Lots of movement in the neighborhood development pipeline. Let’s take a look.

Fort Totten Square

Fort Totten Square, a mixed-use development by JBG Companies and Lowe Enterprises consisting of approximately 345 apartments atop ground floor retail, officially opened in 2015 on Riggs Road NE between 3rd Street and Chillum Place. While the 117,000 square foot Walmart anchor opened in October 2015, ancillary tenants Subway, Five Guys, and Petco all opened near the corner of Chillum Place and Riggs Road NE in 2016.

We still anticipate that a local coffee shop will occupy the space at 3rd Street and Riggs Road, but it looks like we will have to wait until 2017 for that. We have our fingers crossed and look forward to supporting what we believe will be a great addition to the neighborhood.

Art Place at Fort Totten

Construction continues on this multi-phase mixed-use development by Cafritz Enterprises along South Dakota Avenue NE between Galloway Street and Kennedy Street. According to the project page on leasing agent HR Retail’s website, the first phase of the project will open in May 2017. The first phase will consist of approximately 520 apartments atop approximately 100,000 square feet of ground floor retail, with around 141 units set aside for seniors and the tenants of the Riggs Plaza apartments. Relocation of the Riggs Plaza tenants is expected to begin in April 2017.

X-Sport Fitness anchors the project. Other leased tenants include T-Mobile, a pharmacy, and Shining Stars Pediatric Dentist. Lots of retail space remains available for lease as of this writing. Early design plans included space for up to three restaurants. No word on any restaurant tenants just yet though.

The project permanently closed Hamilton Street NE west of South Dakota Avenue. An extension of Ingraham Street NE to the west of South Dakota Avenue still needs to be constructed.

One great aspect of this project is that power to the site will be provided underground. No more butchered trees, so we should enjoy a nice tree canopy along South Dakota Avenue in the future.

Explore! Children’s Museum

We are excited to add the Explore! Children’s Museum of Washington DC to our neighborhood development pipeline this year. One big draw of the Art Place at Fort Totten development is that a children’s museum is planned for the development. While the exact location and timeframe for construction are still open questions, we were excited to see the ball get rolling on plans for the museum.

This year, Explore! museum staff opened an office in the neighborhood and held a Fall Fun Fest and Winter Wonder Fest in their museum hub at 5455 3rd Street NE to introduce themselves to the neighborhood and get feedback on their plans for the museum. Snowflake painting, DIY snow globes, DIY bird feeders, masks, music, and storytelling were just a few of the fun activities that drew families from not just the neighborhood, but from across the metro area. We look forward to having a true destination spot in the neighborhood.

The museum plans to open a pop-up location in the National Portrait Gallery in late January 2017. The next neighborhood event will take place on April 1, 2017.

Fort Totten Metro Donatelli Development

Metro issued a request for proposals to develop the long-term parking lot at Fort Totten metro station way back in 2014. The agency selected Donatelli Development’s proposal to build 345 rental apartments, 10,000 square feet of ground floor retail, and a parking garage to replace the surface parking lot. According to Donatelli’s website and Metro’s term sheet with Donatelli, construction on this project will begin in 2017.

Fort Totten South

Also known as Fort Totten Square Phase II, plans for Fort Totten South (pdf) are moving steadily. JBG has teamed up with EYA to build a mixed-use development with approximately 26,000 square feet of retail and 170 to 180 mostly back-to-back townhomes atop a retail podium on the southeast corner of Riggs Road and South Dakota Avenue NE.

Early design plans show one- to two-bedroom loft-style homes fronting South Dakota Avenue with ground floor retail fronting Riggs Road and stacked two- to four-bedroom townhomes above the retail podium. A minimum of 29 of the homes will be set aside as affordable dwelling units and the developers have committed to set aside 5,000 square feet of the retail for a local retailer. A parking garage will sit behind the homes.

The DC Council recently recommended approval of the sale of District-owned property for the project. The developers will start removing trees from the site in January 2017. Current timeline anticipates construction starting in late 2018.

That wraps up our year-end neighborhood development report. Lots to look forward to in 2017. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year.

From DC’s Office of Planning:
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The DC Office of Planning (OP) is leading the amendment process of the District’s Comprehensive Plan, its 20-year framework for the future planning and development of the city. OP is holding its seventh PlanDC: Amending the DC Comprehensive Plan community meeting on Monday, November 14th at Luke C. Moore High School, 1001 Monroe St. NE, from 6pm-8pm.  Due to the revised schedule for WMATA’s SafeTrack Surge #10, the Brookland Metrorail station, the nearest station, will be closed on November 14th. OP sincerely apologizes for this inconvenience. OP reviewed upcoming SafeTrack work when scheduling its PlanDC community meetings and secured this meeting location and date when SafeTrack Surge#10 was originally scheduled to be completed before November 14th.

We encourage you to take alternative means of transportation to the meeting; please allow additional time for your travel. Please visit safetrack.godcgo.com to learn more about other transportation choices. Specific options include:

• Metro shuttle buses will be running between the Fort Totten and NoMa Metrorail stations.
• Bus routes servicing the Brookland Metrorail station include the H1, H2, H3, H4, H6, H8, H9, R4, G8, and 80.
• A Capital Bikeshare station is located at 10th and Monroe Streets, NE.
• On-street parking is available as well as in the school parking lot.

If you are not able to attend the November 14th PlanDC meeting, please visit PlanDC.dc.gov to review presentations and other meeting materials from the first six PlanDC meetings and fill out an online survey.

Additionally, a Meeting Summary and Public Comment Digest for Meeting #1 on October 19th is available online at PlanDC.dc.gov. Summary reports for the remaining meetings, including the November 14th meeting, will be available soon.

For more details about the Comprehensive Plan Amendment Process, please visit PlanDC.dc.gov and sign up for alerts or contact the DC Office of Planning at (202) 442-7600 or plandc@dc.gov. Follow us on Twitter: @OPinDC #PlanDC #DCCompPlan.

Fall Fun Fest tomorrow! Events in the warehouse and outdoors. Dress accordingly

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Fall Fun Fest
Saturday, October 22, 1 PM – 3 PM
5455 3rd St NE, Washington, DC 20011

Curious about the new children’s museum coming to the Fort Totten neighborhood? Come get a FREE sneak peek!
• Fanciful music and storytelling with Sylvia Zwi
• Large-scale whimsical weaving
• Saxophone demo with Herbert Scott
• Make your own bird feeder
• Create a spooky mask

Families and children of all ages welcome. Share your ideas for the museum and learn how to get involved.

Update: Survey is closed

Plans are afoot to develop the second phase of Fort Totten Square, which will consist of 170-180 townhomes and 26,000 square feet of ground level retail on the southeast corner of South Dakota Avenue and Riggs Road NE. A minimum of 29 of the homes will be offered at below market rate price. The District owns part of the land on which the developers want to build. Therefore, LRCA is exploring a community benefits package related to potential sale of the land for the project. Please take a moment to take LRCA’s brief survey soliciting resident input on community benefits.

Click the link: Community Benefits Survey

Plans are afoot to develop the second phase of Fort Totten Square, which will consist of 170-180 townhomes and 26,000 square feet of ground level retail on the southeast corner of South Dakota Avenue and Riggs Road NE. A minimum of 29 of the homes will be offered at below market rate price. The District owns part of the land on which the developers want to build. Therefore, LRCA is exploring a community benefits package related to potential sale of the land for the project. Please take a moment to take LRCA’s brief survey soliciting resident input on community benefits by October 3.

Click the link: Community Benefits Survey

A new children’s museum is coming to Riggs Park. The Explore! Children’s Museum of Washington DC is hosting a Fall Fun Fest on October 22, 2016, to give residents a sneak peek of the new museum. This blog covered in these posts the decision to locate the museum in the existing warehouses located at 3rd and Kennedy Street NE rather than in a new building to be constructed as part of a much later phase of the Art Place at Fort Totten project.

Fall Fun Fest details below:

Johnson Development wants to build a self-storage facility at 5600 Second Street NE (across the street from Fort Totten Square). Because the project is over 50,000 square feet, it has to undergo large tract review. DC’s Office of Planning asks for comments from ANC 4B by September 19, 2016. ANC 4B’s Design Review Committee is meeting at 6:30pm on September 19 at Shepherd Park Library to review the application.

The developer wants to tear down the building that housed the former print shop and build a four-story self-storage facility. The property is located in an industrial zone (renamed Production-Distribution-Repair zone in the zoning update). Renderings show a facade that is broken up with different materials, a mix of brick and siding, playing off the facade of Fort Totten Square and designed to look more like a residential building. As far as storage facilities go, the rendering is not terrible. The building will have either a green roof and there will be graded streetscape in front. (Maybe we are being nostalgic, but we kind of like the old buildings that are there now. So many cities are repurposing their old industrial buildings in cool ways. But we digress.)

The application notes that the Comprehensive Plan General Policy Map (GPM) designates the property as a “Land Use Change Area” to encourage adaptive reuse to become a mixed-use community. The developer says self-storage is not inconsistent with this general policy map because it is changing what was an industrial use to a more community-oriented use in that as density increases, demand for storage space will increase. And the developer believes this use fits with the interim green enterprise use contemplated by the plan. Whether these conclusions are reasonable is up for debate, but a self-storage facility is permitted under the current designation.

The developer also notes the Future Land Use Map (or FLUM), adopted as part of the Comp Plan, designates the property as a mixed-use space (moderate density residential and commercial), but of course the FLUM is not a zoning map. And the developer says self-storage is similar to a retail or service use and in fact may have less impact than similarly-sized commercial or retail uses (paraphrasing). Readers might recall, the FLUM became an issue in the 901 Monroe Street NE case in Brookland where the DC Court of Appeals relied in part on the FLUM to reject the developers’ attempt to change the zoning designation for that property (paraphasing greatly). See this Washington Business Journal article for more on that case.

There is lots more in the application about urban design, controlling storm runoff, traffic flow, etc. Note that the developer says it does not have to do a traffic impact analysis because it does not estimate more than 25 trips/peak hour, which it says is DDOT’s threshold for having to do a traffic analysis. (The developer estimates 23 trips/peak hour during evening rush). We already know that intersection is kind of a mess, with drivers trying to exit Walmart’s parking lot and drivers making illegal U-turns in the middle of the street, so at the very least, that needs to be addressed by DDOT. Loading will take place in the interior of the site. With a likely 14-foot clearance, the building will not be designed to handle really large truck deliveries (no 18-wheelers here).

We are sort of agnostic about a self-storage facility. On the one hand, the small area plan designates this property as a development opportunity site (as acknowledged by the developer in its application) and that is reflected in the general policy map and FLUM. On the other hand, some people complain about more density in the neighborhood, so this is one less building that will be developed with potentially hundreds of more residents and commercial uses, creating more traffic. Once this facility is built, it will not be going anywhere for a long time. And as far as industrial uses go, it is not a super obnoxious use and will be useful to residents. So there are tradeoffs. Plenty would welcome more residents/mixed use spaces; others do not want more density. We would say we will have to decide what kind of density we want as a community, but residents already decided that with the small area plan. And the plan contemplates four corners of development around the South Dakota Avenue/Riggs Road intersection. But that is a different post for a different day.