small portion of the site has a residential zoning designation instead of a mixed-use zoning designation, so the developer will apply to the Board of Zoning Adjustment for a change to make the zoning designation mixed-use for the entire site.

See EYA Fort Totten South Revised Plans December 2017

 

Lamond-Riggs Library

The Lamond-Riggs Library will be completely rebuilt at its current location at 5401 South Dakota Avenue NE. The kick-off meeting was held in October 2017. A design team will be selected around April or May of 2018. A design kickoff meeting will follow in summer 2018. Library officials will hold targeted focus groups for residents. The current library is anticipated to close in fall 2019 and the interim library will open around the same time. The current timeline has the new library opening in 2021.

Be sure to visit the project website at http://dclibrary.org/newlamondriggs for up-to-date information.

Metro/Donatelli Fort Totten Joint Development Project

The project to redevelop the long-term parking lot at Fort Totten metro station has been hanging around for a couple of years now, waiting for approval of a joint development agreement by Metro’s board. We wrote about the project in this post. Metro selected Donatelli for the joint development project back in 2015. The plan involves building around 345 apartments and 10,000 square feet of retail with a structured garage to replace the surface parking lot. Construction is anticipated to begin in 2018.

Metropolitan Branch Trail

We are including the extension of the Metropolitan Branch Trail from Brookland to Fort Totten in this development report because it will be a useful connection for residents from Riggs Park to points south and into downtown. In October 2017, DDOT awarded a design-build contract to Potomac Construction Company for the Fort Totten extension. Construction is anticipated to begin in 2018 and should take around one to two years to complete.

Bertie Backus Urban Food Hub

In September of this year, UDC CAUSES held an open house to introduce the Bertie Backus Urban Food Hub to the community. The food hub is located on the campus of UDC-CC Backus at 5171 South Dakota Avenue NE (off Galloway Street). The food hub has a hydroponics house, aquaponics house, compost collective, community garden, and will eventually contain a native plant nursery and commercial food kitchen. There is also potential for a farmers market, or at least possibly a farm stand by summer 2018. The open house was the start of more community engagement with the food hub, spearheaded by Cheryl Dixon and CAUSES faculty. Compost training classes and sign-ups for the community garden took place in November and December. CAUSES faculty remarked how surprised they were by the strong level of resident interest in the activities at the food hub. Next year will bring more opportunities for community participation during the growing season as well. This food hub really is an opportunity to organically build community and we look forward to watching it grow next year.

That wraps up our 2017 development report. Lots of retail to look forward to coming online in 2018. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year.