D.C. Chinatown Redesign Proposals Unveiled
Despite plans for the Capitals and Wizards to remain in Washington, officials still considering revitalization of downtown area. Some office-to-resi proposals could add about 7,000 new multifamily residential units.
By Jacob Gardenswartz May 7, 2024 6:10 pm
reprints
Though the much-debated plan to build a new stadium for the Washington Capitals and Wizards in Virginia is dead for now, Washington, D.C., officials are not giving up on their efforts to redesign the city’s Chinatown neighborhood, home to the Capital One Arena complex and National Portrait Gallery.
Initially formed to consider how the 130-acre area in Downtown D.C. might respond to the sports teams’ relocation, members of Mayor Murial Bowser’s Gallery Place/Chinatown Task Force pitched their “8 Big Ideas” for a possible redesign to an audience of local residents and community officials, Bowser among them, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library on Saturday. Some proposals include converting millions of square feet of office space into roughly 7,000 residential units.
Chief among the officials’ goals was responding to local calls for more green space, better walkability and greater access to affordable housing.
“We want the arena to speak more to the streets around it, to the small businesses around it and to the arts and entertainment culture that already exists in our downtown,” Bowser said at the event, according to BisNow.
The task force itself is co-chaired by three women with a background in redesigning D.C. spaces: Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Nina Albert; Edens CEO Jodie McLean; and Deborah Ratner Salzberg, Uplands Real Estate principal and former Forest City Washington president. A slew of other consultants collaborated on the proposal, including officials with urbanist design firms such as Creative Class Group, Gehl and SiteLab Urban Studio, landscape architecture groups Field Operations and PUSH Studio, restaurateurs with the José Andrés Group, and many more.
“Jodie and I plan neighborhoods. That’s what we do. We plan. We build. We execute,” Ratzner Salzberg said during the event. “So whenever we are starting a project or looking at something, we are doing it with a focus on people. Our job was to make people come back into this neighborhood in droves.”
Among the ideas proposed by the task force was the creation of a “Gallery Square and Walk” along Eighth Street Northwest extending from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center all the way to the Hirshhorn Museum on the National Mall a mile south. That path already has low levels of car traffic and wide sidewalks, according to the task force presentation. The proposed redesign would “rebalance” the roadway with a designated pedestrian-only area down the center and single-lane traffic on either side. Along the walk would be public art installations and seating spaces modeled on similar sites in New York City, Paris and Vienna, officials noted.
“If we think about how this street might be reimagined, we think about pedestrians and we think about an opportunity to weave pedestrians and vehicles together but in a way that creates an absolutely unique experience,” said Uwe Brendes, faculty director of the Urban & Regional Planning Program at Georgetown University and a task force collaborator, per Washington Business Journal.
Another proposal would transform Capital One Arena from the “large, imposing” presence it is today to a more “neighborly” space, featuring an “F Street Activation” to give fans a more safe and easy place to congregate after games. Other ideas included the creation of a “spine” along Seventh Street to connect the National Mall with the Washington waterfront, the planting of more trees along downtown roadways to create “botanical streets,” a new “Judiciary Gardens” greenspace in Judiciary Square, greater cultural investments in Chinatown programming, and the conversion of millions of square feet of office space to residential units.
The proposal specifically named three large and underutilized government buildings as possibilities for redevelopment: a 6.4-acre Government Accountability Office building, 11.6-acre Department of Labor (DOL) headquarters and 6.5-acre J. Edgar Hoover Building, currently home to the FBI.
Already, government officials have discussed disposing of the Hoover building as the agency plans a relocation to Greenbelt, Md.; the DOL building, meanwhile, is being utilized at only 9 percent occupancy, a report from the Public Buildings Reform Board found last year.
Redesigning the FBI headquarters space alone could create some 1,400 new residential units, according to the presentation, along with a new library, tennis courts and other recreational spaces. Altogether, officials hope to create around 7,000 new housing units in the area.
“We need to learn how to really turn this district, turn our great institutions, sort of inside out,” McLean said during the event. “Bring them out, bring them to life, bring them together in one place.”
Bowser launched the redesign task force in January shortly after it was announced that the Capitals and Wizards would be moving to Virginia. Monumental Sports & Entertainment CEO Ted Leonsis, who owns the teams, backtracked five months later after reaching a deal with the District to keep the teams at Capital One arena for another 25 years. As a part of the agreement, he secured $515 million in District funding and announced Monumental’s expansion into the Gallery Place mixed-use development next door.
Unmentioned in the task force presentation were any possible funding mechanisms for the proposals. Officials are currently soliciting feedback from the community, and have until September to produce more concrete recommendations for the neighborhood redesign.
