A Decade Later, A Big Residential Development Is Pitched For DC's Chinatown

• January 21st 2025

by UrbanTurf Staff

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Plans are back in the works for a residential project in the middle of DC's Chinatown. 

Monument Realty has filed plans with DC's Historic Preservation Office (HPO) for a development at 608-624 Eye Street NW (map) that will deliver 95 new apartments and 9,400 square feet of retail. 

The project, designed by DCS Design, will preserve the townhouses, auto body shop and carriage house on the site, as well as add a new eight-story residential building. Monument received approval in December to demolish the warehouse building at 616 Eye Street to make way for the new apartment component. 

"The 600 block of Eye Street is in dire need of attention," the developer stated in the HPO application. "The Project will preserve and revitalize the existing townhomes from 608-620 Eye Street NW bringing them back to life by way of restoring the existing façades and structure."

This isn't the first iteration of a development for these addresses. After a lengthy process with DC's HPO back in 2015, Monument received approval to build an 10-story, 133-unit residential building at the site. Challenges due to the pandemic resulted in the project stalling and the developer switching gears to a smaller development. 

"The plan is basically the same in terms of the building layouts, but we are reducing the height from 10 stories to 8 stories and pulling the lowest level of the new tower back from the historic row homes on I Street," Monument’s Joshua Olsen told UrbanTurf. "The goal is to simplify the design and make it possible for the project to move forward in today’s difficult financial environment."    

The planned project will go before the Historic Preservation Review Board in February. 

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/a_decade_later_95_unit_development_pitched_for_chinatown/23100.