The New Vision For Chinatown: Tearing Down Federal Buildings, Turning Area 'Inside Out'
With the Washington Capitals and Wizards recommitted to Chinatown, the vision for the future of the area around their arena has come into clearer focus.
The Gallery Place-Chinatown Task Force — created in the wake of the announced, then scuttled, move of the NHL and NBA teams to Virginia — presented eight initial proposals for the future of the area to the public at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library Saturday.
At the forefront of the vision is bringing more people, events and vibrancy into the 130 acres that make up the downtown district, anchored by cultural landmarks like Capital One Arena and the National Portrait Gallery.
The group is headed by three women with a history of developing transformative projects in D.C.: Edens CEO Jodie McLean, Uplands Real Estate principal and former Forest City Washington President Deborah Ratner Salzberg, and Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Nina Albert.
“Jodie and I plan neighborhoods,” Ratner Salzberg said at the unveiling. “That’s what we do. We plan. We build. We execute. And we know that the core of a neighborhood is the people of the neighborhood.”
Some 7,550 residential units could be created in the area, the task force said Saturday, through nearly 5.7M SF of potential office conversion and infill development.
The task force focused on three federal sites that could be redeveloped into apartments and a mix of other uses: the 6.4-acre Government Accountability Office site, the 11.6-acre Department of Labor headquarters and the 6.5-acre site of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI's headquarters.
The General Services Administration, the federal government's real estate arm, is already set to weigh disposing of the Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue as the agency prepares to relocate to Greenbelt, Maryland. The DOL's hulking, 1.9M SF headquarters had a 9% occupancy rate last year, according to a report by the Public Buildings Reform Board.
The bulk of the task force's proposals focused on creating functional streetscapes and gathering places for activities like marketplaces and festivals, as well as incorporating it into the broader network of the District.
“We need to learn how to really turn this district, turn our great institutions, sort of inside out,” McLean said at the event. “Bring them out, bring them to life, bring them together in one place.”
With the Capitals and Wizards now signed on to stay at Capital One Arena through 2050, one of the concepts focuses on connecting the 20,000-seat arena with the outside.
“Right now it is a box,” Albert said. “It’s also a solid wall.”
Ideas include bringing events that had been held inside into the public realm with large viewing screens and making the arena's F Street entrance livelier and more activated, like Half Street outside Nationals Park, Albert said.
“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,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said.
The task force envisions a wide, activated pedestrian walkway on Eighth Street between the Convention Center and Hirshhorn Museum and a civic commons and gathering space, Gallery Square, around the National Portrait Gallery.
A street over, a “Seventh Street Spine” could act as a commercial corridor connecting the neighborhood up to Shaw and down through the National Mall to The Wharf.
Natural elements also factor heavily into the vision, including tree-lined streets to provide canopies of shade and capture floodwater, as well as reimagining Judiciary Square as Judiciary Gardens.
“Judiciary Square is an incredibly large area that on the evenings, on the weekends, is virtually vacant. What if we kind of hearken back into this tradition that we have in the United States as the courthouse in the park?” said Uwe Brandes, an urban and regional planning professor at Georgetown University and task force collaborator.
Bowser launched the task force in January, shortly after the announcement that the Capitals and Wizards would be moving to Virginia from their longtime home anchoring the neighborhood. Monumental Sports & Entertainment CEO Ted Leonsis backtracked five months later, announcing he had reached a deal with the District to keep the teams at Capital One for another 25 years, with $515M in District funding.
The task force hasn't laid out any funding plans for its proposals. Albert said it is asking the community for feedback on the proposals presented Saturday and will then reengage with the community. The task force has a September timeline to produce options for the neighborhood and recommend incentive tools to support the vision.
