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.
winning uses, including housing, commercial development, high tech sectors, and municipal
services, are all significant and important in their own right.
Development plans and proposals, mostly in the form of housing and related neighborhood
commercial development, as well as from large-scale mixed-use initiatives such as the
Anacostia Waterfront Initiative (AWI), exert significant pressures on all of the industrial lands
examined in this study. The AWI itself would reclaim vast stretches of the Anacostia Waterfront
for much-needed parks and open space, including now-industrial areas such as 11th Street, SE
(about 74 acres), Water Street, SE (about 37 acres), and portions of Benning Road and
Anacostia Poplar Point. Map 2.1 illustrates areas in which large initiative like AWI and specific
proposals such as those noted below will affect industrial areas.
One of the most significant proposals to affect the District’s industrial areas was the Buzzard
Point / Capitol Gateway initiative, in which a 242-acre industrial area was rezoned from its M
and CM-2 designations to mixed use zones which promote residential and commercial redevelopment.
6 The recent Council decision to locate the new stadium for the Washington
Nationals has greatly increased the pace of redevelopment in the area. Of most immediate
issue is that the industrial businesses within the 19-acre footprint of the proposed stadium must
be relocated, including a 55,000 square foot waste transfer facility and an 88,000 square foot
asphalt plant. Numerous municipal facilities including a 67,000 square foot WMATA bus lot,
several DPW facilities totaling nearly 47,000 square feet, an 80-100,000 square foot Parks and
Recreation warehouse are also being forced to relocate. While the Capital Gateway Overlay
District allows for “continuation of existing industrial uses, which are important economic assets
to the city, during the extended period projected for redevelopment,” development plans clearly
do not welcome industrial uses in the Buzzard Point area. 7 Moreover, as developers continue to
assemble land and break ground for adjacent projects, industrial uses are quickly being pushed
out of Buzzard Point.
Other known development proposals or initiatives that would necessitate rezoning of industrial
land include:
a townhouse development near the Fort Totten Metro (Sub-area: Fort Totten)
a development at Rhode Island Avenue and Reed Street, NE, near the Metro (Sub-area:
CSX 1)
a large residential development of about 700 units on Eckington Place near Q Street, NE
(Sub-area: New York Ave/Florida)
6 Because it is no longer industrially-zoned, the Buzzard Point area has been removed from the scope of this study,
except insofar as the study must account for the space needs of displaced industrial uses.
7 See District of Columbia Zoning Commission. 2005. Zoning Commission Case No. 05-10, Capitol Gateway Overlay
District Amendments. Attachment 1. Chapter 16, Section 1600.2 (c). November 21.
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