City Center DC Brochure

Our neighbors at PQLiving shared news of zoning adjustments at the City Center DC site yesterday. That led me to visit CityCenterDC.com for the first time since August. Hines Archstone has revamped the site adding more details including a video and a 38 page brochure. Below are a few screen prints from the materials.

Aerial view rendering of CityCenterDC; Click to visit brochure

Retail visioning at CityCenterDC; Click to visit brochure

The plans call for 458 apartments, 216 condos, 458,000 SF of office space and between 250,000 and 400,000 SF of retail. 10th and Eye Streets will be restored to the street grid. An interior courtyard is placed between the four residential buildings and pedestrian alleyways paved with cobblestone cut through mid-block. All parking and loading is underground so that retail lines all streets and alley ways, 20% of the housing is affordable and there is a new park at NY Ave and 11th.

Triangle under consideration for new 6,000 seat theatre venue?

On Wednesday the Washington Business Journal created enormous buzz with news that the Madison Square Garden LP is aggressively scouring D.C. to identify a site for a new theatre venue. The article suggested MSG would open a venue of a 6,000 seats or more, requiring up to 100,000 square feet near shopping and public transit.

A day later, WBJ reporter Jonathan O'Connell unveiled more specifics on the locations under consideration. Two locations are in the immediate vicinity of the Nationals ballpark. The other three strike much closer to home:

• The Wilkes Company - Mount Vernon Place. Sandy Wilkes apparently met with the MSG team and he is planning 2.2 million square feet of development two blocks east of Mount Vernon Square. Not much further from the action.
  
• Douglas Development - Mount Vernon Triangle. Ever since assembling 1.2 million square feet across from the convention center, Douglas Jemal has been pursuing an entertainment attraction.
  
• Hines - CityCenter DC. The old convention center site will be the city's most high-end major development and has 111,460 square feet along New York Avenue between 9th and 11th Streets. Close to downtown, subway stations and dining options, it may be the most New York City-esque part of D.C.

How big would a 100,000sf venue be? Nearly double the size of the 59,000sf City Vista Safeway. From a capacity standpoint it would be 6X that of the 930 club, 3X the previously proposed House of Blues, and 1.5X the size of DAR Constitution Hall.

Proposed MSG venue would have 1.5 times the capacity of DAR Constitution Hall

What are reactions to this? I can't believe Mount Vernon Place is a serious contender. By my rough math neither of MVP's two largest remaining continuous assemblages of land on K Street is > 45000sf. City Center could definitely accomodate this project if desired. Douglas Development might have problems because of all the holdouts (Marrakesh, Rupperts) and historical properties they have to work around.

Where ever this project lands I hope MSG has a commitment to producing an architecturally beautiful building befitting a grand theatre rather than a value engineered blank box like the Convention Center or the 6th Street frontage of the Verizon Center.

UPDATE (8/18/09 7:10PM) - I've talked to an industry insider and while MSG needs 100,000 sf for the venue the required land footprint would be 50,000sf. Mount Vernon Place still is a non-starter as their largest land assemblage is 45,000sf which falls shy even before you have to carve a few thousand square feet out on the ground level for supporting infrastructure like parking garage egress, loading docks, etc...

Just two months left in the trapeze season

Two months ago we highlighted the arrival of the Washington Trapeze School at City Center (9th & H). With just two months left in the "semester" I was wondering who has tried getting their high flying acrobat on?


Yelp does presently have 3 reviews for the local incarnation of the Trapeze School - each of which grades the class as a five star experience. Juliana from Chevy Chase writes: "I feel like a limp noodle, my hands are blistered and my arms are all scratched up, but damn if that wasn't one of the most fun evenings I've had in a while."

Lastly, it's worth mentioning that these classes are cheaper than you might think - roughly ~$50 for two hours.

Photo credit: Oddlittlebird

Street Soccer USA Cup

This weekend Kastles Stadium at City Center DC is hosting the Street Soccer USA Cup. Mayor Fenty Tournament games accompanied by DJ music will go on throughout the weekend with the final game scheduled for 3pm on Sunday. Admission to the event is free.


From the SSUSA website:

Street Soccer USA offers the most excluded a chance to get in the game. SSUSA is national league of street soccer teams, which grows the game in urban areas while helping the homeless and impoverished move off the street and back into education and jobs. As official partner of the Homeless World Cup, SSUSA competes in the 56 nation international tournament each year. We also host the Street Soccer USA Cup, the nation's premier sport for social change event. Visit www.streetsoccerusablog.com. Get in the game yourself by playing with us and investing in the lives of our players.

Trapeze School at Old Convention Center site

The Washington Trapeze School has relocated from Baltimore to the Old Convention Center site (aka City Center) at 9th & H. The Washingtonpost reports the school will run for four months.


The trapeze school's website gives credit to a Sex in the City episode for generating unprecedented buzz for their school.

Photo credit: Oddlittlebird

Kastles press conference at City Center parking lot

Walking to Metro Center this morning I saw a TV Crew, two mascots and presumably some officials from both the city government and Washington Kastles in the City Center parking lot.


I didn't have time to really seek out the best angle. Topsin, the big Tennis ball, is clearly visible in the image however the mascot in the Knight outfit is obstructed.

April DNA Meeting Notes

Meeting notes from the April DNA Meeting provided by Miles Groves:

Our primary discussion leader was Neil Albert, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Planning. He covered the breadth of public space development across downtown including the convention center hotel, CityCenterDC, The Arts at 5th and I, Franklin School, and the Louis Dreyfus 395 air rights project. In short, despite the slowdown, we have a lot of development activity in the pipeline.

Neil shared that our city economy is in good shape, especially when compared with neighboring Virginia and Maryland and we continue to benefit from lots of development. He discussed the mayor’s commitment to no tax increases, buttressed by efforts to reduce overhead by 15 percent and a focus on efficiencies. He noted that city government had been growing at an unsustainable rate of 8 to 11 percent over the past decade. Among the projects discussed:

• The Convention Center Hotel, funded by $152 million in Tax Increment Funding dollars will not be completed until 2012. In order to be competitive, our convention center must have the hotel.
  
• CityCenterDC is moving forward and the deputy mayor was 85 percent sure that we would have a ground breaking this year. (Ed note: Albert said after the Washington Kastles tennis season)
  
• The Arts at 5th & Eye negotiations continue between the developer group and the city. The deputy mayor was 99.75 percent sure that an agreement would close and that the project would go forward.
  
• He acknowledged our interest in the development of the Franklin School property. There will be a request for expressions of interest (RFEI) going out soon to help the city review possible uses for this property before any formal RFP process begins. He promised to engage downtown residents in the process as it goes forward.
  
• The Louis Dreyfus project puts a top on highway 395 with mixed-use development including commercial, retail, and residential uses included. They had shared at an earlier ANC meeting plans to locate the Jewish Historical building to the west lawn of The Building Museum, a plan that DNA had objected too. He shared that they would prepare the new location and that there would be no intermediate temporary location.

Note: Hyperlink markup is from me, not Miles