Akridge Sends 700 6th St NW Love Note To PQ Residents

David Toney, the project manager, says that there will be a garage. Access to it will be via the alley between the Verizon Center and the new building. There will also be a sidewalk in the alley for pedestrians.

sorry, but the proportionality appears monsterous.

I hope Akridge is able to match their public relations with their actions. Local residents have a right to R&R during non-business hours. That would include not having any commerical truck traffic before 7 am; very often trucks will line up outside the contruction site well before 7 am, especially Monday mornings, creating way too much noise – why not be friendly to the neighborhood and stagger the deliveries. This would also include not scheduling all pile driving to happen between 7 am and 9 am, but staggering it so the pain of hearing their construction is not borne only on the backs of residents. And, what time are construction workers allowed to start coming into the mixed use neighborhood. Keep in mind, the local police will probably defer to Akridge overt the needs of the residents since they are already giving the police a rent-free place to work. How many construction workers driving in from deep in Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia really care about the needs of local residents, anyway. The police are changing shifts in the morning and don’t really cover the neighborhood until after 9 am, so I don’t expect the construction crews to really pay attention to the spirit, if not the letter, of their building permits. Finally – what does Akridge, or any developer for that matter, give back to the neighborhood in exchange for our “cooperation” aside from giving financial contributions to politicians and other things that benefit chiefly their own interests?

However, I would like to mention a big thanks to the bloggers on this site for keeping us informed of these things. I encourage residents to post their concerns on this blog so there can be a dialogue and reduce the pain associated with construction.

Thanks, cityliving, for the extra info!

Looks ugly, cheap, and huge. No retail or restaurant at ground level either, insuring that this part of 6th St stays as dead as it is now with the empty lot.

I hope the redeveloped old convention center site will raise the bar a bit for developers. I went to the presentation on Thursday and it was truly inspiring.

Sorry to keep ragging on this building, but look at the list of ammenities from the 700sixthstreet website:

-Client Only fitness facility
-Rooftop terrace of the washington skyline
-Adjacent to Gallery Place retail and dining
-Award Winning Akridge property management services

Thats great…for the people that work in the building. Akridge needs to get with the program and start developing buildings that contribute to the community, not just the people that work in them.

chris — what did you hear/see at the thurs. presentation (old convention center) that was inspiring? I couldn’t make the meeting but would love to hear some details.

I too am concerned about the construction noise. I’ve had sucess in the past calling 311 to report permit violations at the site at 7th and H. I hope other residents will chip in and do that when the site starts work too early. I am sad to lose another sidewalk!

Chris,

So, you are expecting Akridge to develop buildings that contribute to pedestrian activity and life in the city of Washington, DC?

Akridge still represents old-school Washington development – devoid of human scale, innovative architecture, and dead street activity surrounding their buildings. And, we can now look forward to the Burnham Place at Union Station development from these old-schoolers. I’m not holding my breath for anything unique and interesting at all on that one.

This building is a monster!

The only way for raising the bar is for the old-school Washington developers to step aside and let some other international developer do it. DC has already had success with that in a number of developments. They aren’t getting with the program quick enough!

Even if they put retail in this monster, just look at the design of the ground floor – same ole same ole from this group!

I hope Akridge does keep the noise down though since that is the least they can do while building this monster.

Akridge built gallery place, so they can build projects which can bring more life to the neighborhood. Also I think the building with look nice. The ibew building is an hok building developed by akridge which uses similar looking blue glass, and I like the look of that building. It is definatly dissapointing that there is not more retail in the building. Sixth st. is very dead and looks like it will remain so.

Anon,

At the presentation they had slides, posters, and 2 models of what is planned for the old convention center site. They plan to reintroduce 10th street through the site (where the astroturf “art walk” is now), as well as I street, which will go a long way to break up the superblock.

There will be a network of pedestrian only alleys running through the site, lined by retail and restaurants, and meeting in a central plaza. Calling them alleys is almost misleading however. Think Las Ramblas in Barcelona, or for a less grand example (and probably more accurate one) think Lincoln Road in South Beach, Miami.

The buildings will be mixed retail, condos, apartments, and office space. The buildings are terraced, and get lower and lower as you work your way further into the center of the site, so the lowest parts of the buildings face the pedestrian walkways. This way, everything feels human scale from the walkways.

The buildings looked pretty in the renderings. Very modern, all steel, glass, and cool textured panels. Still, they are only in the planning stages, and you know how these things go. When it gets handed off to the architects, they could very well construct buildings that look completely different than they do in the planning renderings. We shall see.

There will also be a new triangle park on the corner of the site, that will double as an amphitheater. They also talked about DC doing a new public library on site, but if I remember correctly it got voted down last time it came up in city council so I don’t know if that will materialize or not.

They said they will post the new presentation on the website (http://www.oldconventioncenter.com). Also, there was a reporter from the Post there (he interviewed me! who will be running an article in Monday’s paper. Lastly, if you want to see some of the buildings done by the firm in charge of the site, Fosters and Partners, check out this link. They are simply, the best at what they do -> http://www.fosterandpartners.com

I lived in a condo in the West End that was given hundreds of thousands of dollars from a development company in thanks for their patience and cooperation during a new construction in the adjoining lot. I wonder what Akridge is doing to compensate the neighbors whose lives will be disrupted during construction.

The rendering’s perspective is clearly enhanced a bit to make the building seem more imposing/powerful than it will be. It’s no architecture design winner, but hardly the monstrosity some make it out to be.

I agree with comments that this is a nice building for the workers, not the neighborhood, but feel that Akridge deserves at least some credit for not leaving their ground-floor retail spaces empty for years while they search for that elusive “perfect tenant”. Burnham Place at Union Station will likely not be as pretty in Akridge’s hands as it would be in Jemal’s, but at least they aren’t building up a new area just to blight it with empty retail storefronts.