Everyone needs information to make informed decisions.
Since there has never been a community forum specific to 1617 U Street to get feedback and take Q&A from neighbors hosted by the very people pushing this high-density upzoning (Councilmembers Brianne Nadeau and Brooke Pinto), an FAQ may serve to fill the gap in information.
In July 2023, Save DC Public Land: Working for a Safe & Affordable U Street put out the premier FAQ on the future of 1617 U Street after gathering as much information as possible. We publicly noticed the FAQ on our website (here), as well we published it on the Adams Morgan listserve and in a direct email to Councilmembers Nadeau and Pinto and their staff. We asked the Councilmembers to correct any mistakes in our FAQ, but never received any acknowledgement of it at all.
Almost three months later, in mid-November, 2023, Councilmember Brianne Nadeau put out her own FAQ and now we have competing FAQs on the future of 1617 U Street. https://brianneknadeau.com/1617-u-faq
After reading Councilmember Nadeau’s FAQ, what remains undisputed is:
- The current plan (pushed by Nadeau, Pinto, and the Mayor) will privatize this 2-acre public property and the public interest will be lost for what amounts to forever (99-year lease).
- Their plan will mean half or more of any housing at a redeveloped 1617 U Street will be unaffordable market rate units (luxury housing).
- And their plan will likely lead to an enormous out-of-scale downtown-sized (10+ story) building shoved in between two low-rise historic districts threatening imminent displacement pressures and massive construction impacts to the existing people and affordable housing in the area.
ANALYSIS: NADEAU’S 1617 U STREET FAQ
Brianne Nadeau’s Blog post dated November 8, 2023, entitled “1617 U Street Frequently Asked Questions” at this link: https://www.brianneknadeau.com/1617-u-faq
Here are some select quotes [and some responses in brackets]:
The 1617 U site is an exciting and significant opportunity for a transformative project that can provide new community amenities and ensure that this corner of Ward 1 continues to live up to its promise of racial and economic diversity. The redevelopment of the site, together with the Reeves Center redevelopment, will enrich the neighborhood through significant new housing, including income-restricted affordable housing and expanded public facilities.
[Lots of promises here; Other areas where there has been MU10 rezoning has resulted in substantial redevelopment and accompanying substantial displacement.]
In 2020, this site was identified in the Mayor’s amendments to the Comprehensive Plan, the District’s primary land use document, as an opportunity for new housing.
[The Mayor never addressed upflumming 1617 U Street; The upflumming happened at the last minute vote by CM Nadeau in May 2021]
The moment we are in right now is already the result of numerous and extensive comments and many hours of public meetings on goal setting and planning that came before discussion of this project even began.
[The blog post goes on to link to numerous webpages and videos showing the community engagement about the Comp Plan between the public and Office of Planning and Nadeau’s office. However, none of what OP or Nadeau were engaging about mentioned the 1617 U Street high-density changes let alone much of any other the changes that were proposed last minute in May 2021 by Nadeau.]
Any development on public land within a half-mile of a Metrorail station or one-quarter mile of a Priority Corridor Network Metrobus Route (1617 U St. meets both standards) must include at least 30% of units affordable for low and very low-income households.
This is the highest affordability requirement for any kind of project in the District. However, 30 percent is the floor, not the ceiling. I support requiring more than that and have long supported more affordability in public projects.
[Nadeau’s FAQ forgets to mention that the law allows the Mayor can waive the affordability requirements at her own discretion and in service to developer friends.]
Under current zoning, there’s little that likely can be achieved with the site. Under current zoning a new structure at 1617 U could only be about as tall as the rowhouses on the other side of 17th Street . Keeping MU-4 zoning would likely produce a new police station and fire station, possibly some new retail or a handful of housing units, and that’s about it.
[The blog post also links to DMPED’s disposition hearing in Jun 2022 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8daerxa5Jc; What Nadeau fails to discuss here is that almost all of those in attendance (in person and by zoom) spoke out against the disposition and privatization of 1617 U Street.]
The site is currently zoned MU-4, which allows for moderate-density mixed-use development. Buildings can be up to 50 feet tall – about 4 stories – and can be a mix of residential and commercial use. For context, MU-4 is the zone for Mount Pleasant Street and the 11th Street commercial corridor in Columbia Heights.
MU-10 is a mixed-use zone used for neighborhood centers outside of downtown. MU-10 zones and developments built to those standards currently exist next to blocks with rowhouses in the U Street corridor and Dupont Circle area, as well as other areas in the city. The ARTS-4 zone, a special purpose zone with nearly identical development standards as MU-10, covers much of U Street, including an area less than two blocks away from 1617 U.
[Nadeau’s FAQ fails to mention wherever MU-10 rezoning has been proposed (only in 5 areas of the city) the displacement of existing residents goes up substantially and demographics completely change.]
Tall buildings serve an important role and we should not shy away from them. We live in a space-constrained city where land values are already high and continue to rise, where we are tasked with making affordable housing accessible to old and new residents and creating more livable neighborhoods. It is impossible to address all these goals without pursuing more density.
[Nadeau’s FAQ provides no images or understanding of how immense buildings in a MU-10 zone can actually be, they are massive, some of the biggest buildings in DC; Simultaneously, Nadeau makes no mention that the surrounding area is nearly complete with one and two story rowhouses built in the 1800’s.]
A new building at 17th and U will look and feel different in scale compared to what’s there now, of course. Design of a new development – from the placement of open public space to materials and where building mass is located – help a project to better integrate into its surroundings. Many of our most treasured neighborhoods could never have been built as we know them today if different-sized buildings were unallowed.
[The blog post also points to Brianne Nadeau’s “open house” held in November 2020, https://youtu.be/fxiyKAzNCCI ; Nadeau makes no mention of 1617 U Street during her “open house” or what she later calls a “town hall”. ]
We should not pass up the opportunity to maximize the housing we can build on a public site, particularly in this location. While Ward 1 has the highest concentration of income-restricted affordable housing west of the Anacostia River, that affordability is not evenly distributed across the ward, with areas west of 16th Street having under-produced both market rate and affordable housing in the last few decades.
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