272 Apartments, Timber Construction: The New Plans For Third Phase Of Bridge District

• August 29th 2025

by UrbanTurf Staff

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Plans for the next piece of DC's massive Bridge District development have been revised a bit. 

Back in May, RedBrick LMD filed plans with DC for a new 15-story, 299-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail at 633 Howard Road SE (map). As the development team gets ready to go back before the DC Zoning Commission next month, there are a few changes to the project. 

First, the number of apartments in the project has been reduced from 299 to 272. Second, with the environment in mind, RedBrick has decided to construct the building with a mass timber structural system. 

"Using mass timber in place of concrete reduces the building’s embodied carbon footprint by approximately 30%, driven by four key factors: timber’s renewable sourcing from managed forests, significantly lower production energy compared to concrete, reduced transportation emissions due to its lighter weight, and its ability to sequester carbon over the building’s lifespan."

The project -- designed by Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture and landscape architect Future Green Studio -- will feature unit types ranging from studios to three-bedroom units, with all of the three-bedrooms set aside for inclusionary zoning (IZ). In total, 12% of the apartments will be set aside for as IZ units for households earning no more than 50% and 60% median family income (MFI).  

A courtyard between this new building and the first phase of Bridge District will have retail and outdoor dining areas as well as residential amenity space and garden patio areas. A pedestrian walkway will run through the center of the courtyard.

More than a decade in the making, the first phase of the 2.5 million square-foot Bridge District officially opened earlier this year. Located near the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, the Stratos and Alula apartment buildings, and furnished corporate housing units at Poplar House are now open. Several retailers, including Atlas Brew Works and Melange, will open later this year.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/272_apartments_timber_construction_the_new_plans_for_third_phase_of_bridge_/23811.