LIne Forms to the Left

---for new townhouses in Southeast near the Baseball Stadium. Folks are camping out for when the units become available in July.

Bubble View:
---People say the market is soft and say they are crazy. Maybe they are.

Link: WaPo

JPI Breaks Grounds on Three of Four in SE

The Story:
--- Three of the four apartment towers that JPI is building in SE has broken ground. The latest is 900 New Jersey Ave. SE, a 13-story building that will contain 237 residential units and 6,000 sf of retail.
--- The first two projects expected to deliver in summer of 2008. The 70 Eye St. SE project will have 448 units in two towers designed in an industrial warehouse style; while 100 Eye St. will provide 246 units in a glass and white terrazzo marble building.
--- Next year, JPI plans to break ground for its final building, 23 Eye St., SE with 421 residential units and up to 35,000 sf of retail space.


Link: GlobeSt.

300 Bucks?!? For Seat Behind Home Plate?!?

Maybe building the new stadium was not such a great idea afterall. Seven bucks for the upper deck at RFK could be my idea of heaven. At least there I could afford the imported beer in a plastic bottle.

Link: WaPo

Gettin' Ready for the First Pitch

The plan is to get The Yards' streetlights and sidewalks ready for baseball's opening day next spring, said the WaPo. Ultimately Forest City Washington and its partners will build or rehabilitate more than 25 buildings and fill them with 1.8 million square feet of office space, stores, businesses, restaurants, and residences.

"You really can create a neighborhood, and that's exactly what we're doing," says Deborah Ratner Salzberg, 54, president of Forest City Washington. "We are building . . . an active waterfront that will transform an entire section of this city."

DC is going to be a very different place in 2020. But without the baseball stadium this part of town would have been forlorn and forgotten.

Tectonic Shift: Alexandria Slipping Away From DC

With each new feature that comes to the southern half of the city you can almost feel Alexandria and all its trade associations moving further and further away. Not in a physical sense, but in terms of travel time. While they once claimed "we're only minutes from Capitol Hill," only a year or two from now that will change to "we're only an hour, except on game days."

The impact on traffic of the baseball stadium, the redevelopment of L'Enfant Plaza, the Waterside Mall, the Southwest waterfront, the condo development has caught the attention of Councilman Tommy Wells noted the WashExam. “Even when there’s not a baseball game. We’re going to have to come up with a new traffic plan to begin with,” he said.

Also in the works is the redevelopment of the Randall School at 65 I St. SW, which was sold last year to the Corcoran Gallery for $6.2 million. Under the proposal, two-thirds of the original school building would be preserved and renovated to house new classroom, exhibition and studio space for the Corcoran College of Art and Design. As many as 500 new condominium units will replace the remaining buildings.

Maybe its time for those trade associations to relocate back to the city.

SCORE

DC Bubble still can't beleive the Lerners fought the partial below ground parking at the new stadium, which was endorsed yesterday according to the WaPo. We hope this does not get DC's relationship with the Lerners off on the bad foot. Perhaps the below grade parking will hinder construction creating short-term problems, but over the long-term its a win for D.C., for the stadium, for the Nats and the Lerners.

Herb Miller has proposed building 925 parking spots in two parking structures that go one level underground and four stories aboveground. The garages would be surrounded by retail shops on the first floor and condominiums that would make the total height of the structure 13 stories. A hotel, possibly in the Aloft chain, franchised by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., would be added near N and First streets.

Miller should be praised, not cursed.

What's the Impact of the Stadium?

Loyal reader Read Scott Martin recently wrote and challenged DC Bubble on our belief that the baseball stadium is helping spur growth near the waterfront. Rather than pointing to the stadium and the lack of developable land elsewhere, Martin asserts that "the Anacostia is revitalizing and growing because of good-old fashioned government intervention, not baseball. The military decided in the 1990s to move thousands of white-collar employees and contractors from Crystal City to the Navy Yard," then, then DOT moved its headquarters building there.

Ten years ago less than 3,000 people worked at the Navy Yard, and by the fall that number will be north of 16,000, Martin continued. "Baseball had nothing to do with [the growth]. As for running out of developable land, the Navy Yard rebuild was underway when the neighborhood north of Mass Ave. was still an urban prairie."

But wait, Mr. Martin, what's envsioned on the waterfront is a 24-7 community with offices, yes, but also entertainment and condos and apartments. A bunch of Navy contractors could not have spurred these other types of development. Most recently, Camden Living, a Texas apartment developer, bought two lots totaling about 41K SF in the 1300 block of South Capitol St. SW at the corner of O Street, just across from the baseball stadium site.

Crystal City, where the cadets were coming from, was famous for its 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. sterility. No one living there. No one dining out, shopping or whooping it up. Without the stadium, the waterfront would have developed much more slowly and very, very differently without the stadium. In ten years, M St. by the waterfront will look more like M St. in G'town than Crystal City.

Stadium Turning More Porny SE Into Gold

Two parcels of land -- located about three blocks north of the proposed baseball stadium site in Southeast -- have been purchased by JPI, a Texas-based residential builder. One parcel at 900 First Street SE, now a strip club, is "likely to close," helpfully reports the Washington Post. The other property is on I Street between South Capitol Street and New Jersey Avenue SE.

JPI also is developing the newly constructed Lafayette Condo in Penn Quarter and Jenkins Row on Capital Hill, as well as various properties in the Commonwealth of Virginai and Merland.