Petworth Project Across From Metro Does Not Garner Support For Parking Variance

• October 15, 2015
• 5 Comments

by UrbanTurf Staff

New rendering of development planned for 3701 New Hampshire Avenue

On Wednesday evening, a 21-unit residential project on the boards for the intersection of New Hampshire Avenue and Georgia Avenue NW did not garner the support for a variance from the site’s 13 required parking spots.

ANC 4C voted against supporting the variance, despite the development’s location across the street from the Petworth Metro station. The commission did vote to support the project’s lot occupancy variance.

Developer Rooney Properties and PGN Architects are working on the project that will be located at 3701 New Hampshire Avenue NW (map). The site is the former location of Sweet Mango Cafe.

The 65-foot, five-story residential development will have one and two-bedroom residential units on floors two through five and there will be retail on the ground floor.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/anc_does_not_support_parking_variance_for_21-unit_residential_project/10461

5 Comments

1. Fried Green Tomatoes said at 9:27 pm on Thursday October 15, 2015:
   This is BS. How can we avoid such nonsense from ANCs?

1. ANCs said at 10:16 pm on Thursday October 15, 2015:
   ANC 4C really is the worst of the ANCs (5D excluded, because Kathy Henderson). Look at any variance request and they've undoubtedly tried to stall/delay/stop any request.

1. Makeba-The-Architect said at 4:08 pm on Friday October 16, 2015:
   The metro is 'across' the freaking street . What is the ANC doing ? Buses rolling by every 5 seconds ... The deal can't get better. It's called progress. Get out of the way. DC needs the tax base to be a solid infrastructure, to be stable despite rolling markets. Duh.

1. skidrowedc@gmail.com said at 8:03 pm on Friday October 16, 2015:
   I'm in agreement with the other commenters that this is a reasonable location for a no-parking building. But I am concerned about this trend of developers being granted 100% relief on newly-bought sites. They may have started to regard it as standard operating procedure. Rooney Properties is an experienced, sophisticated company. They can create a sufficiently accurate pro forma to pay the right amount for a site. They know that parking nowadays costs more to build than it yields in income, and this was surely reflected in the site acquisition deal. Accordingly, this relief, if BZA disagrees with the ANC and approves it, is basically just a financial windfall to the developers. A sizable expense on the pro forma vanishes, partly balanced by slightly lower returns, but overall a home run. It's paid for by the inconvenience, if not direct expense, of people who park on the street in the area, because some of those 21 apartments' owners will have cars and drive, and they'll be hunting for the same hard-to-find spaces. (The ANC may be shrill, but they're right about that.) I support smart growth and limiting the role of the automobile. But I also support the rule of law. The law in this case requires 1 space per 2 units, which doesn't seem excessive to me. More to the point, though, it seems clear to me that an exception to the law is sought largely to provide windfall profits, not due to any inherent aspect of the site.

1. Nathaniel Martin said at 5:51 pm on Tuesday October 20, 2015:
   I feel obliged to note that the design of this project is hideous. It's not relevant to the parking issue, but really, it's just awful. If you're going to do fake historicism, at least do it well.