Rhode Island Station will activate Metro entrance

Development

Rhode Island Station will activate Metro entrance

by David Alpert • May 18, 2010 1:18 pm

Rhode Island Station will begin filling a major hole in the District's urban fabric by turning the surface parking lot at Rhode Island Avenue Metro into a mixed-use project. However, the project also misses several key opportunities at the edges.

With the assistance of $7 million in city funds, the project will build 274 apartments and 70,000 square feet of retail on the 8.5-acre parking lot. 215 of the 287 parking spaces will be replaced with a new garage on the southern side. In addition, the new buildings will have commercial parking garages which Metro riders can pay to use.

A kiss-and-ride and the existing bus bays will remain in between the project and the Metro station. Directly across from the main entrance, a new "main street" will run between the two buildings, with ground-floor retail and parallel parking.

This will bring needed retail and hopefully a 24-7 element of life to this station, which is the closest to downtown DC with such underutilized land and no street-level activity.

Left: New "main street" near Metro entrance. Image via DCmud. Right: Narrow sidewalks along the slope that will become the edge of the project. Image from Google Street View.

However, on the sides away from the station, the project falls short. Rhode Island Avenue itself currently has extremely narrow sidewalks, where pedestrians walk inches from speeding traffic without the benefit of a buffer of parallel parked cars.

This project will build on the steep hill adjacent to the avenue, but won't widen the sidewalk. It also doesn't bring street engagement to Rhode Island Avenue as it does to the Metro station frontage. Rhode Island Avenue sould be the main street for the neighborhood as Connecticut, Georgia, Pennsylvania and other avenues are elsewhere, but this project fails to advance that potential and possibly even hinders it.

Likewise, it leaves few opportunities for a meaningful connection to future development on the massive Home Depot and Giant parking lot or to the post office site if the post office ever moves. Neighborhoods in DC developed with multiple builders' projects fitting together side by side because a preexisting street grid ensured connections. Plans in this area, especially built with public assistance, should consider not only how to improve the area in the immediate term but how to fit into a greater whole in the future.

13 comments

Tags: development, retail, Rhode Island Avenue, sidewalks

Take action: Rhode Island Avenue deserves decent sidewalks (Oct 5, 2010)
TD Bank a step back for urbanism at RI Ave (Nov 15, 2010)
Get the Florida out of the Rhode Island Avenue streetcar (Nov 2, 2009)
Bridge will connect trail, Edgewood to RI Ave Metro (Jun 4, 2010)
GW redeveloping another square; second Foggy Bottom Metro entrance should be priority (Oct 25, 2010)

David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.

Comments
Add a comment »

And south and East of the post office facility, there are even larger tracts available if they decked over the rail yards(leaving the yards operational, obviously). Someday, a new neighborhood could stretch all the way to Union Station.

by Steve S on May 18, 2010 1:38 pm • link • report

The project also fails to incorporate housing for purchase, rather then for rent.

by Redline SOS on May 18, 2010 1:55 pm • link • report

I feel kinda bad for David. He did a great job on his post but all the commenters are over on the soda tax story.

As it is, I'm supportive of anything that makes that part of the city look less like an abandoned warehouse district. The proposed development is a huge improvement.

by D on May 18, 2010 1:58 pm • link • report

It's an improvement, but not that great. It's inward focus is very suburban and reminds me of the failed TOD projects in Dallas-- Victory Park and Park Lane Station.

by Alex on May 18, 2010 2:13 pm • link • report

The road network here also provides a serious impediment to any future development. There are no clearly defined north/south routes (Brentwood Rd is the nearest, and is far from ideal for many reasons), and the entire area has no semblance of a defined street grid.

Ideally, the entire area should be bounded (or plan to be bounded) by a road connecting RI Ave to the 9th St Bridge, along the railroad tracks. This would establish a nicely-defined perimeter for eventual development on the current site of the Post Office facility, its many parking lots, and possibly the railyards. None of these facilities need to be located within a stone's throw of downtown DC.

The placement of this "main street" area will undoubtedly be unsuccessful, as it simply isn't connected to anything.

It would also be wise to plan for the eventual burial/decking of portions of the parking lot at the Giant/Home Depot site, as the lot is seriously overbuilt, and will be on prime real estate once the rest of the new development goes up.

Basically, what I'm saying is: The area desperately needs a master plan. It's a mess right now, and the new development around the Metro station is only a small piece of the puzzle.

Good article, David!

by andrew on May 18, 2010 2:33 pm • link • report

"The area desperately needs a master plan. It's a mess right now, and the new development around the Metro station is only a small piece of the puzzle."

True, though it is a bit too close to the RR corridor, particularly the northern building:

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/02/extending-legacy-with-grand-arc.html

So will this development project get pushed to be expedited even though there is a glut of housing from th e'bubble'?

WHY this push to chock the corridor? It smells pretty bad IMHO.

by Douglas A. Willinger on May 18, 2010 4:21 pm • link • report

I think this is the single remaining part of the city where the city should to just blow everything up and start over again. Seriously. I've mapped it out, and you can draw a contiguous area around the rail yards that's 500 acres in size with zero homes in it. That's over 1% of the land area of the entire city! Zero homes means (more or less) zero entities that would resist Eminent Domain. If the existing land uses were organized into an efficient city grid like the rest of DC, every single business on those 500 acres could return after reconstruction. But we'd still have enough room (vertically and laterally) to add quality homes for between 8,000 people (at DC-average density of 10,000/sq mile) and 30,000 people (if we built at Brookyln density). This is not a place for half-measures. This is a chance to really get it right.

by tom veil on May 18, 2010 5:34 pm • link • report

if anything is done to the sidewalks/roadway, then we need to do something to allow bikes on this road, too.

by Peter Smith on May 18, 2010 6:59 pm • link • report

The picture carries the label "Baltimore & Washington Railroad".

Shouldn't it be "Baltimore & Ohio"?

by Turnip on May 18, 2010 7:44 pm • link • report

The main problems with the area is not Rhode Island ave or the Giant/Home Depot parking lot its the train tracks that run straight through it.

Those train tracks are a stratification point along the whole stretch; you can look at one side and things are completely different on the other.

What should be done but will probably never happen is to;

1 Raise Rhode Island Ave/Lower the train tracks; so that the land between 4th street and Bank of America are at the same level.

2 Need more than just Rhode Island Ave crossing the tracks; there should be a street about where the Metro Parking Garage will be.

The reason why there is so much traffic on Rhode Island Ave, Brentwood Rd, New York Ave, Montana Ave etc is because the train tracks are a physical which limits the way you can get across it and it is also a physiological barrier

3 Geography; I doubt the land is natural how it is between 4th street and Bank of America. Land usually doesn't have a hill, then completely flat land then another hill while if you go north or south of the immediate area its just hills.

I bet the natural elevation of the land is closer to which the Forman Mills is on and gradually lowers south of Rhode Island Ave.

4 Find away to connect the side west of the train tracks to this area; this can be done by

* Redoing the station and the CSX/Amtrak rails and connect W & V street over the rails.

* Building something over the tracks that can connect pedestrians to areas west; the steep ass steps and long ass ramp that goes out of the way don't work

* Build a ramp where the hole in the fence is that every body uses. It beats going down a hill and then up another.

* Just make it easier to get to the station from the west of the tracks; its only one way which is taking Rhode Island Ave.

by kk on May 18, 2010 11:28 pm • link • report

How about connecting the metro station with the Metropolitan Branch Trail? As of now one needs to go out of the station, down to busy Rhode Island Ave, cross under the tracks, take a right, climb a steep hill into a parking lot with drains that will eat tires, and go to the back corner of the parking lot to enter the trail. It's well hidden.

by Erik on May 20, 2010 1:02 am • link • report

@Erik: Perhaps this answers your concern?

by Jack on May 20, 2010 1:14 am • link • report

Wow, that's wonderful, thank you! The MBT is a great bikeway and deserves good access.

by Erik on May 20, 2010 1:28 am • link • report