Park View, D.C.

Development in Park View this year tended to focus on smaller residential buildings rather than the big, high density projects often proposed.

Despite much anticipation, the future “V” at 3557 Georgia (corner of Otis Pl) just didn’t get off the ground in 2013.

Large projects, with the exception of the 69-unit Neighborhood Development Company The Heights/32Thirty-two Apartments completed in May 2013, have either stalled or are still on the drawing boards. The most significant of these projects is the redevelopment of the New Community for Park Morton, which has been in the works for over four years. The completion of the nearby 89-unit The Avenue was touted as the first phase of a the redevelopment of Park Morton, but even that project didn’t add enough capacity for the development to move forward without more land. A deal to include the properties on Georgia Avenue between Park Road and Morton Street never materialized leaving the development in a state of limbo. The failure to redevelop Park Morton may also be one of the reasons for the delay in Neighborhood Development Company’s The Vue project — planned for the strip mall property on the southeast corner of Georgia and Morton Street.

Other significant projects that just didn’t seem to go anywhere, didn’t get zoning variance approval, or just plan haven’t begun include the 20-unit building designed for the southeast corner of Georgia and Otis Place, the 6-unit project proposed for the 400 b/o Newton Place, and the 6-unit Blue Water proposal for the blighted 3612-3614 Park Place properties.

Dispite the comatose projects referenced above, there was significant small scale housing development in Park View during 2013. Starting from the north of the neighborhood and moving south, the long vacant buildings at 809-811 Otis Place, NW, along with a smaller apartment building across the street were renovated to provide 36 new units offered by Rock Creek Realty.

Rendering of 610 Newton Place.

Moving to the south, two projects are currently in various stages of development on Newton Place. The older, and larger, of the two is at 610 Newton Place. This project is moving along nicely and so far is living up to expectations. 610 Newton will contain 12 new living units. To the west of Georgia Avenue, another housing project has just begun. The rowhouses at 703-707 Newton Place are in the early stages of being razed to make way for a new building that will contain 9 new one- and two-bedroom units.

The new condos at 762 Park Road are finished and available for viewing.

Continuing to move south, there are two new developments near the intersection of Sherman Avenue and Park Road. The first was the 6-unit Park Row located at 3413-3417 Sherman Avenue. These were completed in September 2013. This was closely followed by the completed North Star Condos in December. Located at 762 Park Road, NW, the North Star added 7 more two-bedroom units to the neighborhood.

The intersection of Georgia Avenue and Kenyon Street will also be adding more housing to the neighborhood. The new building at 3205 Georgia has topped out and will be completed in 2014. The building will have five floors and 31 1- and 2-bedroom rental units when completed. A short distance to the west, at 715 Kenyon Street, the former single family house is nearly completed in its conversion to 6 2-bedroom units.

So, in reflecting upon neighborhood housing during 2013, 118 new units were added in Park View during the past year, with another 58 currently in various stages of construction, for a total of 176 new housing units. Considering that the Petworth Safeway will be adding an additional 218 units to the north, and 2920 Georgia will be adding 26 new units to the south, by this time next year there will easily be another 302 new housing units online (with other projects, such as the 105-unit building being planned for the former Petworth Liquor site, sure to arise in 2014), which is all very good news for our small business community and most assuredly will help draw new businesses to the empty commercial space that currently exists on Georgia Avenue.

This entry was posted on December 26, 2013 at 10:44 am and is filed under Housing. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Development, housing, Park View