Park View, D.C.

I’ve received a heads up from a number of people that the church and parking lot at 625 Park Road is for sale, with an asking price of $8,900,000. The property last sold in July 2013 for $2,100,000 and while there have been no improvements to the property, it does have an approved development plan that is valuable (plans here).

The listing states:

Opportunity for Condo builders -Shovel Ready- Approved 38 units with Plans and Permit. For sale is the assemblage of existing church at 625 Park road to be converted to 12 units and a lot at 633 Park road approved for 26 units. Total of 36K sqft. (11) 1BR/1.5 Baths, (26) 2BR/2.5 baths and (1) 3BR unit.

The former church building on the property was added to the DC Inventory of Historic Sites in June 2014, but that listing does not include the vacant parking lot. The resulting plan and overall concept was approved by both the Board of Zoning Adjustment and the Historic Preservation Review Board. Since that time there has been no progress on the site, which is puzzling. While the historic status of the church initially created a design challenge (already solved), it also created some financial incentives.

The biggest asset for the church structure is that a 20% income tax credit is available for the rehabilitation of historic, income-producing buildings.  This incentive is significant enough that many developers who renovate large apartment buildings will nominate their buildings for historic consideration in order to qualify for the tax credit. In nearby Columbia Heights, Urban Investment Partners (UIP) sought and got landmark status for the apartment building at 1346 Park Road precisely for this reason. Other sources of revenue are available as well, such as a DC Preservation League grant for up to $50,000 that could be used for a bricks-and-mortar project at the church building.

Unfortunately, the site is too small (and too expensive) for it to be incorporated into the effort to redevelop Park Morton — though I’ve long thought it would have been a nice addition to the project with the church functioning as a community meeting room, rental office, and other community uses.

Its also notable that while the site is officially listed on Redfin now, the owner seems to have been willing to sell the property since the beginning of the year as it was one of the sites Mayor Bowser considered for the new short-term family housing to be built across the city so that D.C. General can close, but the site was ultimately not selected for a shelter as it was considered to be too small for that purpose too.

This entry was posted on December 16, 2016 at 7:01 am and is filed under Development, Historic Landmarks, Housing, Real Estate. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Development, housing, Park View