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.
Land use change: These are areas where a move away from PDR use is appropriate,
due to a lack of viable PDR businesses, and the desirability of these sites for other uses.
In most cases, residential development is contemplated. There are two sub-categories
within this category: areas where a gradual replacement of PDR use with residential is
envisioned (letting the market take its course); and areas where PDR should essentially
be zoned away. Many of these areas are proposed for a new zoning district permitting
both residential and light PDR uses such as storage and light fabrication.
The next section addresses the issue of government facilities, with a particular emphasis on the
District’s municipal space needs. A prior section addressed particular location where public uses
might be sited; this section addresses the policy and programmatic side of meeting public
needs. To this end, the section addresses systems of property and resource management and
various methods of increasing the efficiency of public properties and resources. Given the
scarcity of both land and public funds, ways of doing more with less are a major focus.
While this report sets forth a detailed policy with respect to industrial land use, land use
decisions not foreseen by this report may also need to be brought before the relevant District
bodies such as the Zoning Commission. Thus the final section of this chapter provides a set of
criteria for evaluating future proposals for land use change which impact industrial areas.
4.1 A NEW ZONING FRAMEWORK FOR PDR
The existing zoning ordinance has two types of industrial district. The C-M districts permit retail,
office and industrial uses, with permitted FARs ranging from 3.0 to 6.0. The M district permits
everything permitted in the C-M district, but extends the permitted uses to encompass anything
not specifically prohibited, and has a maximum FAR of 6.0.
There are several issues with this zoning scheme:
It does nothing to prohibit retail or office uses from overtaking industrial areas and
displacing PDR tenants.
The bulk standards bear little resemblance to the low-scale, high-coverage built
environments found within these districts.
It is somewhat vague as to what precisely is permitted in the M district: it may be fully
specified in theory, but multiple trips around the zoning ordinance are required to try to
figure this out.
The performance standards for industrial areas need modernization.
A variety of industrial zoning strategies were reviewed for this report, some of which are esoteric
in their application, many of which were formulated for use in big cities with a significant
industrial and manufacturing past. The strategies proposed here, while representing a
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