Friday, September 29, 2006

Big news in Eckington

Fairfield Residential will construct three large buildings ranging in height from 11 stories, stepping down to 9 and 7 stories as it approaches Eckington Place NE. There will also be townhouses on the portion of the site that borders the Wholesale Flower Market. There will be 625 to 675 units, which will be a mixture of condominium and rental units. The final condo/apartment mix will be dependent on market conditions as the units come on line. There will be 750 - 800 underground parking spaces. 8% of the square footage, or 65-70 units interspersed throughout the building will be affordable workforce housing, affordable to households earning less than 80% of area median income.

Q Street NE will be extending through the middle of the site and dedicated to the city as part of the Office of Planning's goal to rebuild the L'Enfant grid, when possible. There will be a lighted walkway connecting Q Street NE to the Metropolitan Branch Trail vis a vis a dedicated easement through a Pepco-owned site. That connection to the Branch Trail will allow residents to walk directly to the metro station without having to cross New York and Florida Avenues at street level.

There will be 15,000 square feet of neighborhood-serving retail space with preference being given to restaurant/deli use. That will be located at the corner of Eckington Place NE and Harry Thomas Way NE, providing a good retail location to serve FedEx, ATF, XM, and the community, as they come and go from the metro.

2 comments:

Sean Hennessey said...

not too awful for those that use the lnd for dog walking i guess.

can you elaborate?

Anonymous said...

Fairfield did all the rezoning of the site (which will stay rezoned as dense residential), and then approached CSX (the owner) to renegotiate price. The rezoning took longer and cost more than expected, and at the contract price, it didn't make economic sense for Fairfield. CSX said no, so they are re-marketing the site, and it must be dense residential.

JTE