Navy Reportedly Nixes Land Swap For Museum, Redbrick Development

A land swap agreement that was set to pave the way for a new U.S. Navy museum and a nearby 15-acre mixed-use development on D.C.'s waterfront is reportedly dead.

The chairman of the foundation overseeing the planned National Museum of the United States Navy said at a conference this month that Navy Secretary John Phelan had “withdrawn” from the land swap agreement that would enable the museum's construction, according to the U.S. Naval Institute’s Tuesday Tidings newsletter published last week. 

The newsletter says Navy Museum Development Foundation Chairman Kenneth Braithwaite has put fundraising efforts “on hold until a new site can be identified.”

The office of the assistant secretary of the Navy and the Navy Museum Development Foundation didn't respond to Bisnow's requests for comment. 

In addition to throwing the future of the museum into question, the statement also casts new doubt on the other piece of the land swap agreement: the nearby 15-acre site that Redbrick LMD plans to develop into a mixed-use district. 

The D.C.-based developer inked a 99-year ground lease in June 2024 for the site, owned by the U.S. Navy and known as the O Parcels. It has planned to develop a mix of housing and retail in a combination of new buildings and rehabbed naval buildings. The National Capital Planning Commission approved the master plan, submitted by the Navy, a month earlier. 

A spokesperson for Redbrick declined to comment.  

The museum was set to be developed on a 6-acre parcel about half a mile northwest of the Redbrick site. The 240K SF, $450M project would replace a smaller museum inside the Navy footprint. 

The plan involved the Navy taking control of what it calls the E Parcels — near the Harris Teeter at Fourth and M streets southeast — from the General Services Administration and transferring control of the O Parcels to Redbrick. 

Brookfield, which owns the nearby development The Yards, had previously secured development rights for the E Parcels and was planning to build 328K SF of office, 538K SF of residential and 581 parking spaces by repurposing Navy buildings and building from the ground up.

But the Navy, concerned about the security risks of private development next to its facilities, was looking to halt that effort. 

“Encroachment on the [Washington Navy Yard] is an immediate concern because of the proposed incompatible private development currently scheduled and approved for construction,” the Navy said in its environmental impact statement released in August 2023.

The EIS contemplated several options for the site: taking it over through a land swap, taking it over through a direct acquisition and taking no action.

It concluded that the land swap would be the preferred option given that it wanted to take control of the site, and by leveraging its underutilized land near the waterfront, it wouldn't have to appropriate any funds to purchase the acquisition rights from Brookfield.

Under the land swap option, the Navy concluded that building a museum was preferred to the other alternatives of using the space for administrative facilities or leaving it as is.

“Relocating the Navy Museum would benefit both the Navy and the surrounding community by addressing the limitations of the existing museum, providing a location for a new, world-class museum for public enjoyment and bringing potential retail and commercial amenities to the local area,” the EIS says.

The Navy's effort to take control of the O Parcels and build a museum there dates back to at least 2022, when then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said the military branch would seek to obtain the parcel for a new museum and an EIS was underway.

As recently as Sept. 30, Navy Museum Development Foundation President Sonny Masso spoke as if the project was still moving forward. Speaking on Bisnow's Developing Southeast D.C. event, he discussed the vision for the new museum but didn't specifically mention the land swap agreement. 

“We’ve done some pretty rigorous studies, and we believe in the most conservative view that we will have 1.5 million walk-ins to come into the museum at the end of the day, and some estimates can go as high as 1.9 [million],” he said. “What they see when they come visit is going to be the story of our country in 250 years and the story of our Navy.”