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The U Street Flea Market at Ninth Street & Florida Avenue NW.
Photo: Hunter Gorinson
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More than a year after gaining development rights to a string of Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA)-owned vacant lots along Florida Avenue NW, Banneker Ventures LLC and the Banc of America Community Development Corporation have announced the details behind the mixed-use, mixed-income project they’re now calling “The Jazz @ Florida Avenue.”
Per an application for Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits filed with the District’s Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) in July, the Jazz will bring some 153,770 square feet of new apartments and retail to the current site of Shaw’s U Street Flea Market. In total, WMATA owns three separate properties between Seventh and Ninth streets on the north side of Florida Avenue, totaling nearly 29,000 square feet, above the Green Line tunnel linking the Howard-Shaw and U Street-Cardozo stations. Those lots, all of which will be incorporated in to the Jazz, stand just blocks from Howard University and delineate the border of the booming U Street corridor from the less development-prone Shaw/LeDroit Park communities.
“We’ve had challenges at Ninth and U,” said Bryan N. Martin Firvida, president of the U Street Neighborhood Association. “It’ll be nice to see new activity and investment on that corner. … The neighborhood is always looking for new opportunities for more daytime traffic and more retail. Everyone loves the idea of the 24-hour neighborhood that serves not only people who are just visiting, but residents as well. … This is one of the gateway corners into the neighborhood, and it’s going to be nice have something other than a vacant lot there.”
Since being selected to develop the project by WMATA in June of last year, Banneker has gone on to acquire two other privately-owned parcels along Ninth Street, thereby adding an additional 7,720 square feet of buildable ground area to their project plan. At present, the Jazz is slated to consist of three adjacent four-story buildings, for a total of 124 apartments and 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.
Designed by Torti Gallas and Partners, each of the glass and brick buildings will feature between 32 and 52 units, one level of underground parking and a private interior courtyard for use by residents only. According to the development team’s application, their plans call for “a mix of studio, junior one-bedroom, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units” with finishes like “9-foot ceilings, in‐unit laundry, granite countertops and ceramic kitchen tiles.” Kettler Management has already been contracted to handle the day-to-day of the residential operation.
Making it Affordable and Profitable
Twenty-six of the Jazz’s apartment units have been earmarked for affordable housing (defined as housing for District residents making 50 percent or less of the Area Median Income), with the remainder slated to hit the market as workforce housing targeted at the “young and affluent professionals” now flooding into the greater U Street area.
It is the Jazz’s affordable housing component, however, that has put the project on the fast track to development. Since posting their application with DHCD, the Banneker/Banc of America proposal has drawn several letters of support from prominent local authorities, businesses and residents, including Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Myla Moss (1B01), Susan Sorg, head of a U Street-based architectural firm unaffiliated with the project, and Dr. Rodney D. Green, executive director of the Howard University Center for Urban Progress.
“The injection of commercial and residential development will have a transformative impact on two city blocks on the Florida Avenue corridor that have been underutilized for over 40 years,” wrote Green, who has previously worked with Banneker Ventures on the redevelopment of Petworth’s Park Morton public housing complex. “The plans for this project include 26 units of affordable housing, which is both a commendable and necessary element of any urban development … We are confident [of Banneker’s] ability to ensure that The Jazz @ Florida Avenue will be a successful community partner.”
A key component of that partnership will be the Jazz’s retail outlets, which will front along a two-block span of Florida Avenue. Though the development team has not formally outlined uses for the commercial space, the Florida Avenue lots do fall under the purview of three District planning initiatives: the Great Streets plan for Seventh Street and Georgia Avenue NW; the Neighborhood Investment Fund that seeks to “provide a much-needed economic stimulus to the immediate area”; and, most importantly, the District of Columbia’s Uptown Cultural District Plan for Greater Shaw/U Street (aka “the Duke Plan”), which envisions the neighborhood as DC’s newest “arts and entertainment district with active restaurants, shopping and music/theatre venues.”
Once completed, the Jazz @ Florida Avenue will stand directly across from such area nightlife destinations as Nellie’s Sports Bar and the DC9 and Town nightclubs, and two blocks from the soon-to-be renovated, historic Howard Theatre. As such, the Jazz’s strategic positioning makes it a linchpin of the Duke Plan’s intent to extend the success of the U Street corridor even farther south. For their part, Banneker hopes to invite area foot traffic in with not only new shopping opportunities, but three public, open-air plazas along Eighth Street, Ninth Street and Florida Avenue, as well.
Extra Credit
Apart from the application for $695,000 in tax credits currently pending with DHCD, the $40 million project is being funded in part by Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) “tentatively awarded” by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED). According to the DHCD, the developers are “currently in final negotiations with [DMPED] to receive $7 million in the form of a promissory note to help pay costs associated with infrastructure, parking and the retail component.” Banneker founder and principal Omar Karim did not respond to repeated inquiries concerning the status of these negotiations.
Moss, however, has been receiving quarterly updates from the developer for the past two years and states that an announcement regarding the tax credit application will be coming in the next several weeks.
“I understand that they have been notified that they have been tentatively awarded the credits that they were seeking and that on Sept. 9, there will be a meeting of those who have made the short list. [DHCD] will absolutely make an approval after [that date],” said Moss.
Though the Jazz is scheduled to start construction in the summer of 2010, the Banneker team has yet to fully reach joint development and lease agreements with WMATA. A final, conclusive meeting with that agency’s board of directors was expected in late July but failed to materialize. Angela Gates, an information specialist with WMATA, says that the board will now likely meet with Banneker representatives this winter, and according to Moss, the developer hopes to have the Jazz “fully operational by the fall of 2011.” |
