RSS Feed5th and Eye Developer Donohoe Selection Roundup
Yesterday, Mayor Fenty declared the Donohoe Development Company the winner of the bidding process to develop the 5th and Eye parcel across the street from the condo building, 555 Mass, in the Mount Vernon Triangle. Instead of rehashing a number of stories already out there, we’ll just round ’em up so you can get all the perspectives. The development will add a number of additional characteristics to the neighborhood such as a jazz club, an international hotel, additional residents with a lower income set aside and retail. Most satisfying is that this is an example of how a government RFP process included and considered the community’s input. We look forward to the groundbreaking!
Fenty Announces Luxury Hotel, Jazz Club for Downtown Site [DC Government Press Release]
Donohoe Development to build hotel in Mount Vernon Triangle [Washington Business Journal]
The Arts at 5th and I [website of Donohoe Development’s proposal for the parcel]
District Briefing – Hotel to Anchor Project [WaPo]
5th & I Announcement – more beef [Life In Mount Vernon Square] includes photos of Fenty
5th and Eye RFP Awarded – [The (Mount Vernon) Triangle]
New Poll: Name Our Safeway
Lots of suggestions have been floating around the blogosphere on how to name our neighborhood Safeway. The unofficial rules are that the name has to start with the letter S. If you have any other poll option suggestions, leave a comment!
Mayor Fenty dubbed the new Safeway at 5th and K (or L St, depending on who you talk to) as the “Sexy Safeway.”
The Bloomingdale blog has named it the “Swanky Safeway.”
PQLiving suggests “Super-Stocked Safeway.”
Vote now!
Silicon Downtown?
Ever walked by a rather nondescript, thin historic building on F Street between 13th and 14th Streets and see the word Swapdrive in the window? Wonder what it is? We sure did and a recent story in the WaBiz Journal revealed it to be a $124 million dollar tech company acquisition by none other than Symantec, the company that makes enterprise security software for both home and business computer users. That got the PQ Living staff thinking. Are there any other high tech companies downtown? The answer sure is yes.
Swapdrive (1313 F St NW) – online Internet data backup service; acquired by Symantec for $124 million
Smartbrief (1100 H St NW) – industry and trade e-newsletter and aggregator service provider; privately held
Blackboard (650 Mass Ave NW) – publicly traded education software company; market capitalization of $1.22 billion; ticker is BBBB
Searchles (1220 L St NW) – a mash up search and social networking service provider; privately held
The Map Network (formerly on 7th St NW, now at 1875 K St NW) – provider of fanciful online destination maps; acquired by Navteq who was acquired by Nokia; now called Navteq ID Maps
Distributive Networks (819 7th St NW) – text messaging content and service provider; privately held
Streamsage (1110 Vermont Ave NW) – TV programming and video search technology provider; acquired by Comcast; technology behind TV Planner and Fancast’s video search
During the go-go tech days of the late ’90s when you could still find Michael Saylor of Microstrategy fame throwing parties at Cities (now The Left Bank) in Adams Morgan, DC was trying to drum up NoMa and its empty warehouses/lots as perfect spots to build data centers. Those days are gone but just maybe we can now lay claim to having a small but budding Silicon Downtown.
Are there any companies out there that we missed?
Ed. Note: gpliving contributed to this story.
PQ Living Shines Using Chrome
You may have heard that there is a new Internet browser in town thanks to Google and it’s called Chrome. We’ve downloaded Chrome, put it through its paces and are happy to report that PQ Living works swimmingly using this new browser. In fact, it’s quite snappy!