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Monday, October 07, 2013

WBJ: "McMillan designs refined ahead of upcoming hearing"

See this report from Washington Business Journal reporter Michael Neibauer.  Click on the link below to see the six images from Vision McMillan Partners.



Oct 7, 2013, 11:24am EDT
Michael Neibauer, Staff Reporter- Washington Business Journal

The team behind the planned redevelopment of D.C.’s 25-acre McMillan Sand Filtration Plant has released a revised set of blueprints for the controversial Northwest Washington project.

The redesign was submitted to the Historic Preservation Review Board late last month, ahead of the scheduled Oct. 24 HPRB meeting. The last time the HPRB met on the Vision McMillan Partners’ plan, members were not blown away, nor did they write it off. It’s a process.

The changes are technical, but noticeable. The building and street layouts have been revised, setbacks increased, and designs refined “to shape a more cohesive set of new buildings.”

VMP consists of EYA, Jair Lynch Development Partners, Trammell Crow Company, WDG Architecture, Shalom Baranes Associates and Lessard Design.

The overall McMillan setup is comprised of three-prongs — VMP calls it the “tripartite organization" — with the park and community center farthest south, the multi-family and town homes in the center and medical office buildings to the north.

The decommissioned water treatment plant, bounded by Michigan Avenue, North Capitol, Channing and First Streets, was designated a historic landmark in the early 1990s. Plans for its redevelopment have run into some fierce, vocal community opposition, led by Friends of McMillan Park, which hopes to preserve most of the site as park lands.

The Friends group has deemed VMP’s plan “destruction” of the area. Many others in the community want the project to move forward now. Those two positions are on display on the Bloomingdale neighborhood blog. The VMP website provides a useful FAQ on the project, as well as the full HPRB submission.

And check out some of the images from the revised VMP plan above.

1 comment:

  1. Refined? This is the worst version yet. It just gets worse and worse. Let's have a real open solicitation and get someone with some better ideas. It's a waste of time with VMG. We want to see something on this land, but not this!

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