Park View, D.C.

(Neighbors at the Petworth Library listening to updates on the Hebrew Home project, Tuesday, March 19th)

A good number of neighbors attended the Hebrew Home redevelopment update meeting at the Petworth Library on March 19th. The primary objective of the meeting was to learn where the project for 1125 Spring Road, NW, is and what progress has been made since the project got the green light to move foreword. While the development team is still fine tuning the project, key updates shared focused on approvals the project has received to date, design element refinements, and the basic timeline for when construction would begin.

Current status of approvals as of March 2019.

The plans for the historic Hebrew Home building were approved by the HPRB in January 2018, following Victory Housing and Brinshore being awarded the project in August 2017.

When completed, the development will include the creation of 187 residential units through a mix of townhomes and apartments. The project will include the creation of 88 units of affordable housing for seniors at or below 60 percent Area Median Income (AMI) through the adaptive preservation of the historic Hebrew Home building as well as the creation of 62 units of affordable housing in a newly constructed building at the current site of the Paul Robeson School.

Currently the team is continuing to work on design and financing stages of the project. They anticipate several more months of work  before construction can begin, and that will be once all the financing is in place. Optimistically, construction could begin in late 2019. Conservatively, construction could begin by January or February 2020 at the latest.

Both the renovation of the historic Hebrew Home building and the new construction next door would begin at the same time, though they would likely be completed at different times. Once construction begins, the historic renovation should take approximately 14 months to complete, while the new family building would take approximately 18 months to complete.

(Current design for the Spring Road side of the new construction.)

(The 10th Street elevation, incorporating more brick.)

Overall, most residents who asked questions and commented on the 1125 Spring Road site expressed a spirit of support for the effort. The chief area of frustration centered on the issue of neighborhood parking and frustration with the District Government for not doing more to leverage District resources to assist with the parking needs of Raymond Elementary, the Raymond Recreation Center, and neighbors.

For example, Raymond Elementary has a large surface parking lot to the east of the building, yet DCPS has expressed that the parking lot is for the sole use of the school and not open to either the community or rec center to use. I, along with others, expressed that this is unacceptable as the school is District property. Furthermore, the recreation center was rebuilt as an extension of the school so that the school has use of the rec center during school hours as an extension of their programs. When the school is not in session, the school property must equally be flexible  and available to support the needs of the rec center. Clearly there is more work to do regarding the parking issue and DCPS’ rigidity with access to their property.

In reviewing the boards and other information that was available, I also noticed some programming and rough plans for the pocket park that is located to the west of the Hebrew Home building. I’m including that image below to show the progress on that aspect of the project.

(Programming diagram for the pocket park on Spring Road.)