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.
1 Introduction
1.1 PURPOSE AND SCOPE
The economy and real estate market in the District of Columbia are undergoing rapid change.
Since 1997, the District has seen impressive private sector job production, which has led to a
boom in office building construction. This boom started by filling in the gaps in the downtown
block pattern, and has since expanded outward to include new developments in Buzzard Point,
the recently-opened New York Avenue Metro stop, and extensions of the downtown into the
NOMA area. Likewise, a robust housing market has produced a torrent of new residential
projects, most of them multifamily developments located in or near the downtown, at transitoriented
sites near Metro stops, and in scattered infill locations in desirable and up-and-coming
neighborhoods. Following on the heels of the office and residential markets, major retailers have
rediscovered DC. Regional and national retail tenants, ranging from supermarkets to big boxes
to boutiques, have gone from reluctant partners to eager participants in the District’s recent
retail renaissance.
In the midst of this boom, the District’s industrially-zoned areas—hugging rail corridors, tucked
away in remote locations, and sprawling next to major automotive service corridors—have been
largely forgotten. However, as many of the more easily developed and favorably located sites
disappeared, commercial and residential developers have begun to turn their interest to
industrial land, particular those sites which occupy strategic locations and offer relatively
straightforward property assemblages. Requests for the rezoning of industrial land to some
other category, typically one permitting residential development, have been increasingly
common.
At the same time, several factors have conspired to increase the space needs of government
and public entities. Simple growth—jobs and households—in the District increases demand for
municipal services and utilities. Related is the growth in transit ridership and demand for better
transit service, which translates into more bus garages, proposed light rail yards, and other
related services. Further, the plan to build a new stadium for the Washington Nationals on a site
in Buzzard Point has created the immediate need to relocate several key public functions
related to District operations, water and sewer service, and bus maintenance and storage. Many
of these needs are quasi-industrial in nature, and will be hard to site: bus garages, helipads,
vehicle storage and maintenance, have unique site selection criteria for functionality and at the
same time are uses that are less-than-welcome in established or emerging neighborhoods
elsewhere in the District. Since District government is bound by its own zoning, the need for
industrially-zoned land for government functions goes beyond concerns over NIMBYism.
Much of the land in question is already occupied by a diverse array of industrial and quasiindustrial
users, grouped in this report under the descriptive title of Production, Distribution and
Repair businesses (PDR). As this report will describe in detail, PDR businesses in the District
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