INDUSTRIAL LAND IN A POST-INDUSTRIAL CITY District of ...

District of Columbia Industrial Areas Study DC Office of Planning
Prepared by Phillips Preiss Shapiro Associates, Inc.
Vigilantly enforce zoning use regulations and performance standards to ensure mixeduse
areas remain “good neighbors.”
4.6 GOVERNMENT FACILITIES
As discussed in Section 2.4, the public sector demand for industrial land is great, but large
developments and the superheated regional land market are shrinking supply at the same time
that increasing service requirements are raising immediate and long term demand for land. As
such a significant user of industrial land in the District, clearly government has the potential and
responsibility to better manage its own industrial land resources.
4.6.1 POTENTIAL LOCATIONS FOR GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONS
Several locations, illuminated in Section 4.4 above, are appropriate for consolidated public
sector uses. The District should strategically plan for its own industrial land demands—the
identification and acquisition of industrial areas is absolutely necessary for a government that
must meet growing service demands while being constrained by its own zoning. DC Village and
Blue Plains, for example, are now and should remain important locations of municipally
controlled industrial land. Other industrial areas should be acquired for government use and
more intensely built. The PEPCO site on Benning Road is one excellent example—the District
may have the opportunity acquire large portions of this underutilized and strategically located
site and use it to meet immediate space needs or bank the land for future needs. Scattered Site
1, and portions of the 11th Street, SE, Water Street, SE, and Anacostia Poplar Point areas are
also underutilized, and strategically located industrial areas which should be considered for
municipal uses such as school bus storage under highway overpasses or secure records
storage. The District should act on these opportunities promptly, and consider designating them
under a new Municipal Use Zone category to ensure access for strategic public use.
4.6.2 CHANGING THE WAY ASSETS ARE MANAGED
4.6.2.1 Property Management
Of course, strategically planning to meet municipal space needs requires knowing exactly how
much land and of what type each District agency requires. But this study found three major
flaws in the way District assets are managed. These are:
1) The absence of a comprehensive inventory of District land and property holdings,
including leased properties;
2) A dearth of information regarding immediate and future space needs; and,
3) District agencies compete against each other in the industrial land market,
sometimes for the same properties.
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