Along Florida Avenue between U Street and California, at the southern edge of Adams Morgan, there’s a block-long strip of retail containing Pleasant Pops, Mint, and until recently, Hans Pedr’ Kaffe. It’s also missing something big: housing on top.

1781 Florida Avenue, NW. Photos by the author.

In a city full of mixed-use buildings, this one sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s just too short. It looks like a suburban strip mall in its low, horizontal nature. And it’s right in Adams Morgan, where there’s plenty of demand (these days, anyway) for housing. It looks very out of place in DC.

Image from Google Maps.

This site used to house the Kilimanjaro nightclub and a parking garage. According to Cheryl Cort, who lives a few blocks away, violence in the late 1980s hastened its decline. the apartment building across the street was vacant for many years.

The zoning on this site is C-2-A, low-density commercial development, and is also part of the Reed-Cooke Overlay. That limits non-residential Floor-Area Ratio to 1.5, residential to 2.5, and height to 40 feet, if I’m reading the zoning correctly. But it’s likely not even hitting those limits, since the sloping site means it’s only one story high on some sides.

1781 Florida Avenue, NW. Photos by the author.

This is not in a historic district (it’s just outside two districts). If it were, and someone proposed redeveloping this today with five stories of housing, it would probably evoke a usual chorus of objections that such a building would be “too tall.” But it’s not; a taller building would be more compatible with this area because existing buildings are more vertical in nature and new buildings are generally taller than this one. Arguably, this building is too short to be compatible.

But since this was already redeveloped recently, it’s likely to stay as is for some time. That’s a big missed opportunity.

What other buildings do you think are too short and/or represent missed opportunities for more housing?

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.