L’Enfant Plaza Air Rights
11 09 2008
File this one under projects that probably won’t be built any time soon, but it’s fun to dream. The design by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects is for the south air rights over the highway that goes underneath L’Enfant plaza.
That area is really lacking residential options and this would help turn the neighborhood around from being a ghost town in the evening when all the federal workers go home for the day. The glass building looks nice doesn’t it? [Rendering: Pelli Clarke Pelli]
can they please just tear down L’Enfent Plaza and start completely over?
This looks like they gutted the L’Enfant Hotel and put up a glass facade. But considering that the owners just spent a few million on renovations, I doubt this will happen anytime soon, unless they sell.
PS….Enough glass, it dosen’t translate well from renderings to reality.
I’m not sure that more residential space would improve the ghost town feel. Witness the rest of SW, where I live, which is lifeless despite being the home to thousands of residential units.
Looks a million times better than what is there now. L’Enfant Plaza is huuurtting. It really looks like it could be from the Soviet Union or Mussolini’s Italy.
What is the status of the air rights over 395(295) further south?
I would argue that the redeveloped SW is dead on evenings not because of a lack of housing, but because of the lack of an intermingling of housing and retail. The uses are all highly segregated.
I think that many (but not all) of the residents of SW are against any increased nightlife. Look at their opposition to what already exists on the waterfront and their opposition to increased density and retail waterfront redevelopment. They like the quiet suburban feel that it offers and don’t want that changed.
I’m not a fan of the architecture. It looks like a cube with 9th Street running through it. I agree with Capitol Dome, though. Hopefully, the Waterfront Station project along with the Southwest Waterfront redevelopment may remedy that problem, since there will be some mixed-use development in both of those projects. However, the Southwest Rectangle area where L’Enfant Plaza is located is one large federal office park with a few hotels sprinkled in.