The Washington Business Journal recently reported on the city’s industrial land as compared to that of Montgomery County.  The article gives me a good excuse to circle back and cover an item I had intended to cover a while ago, which is the task force created to study the industrial land in Ward 5.  At the end of September, the Ward 5 Industrial Land Transformation Task Force held an open house to share progress on the study, due at the end of this year.  The members identified several goals for the study:  (1)  jobs & economic development; (2) new & emerging uses; (3)  improved industrial neighbors; (4)  community amenities; (5)  municipal needs; (6)  create great new places; and (7)  implementation.    All of the maps and documents shared at the open house are available on the Ward 5 Industrial Land Transformation page of the Office of Planning website.

Preserving Industrial Land

While not an explicit goal of the task force, preservation of existing industrial land was a repeated refrain during the open house.  I look forward to seeing how the task force ends up treating this notion of preserving industrial land.  Given that Ward 5 houses around 50% of the city’s industrial land, it will not be too surprising if the development pressures happening in other areas of the city (such as around Buzzard Point) ends up meaning that the industrial land in Ward 5 is preserved to accommodate lost industrial uses in other parts of the city.  Task force members at the open house directed me to the economics consultants to discuss this point.  The economists acknowledged that industrial uses being pushed out by development will go to other areas of the city, including in Ward 5.  Some, however, will relocate outside of the city, and others will simply fold completely.

Inherent in this notion of preserving and adapting existing industrial land is a discussion of vacant and underutilized land.  I was again directed to the economists to discuss this point.  I asked if they had a sense of how much vacant industrial land exists in the city.  They could not immediately quantify the amount of vacant land, but did say that there was not much and directed me to a map showing areas of vacant industrial land.  The most visible areas are adjacent to Rhode Island metro station, land along New York Avenue, and a smaller area in Fort Totten.

While a visual of vacant land is somewhat easy to capture, more difficult is a visual of otherwise underutilized land.  The economists said there was not a clear-cut definition or set of parameters to decide whether land is underutilized.  I asked how the city could preserve and make more efficient use of underutilized land without a sense of what makes the land underutilized.  By way of example, they said a parking deck could be built on existing surface parking lots in Ivy City that are used to park city utility vehicles.  The parking deck would decrease the surface area used to park vehicles and free up space for other uses.  They noted that any consideration of making more efficient use of municipal services and industrial areas would need to consider buffers from residential areas.  Buffers could include retail, landscaping, or possibly even artist live/work spaces.

2006 Industrial Land Study

One other aspect I am looking forward to seeing is how the Ward 5 study matches up with the study on the city’s industrial land commissioned by the Office of Planning in 2006 (pdf).  A summary of the report is available on the city’s website.  That report recommended that some land use in areas in Lamond Riggs, Fort Totten, Brookland, New York Avenue (Ivy City and Bladensburg) be protected and be made available for municipal services.  Lamond Riggs, Fort Totten, and Brookland were also identified as areas in need of buffer considerations.  The study also supported a recommendation that the areas closest to Fort Totten and Brookland metro stations be redeveloped for transit-oriented development.*

* Earlier this year, the real estate development committee for WMATA indicated that bids would go out before the end of the year to redevelop the land by the metro stations with mixed-use devleopment.