The DC University With the Most Development Plans on the Horizon

• December 19th 2019

by Nena Perry-Brown

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It's that time of year again when UrbanTurf reflects on some of DC’s most interesting real estate topics from the last 12 months. This week, we refresh your memory on some of the best, most intriguing and most peculiar things we came across throughout 2019. Enjoy.

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More than one area university made plans for student housing this year, and both Virginia Tech and George Mason University have plans to expand the physical footprints of their tech programs with Amazon' HQ2 on the horizon. However, it was Howard University that stood out this year as facilitating the most varied and neighborhood-defining developments.

The university kicked the year off by announcing the conversion of seven floors of offices at 2225 Georgia Avenue NW (map) into furnished apartments for graduate students and staff. Around the time this conversion was completed, luxury rental units began delivering at Slowe and Carver Halls, former Howard University dormitories which followed this spring's delivery of dorm rooms-turned-luxury apartments at Meridian Hill Hall. 

These conversions were small potatoes, however, compared to what is slated for the historic Bond Bread Factory and Washington Railway & Electric Company buildings. Howard selected a development team earlier this year to tackle the site occupying most of the block from Georgia Avenue to 8th Street NW between V and W Streets (map).

The development will restore and retrofit the historic buildings to deliver 450 apartments, a hotel, restaurants, retail, and a park above a market. The project received a key zoning approval last month, removing the properties from the campus plan to permit non-university use.

There are also some prime university sites where it seems a mixed-use redevelopment is being imagined. An application is currently pending to rezone the site of a three-story office building on 7th Street NW, across the street from Shaw/Howard University Metro station, to enable development of a medium density, mixed-income residential project with street-level retail.

Also, at a quarterly meeting of the school's Community Advisory Committee, a proposal was teased to rebuild Howard University Hospital across from the College Hall dormitory on 4th Street NW, enabling up to three million square feet of private development on the hospital's current site near the Georgia and Florida Avenue NW intersection. A statement from the university attempted to stem speculation about the future of the site, hinting at a ten-year timeframe for any such plans to unfold.

Either way, our curiosity is piqued about what will be included in next spring's update to the Campus Master Plan. 

UrbanTurf's 2019 Year in Review 

• The Craziest Place to Spend the Night in 2019 
• The 5 Priciest Home Sales in the DC Area in 2019
• The Best Listing of the Year (For the Mere Mortal)
• Most Prevalent New Neighborhood Amenity in 2019
• The Most Striking Development Pitched in DC in 2019
• The Best Listing of the Year (For the Well-Paid Lobbyist)
• The Most Impactful Regulation in DC in 2019 That Can't Get Finalized
• The Best Apartment Views in DC in 2019
• The Best Apartment of 2019 For the Aspiring Muckraker

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/area-university-with-most-development-plans/16231.