The District’s Parcel 42
16 04 2008
The District apparently has big (and very blue) plans for the property they own on the corner of 7th Street and Rhode Island Avenue in the Shaw neighborhood. Developers have been selected and the proposal includes building 112 apartments—all of them will be rented to residents earning less than 60 percent of the Area’s Medium Income, which is about $90,000 for a family of four.
The project will also include 8,000 square feet of retail space. The office of the Deputy Mayor is currently negotiating the exclusive rights agreement with the developers and the project is on schedule to break ground next summer.
We hope they keep the blue exterior, we really really like it! [Rendering: Metamorphosis Development Group]
ewh — I hate the renderings. It looks very cheap and 1960’s-ish communist chic. It seems that the selection of this proposal was largely political — OneDC lobbied hard for its selection (apparently in this development package, they are set to receive some financial benefits from the developer — check out Kevin Chapple’s forum for the deets).
I posted a while back on “what might have been” re: Parcel 42. There was a particularly beautiful proposal with numerous community benefits that was passed over for this, which locals dub “the blue whale” design.
ug
To be fair, “communist chic” would have been red, but we do see where you’re coming from.
That’s the problem with many of these projects, they lack imagination!
Didn’t the developer go back to the drawing board because the community hated this design so much? I think Kevin Chapple posted about this on his blog a while back.
Yes part of the negotiations going on right now may include a redesign, though nothing drastically different from the details we reported (ie. still affordable housing, still mid-rise height)… though it probably won’t be blue, or red for that matter!