49-Unit H Street Project Breaks Ground As Corridor Ponders Its Future

• July 2nd

by UrbanTurf Staff

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Construction has begun on a long-planned residential project along the H Street Corridor.

Capitol Hill Corner reported earlier this week that City Trends Development has broken ground on a new residential project at 10th and H Street NE, across from Ben's Chili Bowl. The project will bring 49 units and four ground-floor retail spaces to the corridor, a scaled-back count from the roughly 80 units originally floated when plans for the site first surfaced in 2023. 

As with the original proposal, the project will retain the existing H Street façade and party wall rather than demolishing them outright. Demolition work is underway and the targeted completion date is late next year.

The groundbreaking comes as the corridor itself is under scrutiny. A recent report from the DC Office of Planning examined what it will take to get the H Street Corridor back on track, finding that total visitation along the corridor fell 20% between 2019 and 2025 and that ground-floor retail vacancy now stands at 26%, roughly double the 2020 rate. The study pointed to limited new residential development as one contributing factor, noting that just 39 multifamily units were delivered along the corridor between 2021 and 2025, compared to 1,567 in the prior five years. 

Projects like 1000 H Street NE offer a small step toward reversing that trend, even as the Office of Planning's broader recommendations — including allowing greater building heights of up to nine stories in Retail sub-districts and six stories in Arts sub-districts — remain preliminary ahead of a final report expected in September.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/49-unit_h_street_project_breaks_ground_as_corridor_ponders_its_future/24780.