Posts about Development

It also got approval from the Hearing Examiner, Lynn Robeson, who basically serves as a judge for the county's zoning code. Then it went to the County Council, but they rejected the zoning change due to opposition from residents only want single-family homes in their neighborhood.

The County Council asked EYA to come back with a new proposal, and they did, which was just approved by the Hearing Examiner. The examiner's office released this 111-page report detailing how they came to their conclusion.

The site will now be zoned RT-12.5, which still allows townhouses, but at a lower density. There will be only 64 townhouses, instead of 77 as EYA first proposed, while the number of county-mandated moderately-priced dwelling units will drop from 13 to 8. The houses will be placed further away from Springvale Road to appease residents of that street, while a private street for the new development has been moved.

Because of these changes, half of the site is set aside as open space, including wider courtyards between townhouse rows and a larger park at the corner of Springvale Road and Pershing Drive. There's also more open space around the historic Riggs-Thompson House, which was built by the founder of Riggs Bank was originally going to be saved in the first proposal.

Neighbors continue to oppose townhouses

Nonetheless, some neighbors weren't satisfied. No fewer than 6 civic associations opposed the project, including the adjacent Seven Oaks-Evanswood Civic Association (SOECA), but also Lyttonsville and South Four Corners, both of which are several miles away from the site.

Residents complained about the loss of large trees, while others questioned that EYA's traffic studies showing no increase in nearby congestion. SOECA president Vicki Warren said there wasn't enough open space around the Riggs-Thompson House, though historic preservation planner Judith Christensen said she could "live with" what was provided because the county's Historic Preservation Commission would have a say in how it was used.

Many complained that the project's layout resembled military barracks, though the "alternative plan" submitted by Kenneth Doggett, SOECA's "expert land planner," looks much like EYA's proposal, but with fewer houses.

In response, EYA tried to show how Chelsea Court fit into the local context. Vice president Aakash Thakkar displayed a model of Clarendon Park, a project they built in Arlington with a similar layout, and noted how the end houses were designed to look like single-family homes, helping them blend into the neighborhood.

Miguel Iraola, a planner at Hord Coplan Macht who's designing the project, offered several precedents throughout Silver Spring, Wheaton and Bethesda that are similar in design or density to their proposal. Neighbors Maria Schmit and Tom Anderson claimed that they weren't comparable to Chelsea Court, but Robeson agreed with Iraola's conclusion.

With the hearing examiner's approval, the new Chelsea Court proposal will now go before the County Council once again, and I hope they approve it as well. EYA has worked hard to meet the neighborhood's concerns, crafting a project that not only respects the site's history but its current surroundings.

They also have a good track record for creating quality infill projects, which many neighbors recognize. "Based on EYA's National Park Seminary [in Forest Glen], I am convinced this new development will be attractive—just as attractive as our existing neighborhood and perhaps even more so," wrote SOECA resident Leslie Downey in a letter to the Planning Board last year.

Many Silver Spring residents say they want to support local businesses, are upset about traffic congestion, and are concerned about safety. Yet they are often the same ones who oppose projects like Chelsea Court, which would generate more customers, allow more people to walk, bike or use transit instead of driving, and provide more "eyes on the street."

We could do far worse than this. Chelsea Court has been fully vetted and dutifully revised, and now it's time to get it built.

In one of DC's most controversial preservation cases, the HPRB rejected the application, since the church had been designated as historic. The owners appealed, and Mayor Fenty asked planning director Harriet Tregoning to personally sit as the Mayor's Agent, which hears such appeals. Using the broader discretion available to the Mayor's Agent, she granted the raze, but only once the owners present a new design that gets past historic and other review.

Separately, the church and developer also reached a settlement with the DC Preservation League where they gave $450,000 for DCPL's operations preservation programs involving religious properties in exchange for DCPL ending their fight against the project, the staff report notes; other groups such as the Committee of 100 continued to oppose razing the structure.

Earlier this year, the developers working with the church proposed an 11-story building with ground floor retail, offices above, and a church space on the first 3 floors at one end. Since the buildings along 16th have cornices at 90 feet above the street, they designed a building with its own cornice line slightly below that height. Behind and set back, a glassier structure would rise to the higher point.

This building would still not be as tall as the adjacent one to the west on I Street, which falls into a different zone and isn't part of the historic district.

At a community meeting with residents of the Dupont and Golden Triangle area a few months ago, people were generally enthusiastic about the proposal. Architect and former HPO staffer Michael Beidler suggested some ways to set the upper portion back slightly more to create more separation.

Last month, however, the designers presented a different and significantly smaller proposal. Staff of the Historic Preservation Office (HPO), and some of the groups that opposed the original raze, opposed having a building taller than the 90 feet prevailing along the street. In response, the architects shrank the top portion to a single extra floor, set significantly back and only minimally visible from anywhere outside.

In their staff report, HPO rejects even that proposal. The report argues that on 16th Street, it is not historically appropriate to allow any buildings over the prevailing 90 foot size. A few buildings have penthouses, but not ones with space for people to use, and the report seeks to draw a firm line there; if this building can even have a single floor of occupiable penthouse, then the St. Regis hotel will want a rooftop restaurant, it says, and several other buildings will likely follow suit.

The property owner's argument is also more difficult in that they're looking to exceed zoning, though in legally permissible ways. In the typical preservation density dispute, staff want to restrict a building far more than the zoning permits in that area. Here, the owners want to rezone the property from SP-2 to C-3-C as well, which would give greater flexibility, and also to seek a Planned Unit Development, where the Zoning Commission reviews the project in exchange for even more flexibility.

Still, if successful, HPO's action has consequences for the city far beyond the look of the street. To take away the top 2 floors whe moving from the original proposal to what the owners call the "compromise" proposal, they reduced the interior space from about 14,000 to 10,000 square feet, they said during a presentation. At a typical rule of thumb of 250 square feet per office, that would cut 152 potential jobs from downtown DC. HPO's recommended limits would squeeze that further.

Jobs are the centerpiece of Mayor Gray's agenda, and one prerequisite for jobs is space. Already, many companies DC would love to attract, like technology companies, have trouble finding affordable office space compared to the suburbs or other cities.

Downtown, in particular, is the best place for jobs because it already has the transportation infrastructure to move more people in and out than in any other part of the region. It has the restaurants and the office supply stores and more. Plus, residents of many neighborhoods don't want too many office buildings coming into their areas; Dupont residents fought for decades to prevent the neighborhood from completely changing into an office-only extension of the Golden Triangle, for instance. Jobs, and space for jobs, downtown reduces the pressure elsewhere.

To me, the original concept doesn't look out of place in downtown. The grand avenue leading to the White House would be just as grand, if not grander, if buildings flanking it had slightly taller sections behind the main cornice lines that more closely matched the buildings right off 16th.

The report makes a good point that it would be better to set limits for the entire street, rather than piecemeal. However, this debate should more properly be part of a zoning discussion. If piecemeal rezoning a block of an SP-2 district to C-3-C is inappropriate, then it should be inappropriate in an SP-2 zone not subject to historic review. The Zoning Commission has the power to decide whether this should be a C-3-C PUD or just a standard SP-2; they should properly make that decision, not HPRB.

If this were already C-3-C, or if the Zoning Commission decides to rezone it, then a building of this size isn't inappropriate. The report makes repeated reference to provisions in the Comprehensive Plan about preserving the "historic, majestic, and beautiful" avenues, but an avenue can still be all of these things with buildings scaled to downtown.

The developers have some legitimate gripes about this process. They were originally scheduled for an HPRB meeting on May 3, but HPO did not issue its staff report by the Friday before the meeting, as usual. That forced them to postpone the project since there would not be enough time to respond to the staff report, said Sylianos Christofides, a principal at ICG, the project's developer.

In the meantime, the Dupont Conservancy, which initially endorsed the "compromise" approach, reversed its position between the two meetings. They say that ICG changed the project, warranting re-review, but Christofides insists they made no changes. Disclosure: I am a member of the Conservancy and was present at the meeting where the project first came up, but not at the second one.

This process also misses opportunities to create a more appealing building. When applying for the raze, the developers insisted that they would replace it with a top-quality building; I wrote that "HPRB now has a chance to shape some excellent architecture at this site."

The church entrance will have an interesting faceted glass arrangement (which hopefully would not be too hard to clean), but the rest of the building, while perfectly reasonable for an office building (and far better than some of the concrete boxes nearby), isn't especially interesting either. Instead of pushing for more significant architecture on the rest of the project, HPO has focused on just asking for a smaller building.

A grand avenue might have been better served by a building which stands out for its detailing and architectural quality instead of just having to get smaller so as to fade away and not impinge upon the consciousness. In past eras, the grand avenue leading to the White House was a place for notable and visible buildings, not invisible ones. Sadly, our preservation process has more recently evolved into one that tries to make each building as close to nonexistent as possible rather than truly great.

Update: Rebecca Miller of DCPL emailed in with additional information about what the $450,000 payment will fund:

The fund is to be used towards educational and outreach programs related to religious properties and mid-century modernism. The fund will also have a grant component to which congregations will be able to apply to the fund for bricks and mortar money or other projects such as research etc.

Miller was concerned that when I wrote "DCPL's operations" it sounded like that was to fund staff or office space and so forth. That was not my intention and I have updated the post.

The conventional wisdom in community development is to preserve current buildings and fight redevelopment of existing low-cost rental units. But that's exactly what we've been doing for the last decade. Instead, the number of affordable units in DC has been cut in half since 2000. The low-cost housing that remains is often poor quality and far from public transit.

While much of the public debate about DC development policies today centers on the height limit, that's far from the only restriction on growth. Locals governments also impose mandated lot sizes, building setbacks, floor area ratios, and parking minimums that restrict the amount of housing and drive up the cost of building new development.

So what's the solution? Yglesias takes the economist's perspective, targeting supply and demand:

[W]e need to acknowledge that there are only two sustainable ways to reduce the price of housing. One is to lower demand by making a given place a worse place to live. Detroit features high crime, low-quality public services, and a bleak job market. The rent in Detroit is not high. [...] The other way is to increase housing supply.

Opponents of smart growth policies contend the suburbs have grown because of America's desire for a white picket fence and a two-car garage. Yglesias says that through policies that discourage additional housing units from being built in urban cores, we've given families little other choice but to turn their backs on urban cores in search of cheap housing. By easing restrictions on urban housing supply, some of those families could move closer to the core, cutting their commute times and reducing their carbon footprints.

Yglesias resists policy prescriptions, instead closing with a call for those on both ends of the political spectrum to let go of failed policies and take a fresh look at possible solutions. "Many on the Left—starting with my inspiration, Jimmy McMillan—are confused about the relationship between housing affordability, regulation, gentrification, and quality of life over the long term," writes Yglesias. "On the Right, the problem is one of myopia and identity-driven resentment." He also wants our public debate "to better distinguish between the price of land (a speculative investment commodity, like stocks or bonds) and the price of houses (a consumption good, like a car or a refrigerator)."

Yglesias has faced some pushback in urban development circles. In a reflection of how fast the online news cycle moves, we already have articles asking if the pro-density movement has gone too far, even though at last check DC's height limit remains alive and well.

At a time of political polarization, is it asking too much for liberals predisposed to distrust corporate developers and conservatives prone to distrust government solutions to come out of their corners? What processes in our systems of government and public debate could be better utilized to facilitate the discussion? Can a happy medium be found between opponents of DC's current development restrictions and the skyscrapers feared by their supporters?

Post your questions in the comments, and we'll try to ask as many as we can during the chat. And join us on Wednesday at noon for what should be a very informative discussion.

Systemic forces like white flight, black flight, redlining, blockbusting, wage stagnation created this problem, and numerous challenges impede reinvestment in neighborhoods like this one.

There are 2,232 addresses on the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs' (DCRA) vacant and blighted properties list, the principal data source for the maps above. The list includes 4022 South Capitol Street as well as the two apartment buildings immediately adjacent to it.

These are not normal short term vacancies, simply between leases. They are the buildings that are unleasable in their current state of disrepair. Some are bank owned, some are city owned. Some have absentee owners, some have local owners who live in poverty and have no means with which to fix up their assets.

In some cases, the owner listed on the title is deceased and there are multiple heirs to the property. Many require a significant investment of time and money before they can again be occupied.

The purpose of DCRA's list is to identify targets for the District's first line of defense against dilapidated buildings: taxation. By threatening to raise property taxes to 5% for vacant properties and 10% for blighted properties, the city encourages the owner to either bring the property up to code or sell it to someone who will, probably at a price less than what the owner would otherwise be willing to accept.

Ultimately, if the owner neither takes action nor pays the elevated taxes, the property goes to tax sale and is awarded to the highest bidder. If no one bids, ownership rights go to the city, but that doesn't mean that a fresh title magically appears in the name of the District of Columbia. The District, like any other winning bidder, must first go through foreclosure proceedings, sorting through existing liens on the property and attempting to resolve any other title issues that exist.

In other words, no one, least of all the District government, wants it to get to that point. This approach is a relatively new, boutique initiative that seems to have promise, as Lydia DePillis has thoroughly described.

In the grander scheme of things, there are really three variables that affect the rehabilitation or redevelopment of nuisance properties:

1. Acquisition cost: the cost of purchasing the property, which may include substantial legal fees, and interest or investor payments on borrowed money.
   
2. Redevelopment cost: site preparation (potentially including demolition), design and construction costs, interim maintenance and taxes, debt payments.
   
3. Income from the redeveloped property: the income that the property generates once it is redeveloped and operational, whether in the form of net operating income if the owner chooses to lease it out, or income from the sale of the property minus any costs associated with the sale.

For redevelopment to make sense, the sum of the first two variables must be less than the third, and when it doesn't, the free market won't mitigate vacant properties and blight.

The first two solutions presented require a taxpayer subsidy. Is it justified?

It is easier to quantify the costs associated with rehabilitating blighted properties than it is to quantify the benefits. The broken windows theory suggests that blight can encourage and support illegal activities, but it is difficult to measure to what extent that is the case.

Blight may lower surrounding property values and deter new investment. It can also contribute to the stigmatization of a neighborhood if dilapidated properties are seen as representative of the entire community. Across the country, the consensus seems to be that investing public funds in individual nuisance properties in order to battle the negative effects of disinvestment is a worthy cause.

The Gray administration, like previous administrations, uses a combination of the three strategies discussed in the previous graphic to combat long-term vacancy and blight, though there seems to be an intentional focus on Solution #3. Dedicating a greater share of energy and resources to large-scale economic development projects, which in Ward 8 tend to revolve around St. Elizabeths, is certainly a more glamorous approach and it probably will have a greater impact on the District's bottom line in the long run.

However, it is interesting that there has not been a more coordinated, ambitious, or heavily-funded government proposal for dealing directly with vacant and blighted properties where they are most concentrated. After all, this is the topic that Ward 8 residents ranked as their top development-related priority at the Ward 8 Community Summit, and unfortunately it is an issue that will forever be intertwined with the tragic events that occurred two years ago at 4022 South Capitol St SE.

• A grid of streets
  
• A dense network of reliable and regular transit
  
• A mix of housing and office to keep the streets active and alive 18 to 24 hours per day,
  
• A density level that provides enough customers to support great creative retail.
  
• And finally, community amenities, parks, playgrounds, dog walks, recreation centers all built in a sustainable fashion that improves instead of destroys our environment and you have yourself a recipe for Smart Growth.

It's easy to recognize smart growth when it is done well. The struggle is how to impart these characteristics into a suburban instead of urban framework and of course how do you actually get something like this approved when almost every single regulation on the books is in direct conflict with the principals stated above.

And so that brings us to the story of White Flint.

Today, the Rockville Pike in White Flint represents the engineering and design direction that consumers demanded from the 1950s through the 1980s. Tomorrow it will become a model of how to reclaim suburbia in order to create order out of chaos. Within a half mile of Metro, White Flint will one day house 20,000 to 25,000 residents and up to 40,000 employees generating close to $7 billion of net new tax revenue for Montgomery County.

The plan includes more than 2000 affordable housing units and a sensational mix of local and national retailers. There will be a grid of streets and a dramatic increase in transit accessibility. There will be parks, community amenities, and every single building will be LEED certified and most will go well beyond that requirement.

In just 2 months, Federal Realty will break ground on our first phase of Pike & Rose, the rebirth of Midpike into a truly magical neighborhood. 900,000 square feet of development including 492 residential units a boutique 80,000 square feet office building and 150,000 square feet of new retail including an IPIC movie theater, and that's just our first phase. It is an exciting time to be working and/or living in Montgomery County.

And so how did this daring and visionary plan ultimately get approved in a county where dinner conversation regularly revolves around traffic?

It came down to civic outreach, education and engagement. People who typically have opposing viewpoints sat down together and learned about the principals of smart growth and how White Flint could be a win win for everyone. Transparency was a cornerstone of the Partnership's work and we went hand in hand with resident supporters to spread the word. We jointly reached out to the silent majority and engaged them in the political process. And the best part was that the silent majority was ready to be heard.

To provide some insight into the results of the Partnership's outreach effort, I would like to read excerpts from testimony submitted and read by two local residents.

First, from Jane Fairweather, a County resident and business person:

I am fortunate to live in the smart growth urban community of downtown Bethesda. I live at the corner of Woodmont and Montgomery Lane.

For 22 years, I lived in a wonderful stone colonial home off Bradley Boulevard where I spent my days driving.

I drove to the grocery store, the bakery, the dry cleaners and the book store. I drove to the hardware store, the drug store, the library, the gym and the hair dresser (obviously this is not my words). On the weekends, I drove to the movies and restaurants and of course to the gas station, early and often. In the suburbs, I was sleeping in my house but living in my car. And, since my neighbors were also car bound, we had very little time to interact with each other and be a part of the community we lived in.

While I knew some of my neighbors, finding time to hang out was difficult. Living in the suburbs meant that I spent at least 3 hours per day in my car and endless dollars on gas to fuel it. I clogged the streets and polluted the air, while ranting the entire time about the traffic congestion around me. I met the enemy and the enemy was me.

After 22 years, my husband and I found ourselves empty nesters and so we moved to a condo in downtown Bethesda. Now we walk to the grocery store, the bakery, the coffee shop, and the book store. We walk to the library and to the gym. I walk to the hairdresser, to 16 movie screens and dozens of restaurants that surround my condo.

Now, I laugh at the people who are sitting in their cars. I never get in my car unless I am working. If I didn't work, I wouldn't even own a car. I live, shop, recreate, relax, learn and exercise within a 12 block radius of my home. If I can't walk there, I take the Metro, which is a ½ block away.

In short—We no longer need to "drive there" because we "live there."

Isn't that just great. This is from an ordinary citizen and resulted from broad outreach and education.

The following testimony comes from someone who lives in White Flint already:

I am here to ask you to improve the exceedingly inhospitable stretches of Rockville Pike and surrounding streets of the White Flint area. For the most part, these streets could not be more hostile to pedestrians. I am speaking about this based on personal experience.

Last year, while crossing Rockville Pike at Hubbard Drive in my wheelchair, to go from Starbucks back to my apartment, I was hit by a car. Today, Rockville Pike is designed for high speed traffic. Due to the near total absence of pedestrians, the simple fact is that drivers on the Pike are not on the lookout for pedestrians.

Fortunately I was not seriously injured, but I ask you to please remember those of us who cannot, or choose not to travel short distances by car. A pedestrian friendly design would enhance my personal safety, and would also result in less traffic by eliminating today's pattern of people driving literally across the street when walking would be eminently more practical.

I ask that the next time you drive down Rockville Pike you envision what it is like for me to get around. Perhaps even borrow a wheelchair and spend the day navigating between housing, strip malls, and the expansive parking lots with no sidewalks. Then think about the possibilities. You hold the power, please use it well.

Because of these voices and countless others, the Sector Plan was approved. Its ultimate success will depend heavily on a continuous drum beat of support from local activists like yourselves and a smart and engaged community.

There are still those that believe the auto should be the central and defining element of urban planning. Until such time that transit and walking are raised to the same level of importance, we will all struggle to win approval and to build great new urban places.

Residents in these camps concerned about development at the site have organized two groups, Friends of McMillan Park and Sustainable McMillan. The groups' leaders claim that Envision McMillan virtually ignored the ideas community members presented in the various public listening sessions.

In fact, the team has significantly altered the plan based on community feedback. It now has much more open space, with 13.55 acres overall, including a 4-acre central park and 8 acres of large, public, open spaces. The team also added a grocery store, a library and a community center.

The plan mixes preservation and growth

Envision McMillan comprises 9 architecture, design, landscape architecture, and consulting firms selected as the site's developer by the DC Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. The District government bought the site from the federal government in 1987 and has sought to develop it ever since.

The majority of the existing above-ground structures on the site would be retained and repurposed. The plan calls for preserving more than one of the underground sand filtration cells for visitors to explore. The historic McMillan Fountain, currently in storage at the adjacent federally-owned McMillan Reservoir, would sit in a prominent location in a public plaza on the site.

The southern row of cylindrical sand silos would form the border between the project's central park and a cluster of row houses, which would match the architecture of the surrounding neighborhood. Stormwater runoff from the site would be completely captured on site by using state-of-the-art runoff management techniques.

Envision McMillan seeks to draw a grocery store and an eclectic mix of local retailers. Developers hope to create approximately 4,000 jobs at all levels as part of new healthcare office space on the northern end (adjacent to the VA hospital and Washington Hospital Center).

Additionally, the city plans to sponsor job-training programs to help District residents qualify for these jobs. 100 housing units will be designated as "affordable senior housing," and a mix of workforce and market-rate housing will be available throughout the site.

The team responds to community concerns

The next step for Envision McMillan and project supporters is to win the public-relations battle by convincing residents of the area, and the entire city, that the current plans represent the most appropriate balance of competing community needs and desires.

Traffic has been a central area of concern for nearby residents. First Street NW, in particular, is often bumper-to-bumper at rush hours between Michigan and New York Avenues, and Bloomingdale residents fear this will get worse once new homes, offices, and shops open up at McMillan. Envision McMillan analyzed current traffic to help create a plan to efficiently move people to and from the site, both by car and by other modes.

The study showed that there are no safe pedestrian crossings of North Capitol Street between Michigan Avenue and Channing Street. The restrictions on left turns from North Capitol onto Michigan from both directions cause more traffic to flow onto neighborhood streets. Cut-through traffic also overtaxes the alleys in the neighboring Stronghold neighborhood.

Envision McMillan's traffic plan calls for building 2 new through streets across the site from North Capitol to First NW, reducing traffic flow on existing neighborhood streets. It also recommends 2 new signalized intersections along North Capitol, and widening the North Capitol and Michigan Avenue intersection. Almost all of the parking on the site would be below ground.

But perhaps more importantly, the plan would enhance access to the site by non-automobile modes, thereby reducing the number of cars that will have to move through the surrounding neighborhoods. It proposes a transit hub on the north end with frequent Circulator buses connecting to the Brookland Metro station, a hiker-biker trail along North Capitol for the length of the site, several new sidewalks, and two Capital Bikeshare stations on the site—one near the grocery store and one in the middle of the mixed-use medical office/retail complex.

Yes, the surrounding neighborhood will feel growing pains as new residents, shoppers, and medical clinic patients move in. But maintaining the site as it is, empty and off-limits to the public, benefits nobody.

The only viable alternative to the status quo is some form of development. Putting this residential and business development in an urban neighborhood where people can take advantage of existing infrastructure at modest incremental cost makes the most economic and environmental sense. The long-term benefits to the region of developing the site in a conscientious way far outweigh the short-term costs.

Envision McMillan has proposed a plan for intelligent development and adapted it around reasonable concerns from the community. The plan will create a desirable place to live, work, and shop that retains both the character of the neighborhood and the uniqueness of this historic site.

On the panel, moderated by Janis Schiff of Holland & Knight, mixed-use developer Grant Ehat of JBG/Rosenfeld talked at length about the decline of enclosed malls. The only mall to open in the US since 2006 is City Creek in Salt Lake City, which is adjacent to the Mormon Tabernacle and is heavily subsidized by the LDS church.

Tysons Corner is the only "super fortress" mall in the DC area that is viable for the long term, Ehat argued. In his view, even Montgomery Mall may not survive for another generation.

50% of the space at top-end retail destinations like Miami's Lincoln Road Mall is food oriented, said Ehat. Architect David Schwarz added that consumers are basically lazy, and that the most successful developments are the ones that contain the greatest number of attractive uses in the most convenient and concentrated places.

The economics of retail is shifting. According to Placemaker Michael Ewing, of Williams Jackson Ewing, retailers now rely on the "clicks and bricks" model, with their physical stores serving as venues for customers to see and learn about products that they later purchase online. Ewing said that people want to feel younger and more affluent than they really are, calling this "the psychology of aspiration."

From the developer's perspective, Ehat reported that he no longer even considers retail as part of the bottom line. Instead, in the context of mixed-use developments, the retail, dining, and entertainment offerings on the ground floor drive the image of the overall project and, hopefully, improves the financial performance of the apartments, condos, or office suites on the upper levels.

A final obstacle to retail developments is the balance between financiers and customers. Lenders still love "national credit tenants" (the big chains), the panelists agreed, but the younger and more affluent are not interested in such stores. Those are the shoppers and residents that developers want to attract, but they have little interest in living near the stores that lenders prefer.

Conversely, the independent retailers and restaurants that most appeal to target markets for new apartments often struggle to secure financing. For developments such as the 6 Walmarts planned for the District, the panelists concluded that this tension will be quite acute.