300 Apartments Atop A Grocery Store: The Preliminary Plans for Walter Reed's Town Center

• May 5th 2017

by Nena Perry-Brown

The team behind the redevelopment of Walter Reed recently revealed the preliminary design for the site’s Town Center, a centerpiece of the development that will include 300 rental apartments atop 75,000 square feet of retail.

The Town Center building will be constructed on the previous site of a hospital building along 12th Street NW between Elder and Dahlia Streets with a design concept that employs “principle based contemporary architecture”, meaning that it will read as contemporary while referencing more traditional architectural ideals seen throughout the historic site. The architect is Torti Gallas.

The building will be asymmetrical yet use features like cornices to read as having a base, middle and top. The construction will also incorporate elements like punched window grids and rainscreens that highlight the building vertically.

A trapezoidal retail-framed village green will lead the way from Georgia Avenue toward the entrances of the residential portion and the small “in-line” retail space of the mixed-use building.

There will also be an anchor space at 12th and Dahlia, intended to be a grocery store, and a junior anchor space at the opposite corner.

The Walter Reed redevelopment, led by Hines, Urban Atlantic and Triden, is slated to bring approximately 90 townhouses, 1,864 multi-family residential units, 767,000 square feet of office, 212,000 square feet of retail, 14 acres of green space and 176,400 square feet of other/creative use to the 66-plus acre site off Georgia Avenue between Aspen and Fern Streets (map).

The development team took the conceptual design to ANC 4B for feedback earlier this week; it will also go up for Historical Preservation Review Board some time this year.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/300_apts_atop_retail_prelim_plans_walter_reed_town_ctr/12532.