A Zoning Fix Could Clear the Way For One Of DC’s Biggest Residential Projects

• September 30th

by UrbanTurf Staff

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A gap between two sets of city rules is holding up one of the larger for-sale housing projects in the works in DC, and the developer is asking the city to fix it quickly. 

Urban Atlantic, the contract purchaser of the former Boys Town campus in North Michigan Park, has filed a text amendment with the DC Zoning Commission this week and has asked the commission to adopt it on an emergency basis. Without it, the developer says, its plan for 166 semi-detached homes on the 12-acre site can't move ahead.

The problem is that two sets of DC rules don't line up. The zoning rules, updated in 2016, let developers create individual home lots along a private street, as long as the public is guaranteed the right to use it. The city's older rules for dividing land into lots don't explicitly allow that. According to the petition, the DC Surveyor, the office that finalizes those lot divisions, read the older rules narrowly and stopped the developer's application, even though the Office of Planning, DDOT, and other city agencies have signed off on the project. Urban Atlantic says it spent roughly six months looking for a workaround with city officials before concluding there wasn't one.

The proposed fix is narrow. The text amendment would apply only to the Boys Town property and would let the homes be permitted based on a planned layout of lots, rather than lots that front a public street. It would also protect the entire project from future zoning changes, as long as the first building permit application is filed and accepted as complete by the time the amendment takes effect.

Urban Atlantic says the alternatives are worse. One is seeking approval through the Board of Zoning Adjustment, a process meant for projects seeking exceptions to zoning standards, which the developer says this project doesn't need. The other is building new public streets and handing them over to the city, which the developer estimates would take 18 to 24 months. The developer also says it has financing lined up but has already pushed back its closing twice, and that it is now scheduled for November.

If the project moves forward, 17 of the 166 homes would be affordable to households earning up to 80% of area median income, and the plans preserve the 1928 school building at the center of the site and the open space around it, which the developer expects to designate as a historic landmark.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/a_zoning_fix_could_clear_the_way_for_one_of_dcs_biggest_residential_project/25050.