Posts about Union Station

This year is especially symbolic, since Amtrak turned 40 last Sunday. As a part of this celebration, Amtrak has released a video, called "Amtrak: The First 40 Years." I hope you enjoyed the trailer.

That 808-foot tower is over 6 times the height of Grand Central's 130 feet; ironically, 130 feet is the maximum allowed in dense areas of DC for all buildings, meaning if someone proposed building Grand Central in any area outside downtown today, someone would probably say it's too tall.

Personally, I don't find the MetLife building to detract from Grand Central; it actually provides a great backdrop that emphasizes the historic station even more. But we're not talking about something 6 times the height of Union Station. C100 and CHRS came up with their own renderings about how much the proposed development will "loom" over Union Station:

Potential development shown in light blue. Image from the Committee of 100.

You can barely see the building here. What's the big deal?

On the comments on the City Paper article, Alex Block notes that the C100 renderings also take out all the trees. Standing at ground level, the trees definitely do obstruct the view of Union Station. A building would irrevocably mar the view, but a bunch of trees don't (unless you live in the Watergate)?

Ultimately, these debates aren't so much about individual projects as about general values: do you think the city should have more buildings, or fewer? More stores or fewer? More parking lots or fewer? Does a new building that barely peeks over an old one create "prominent vertical scars," as the C100 press release argues, or enhance the existing fabric of the city?

In this case, at least there was some independent analysis by the CFO, which raised some questions like predicting the break would take away from other hotels' revenue and therefore the taxes they pay. Even with the analysis, it's still unclear whether it's a good deal, but at least people have some numbers, which is often not the case.

At the very least, I hope the Council would ask for a Transportation Demand Management (TDM) plan, or a reduction in the number of parking spaces. The project has as more spaces than rooms, and Adams Morgan already has more cars driving around than space on streets. The neighborhood could use more foot traffic, but really doesn't need a lot of people just driving to the hotel only to then drive downtown for their meetings. The hotel needs to plan to have at least a large percentage of its visitors and employees use the many buses that serve the area.

Then there's the Southwest Waterfront deal, which Cheryl Cort wrote about yesterday. A developer promised to build some housing and some office on public land, and agreed to include some low- and moderate-income housing as part of the deal. Now, they want to take some of their office space and convert it to more housing, but without the affordability requirement.

They say that they can't afford to have the same affordable housing in the new portion, and that this change is the only way to get financing for the project. We can believe that it's harder to get financing now and perhaps they need some change, but how much of a change? At the very least, for example, DC could probably insist that the new housing contain some housing at 80% Area Median Income, which is still "workforce" housing for fairly well off families, rather than 100% AMI as the developer has suggested.

But how much negotiating room is there? This is public land, which means that DC ought to try to get the best deal it can. The problem is that we don't know what is the best deal or what's even relatively close. The developer is likely to push for more than they need, figuring they might as well try for a little more. On the other hand, if nothing gets built, it doesn't help DC at all. What's the right balance?

Third, the Union Station payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) will come back today. The Union Station Redevelopment Corporation theoretically owes taxes on the commercial activity happening on their land equivalent to what private properties would pay, but they aren't paying it. This bill would permanently excuse them from the tax in exchange for a much smaller payment.

USRC says that they are already spending lots of money that they wouldn't if they were private, like paying for elevators that get used by Amtrak and the Metro. As with the other two, though, the bigger problem is that we have little way of really evaluating how much of the break is reasonable given USRC's special circumstances, versus how much is just a request for special treatment that a for-profit organization thinks it can get out of elected officials.

The only Councilmembers who seem to know for sure how to vote are those with firm ideological attitudes toward tax breaks. Jack Evans, for example, seems so sure about the Union Station break, despite calling it "dead as a dog" last time, that he plans to introduce it as emergency legislation. There's no word on why there's suddenly an emergency on legislation that's been brewing for months.

Even the most well-meaning Councilmembers find themselves in a serious quandary when these votes come up. Do they push for more, risking that a project might then never materialize? Or do they give the developer what they want, knowing that there's a huge chance that developer will be patting their lobbyists on the back for pulling the wool over the Council's eyes and getting a big windfall out of the public till?

Advocates have called for a fuller analysis of the Waterfront tax break. As DCFPI has suggested, the Council should systematize the process for these breaks to require some analysis of each one and set an overall cap. Perhaps also it's worth requiring that some analysis be conducted afterward, to determine which ones actually paid off and which didn't. That could help watchdog groups create a sort of scorecard for long-serving Councilmembers about how much their tax breaks either added to or detracted from the District's overall fiscal health.

Some tax breaks make sense, while others don't. But right now, our leaders are flying blind, which isn't a good way to make decisions.

For the zoning rewrite, OP recommended counting from the ground, not a bridge. But applying that rule for the railyards means that a significant amount of the otherwise allowable building envelope will be taken up by the yards, making it much less financially feasible to build the platform.

Also, with only low building heights, there will be a strong incentive to create boxy buildings that fill up as much of the envelope as possible, whereas with 130 feet of height, it'll be possible to build more aesthetically pleasing buildings. And the site is limited to 6.5 FAR, meaning 130-foot boxes would simply not be allowed.

If approved by the Zoning Commission, this height won't come without strings. Akridge, the developer for the project, will have to submit all buildings to design review including two phases of community review, approval by the Zoning Commission, and approval by the Historic Preservation Review Board. In other words, they won't have the right to build just any buildings, but have to build nice buildings.

Meanwhile, residents and businesses are proposing increasing building heights around 8th Street between the Southeast Freeway and the Navy Yard to 65 and 85 feet, which is still not very high.

As Lydia DePillis explains, that area was limited to 45 feet in 1999 to preserve historic buildings, but it's ultimately led to both historic and nonhistoric buildings sitting moribund. Instead, the proposal would increase the height but also require structures over 45 feet to go through design review with community involvement, preservation of historic structures, and a quality plan.

Potential massing for Lower Barracks Row under 45, 65, and 85 foot limits.
Image via Washington City Paper.

Both proposals follow the principles from Larry Beasley's speech on the height limit to avoid the mistakes of the NoMA upzoning. Simply allowing extra height just gives property owners a one-time windfall that ironically can tie the hands of the ultimate developers. But granting added height subject to some restrictions ensures that public priorities become part of the project allows more housing and office opportunities while sharing the economic gain between the property owners, developers, and the public.

The Zoning Commission hearing is Thursday, 6:30 pm at 441 4th St NW (One Judiciary Square), room 220-South. If you wish to submit comments, you can also send them by fax or email as a signed and scanned PDF to zcsubmissions@dc.gov.

Photo by Natalia Esina.

Union Station. Photo by MichaelTRuhl.

Veterans Day. Photo by MichaelTRuhl.

Adams Morgan. Photo by .lissa.

MLK Memorial. Photo by mosley.brian.

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