A Look at Georgetown Day School’s Planned Redevelopment

• September 25, 2015
• 3 Comments

by UrbanTurf Staff

Rendering of the planned residential buildings. Click to enlarge.

UrbanTurf recently got its hands on images of one of the biggest redevelopment projects in the works for upper Northwest DC.

The Georgetown Day School is planning to consolidate its lower, middle and upper schools on a new campus surrounding 4200 Davenport Street NW (map), as well as build two new residential buildings with retail space. The redevelopment will include the site of a nearby Safeway and Martens Volvo/Volkswagen dealership that the school purchased last year for $40 million.

Click to enlarge.

The two residential buildings will rise to six and seven stories, and house between 270 and 290 units. A plaza called Davenport Steps will sit between the two buildings.

The planned grocery store. Click to enlarge.

Alison Grasheim, the school’s spokeswoman, told UrbanTurf in May that the buildings will include 30,000 square feet of retail — including, hopefully, a replacement for the neighborhood’s popular Safeway, which this spring signed a two-year lease with the school but will eventually be razed.

Click to enlarge.

Esocoff & Associates is the architect on the project, and JBG is advising the school as a development partner. The school is waiting until after its planned unit development (PUD) receives approval from the Zoning Commission to contract with a developer to build the site through a request-for-proposals (RFP) process. The PUD will be filed next month.

Click to enlarge.

Despite plans for the PUD to be filed next month, there’s no timeline for construction, Grasheim told UrbanTurf earlier this year.

“​Our plan is for the school to be complete by fall 2020,” she said. “The mixed use timeline is influenced more by market conditions, and we will know more about the exact timing as we go into the RFP process.”

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/georgetown_day_school_unveils_images_of_planned_redevelopment/10381

3 Comments

1. skidrowedc@gmail.com said at 7:43 pm on Friday September 25, 2015:
   The site/master planning looks unimpeachable. Love the grand staircase in the Davenport Street axis! That's exactly the kind of urban public amenity this part of Wisconsin Avenue so desperately needs. As for the exterior façade design, Esocoff's familiar elements--colorful brick walls with punched windows, curving walls, windows in offset double gangs, precisely designed cast stone lintels and sills, flared base--are all present, but in rather basic form. So basic that the buildings look rather dull. I have to wonder, have there already been several rounds of cost-cutting? This is what it looks like when an ambitious design is cut back too much, not the starting point! These buildings could so use an injection from Esocoff's respectable portfolio: Ornamental cast stone panels like 2401 Pennsylvania Avenue; a play of masonry planes against metal-and-glass planes like 1010 Massachusetts Avenue; piano-curve apexes like 400 & 401 Massachusetts Avenue (the round apex shown looks deadly dull and cheap by comparison!); and fun ornamental metal guardrails like 401 Massachusetts. Or some of the interesting mosaic tile patterns and other ornamental motifs that Esocoff's wife/associate Amy Weinstein uses. Step it up, team! Your architecture should match your planning.

1. Matt said at 8:12 pm on Friday September 25, 2015:
   As usual, agree with everything skidrowedc said ^ !

1. Nathaniel Martin said at 3:49 pm on Tuesday September 29, 2015:
   Indeed, skidrowedc has gotten to the essence of the matter. On the plus side, urbanistically, this site plan is an excellent diagram--it does exactly what it needs to do. But the buildings are joyless. The delightful quirkiness of Esocoff's other projects--which I sometimes find a little fussy but I admire for their uniqueness--is nowhere to be seen. This makes me sad.