Plans For First Major Hotel East Of The River Look To Advance

• August 18th

by UrbanTurf Staff

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When UrbanTurf first reported in June that the first large-scale hotel had been pitched east of the Anacostia River, plans were still in the early stages. Ahead of a zoning meeting in September, a host of new details on the project's design, community engagement, and path through the approval process have been filed.

Redbrick LMD has proposed a seven-story hotel with approximately 160 guest rooms, plus about 4,000 square feet for a bar/lounge and meeting room immediately adjacent to the Anacostia Metro station.

Since the initial zoning filing, the design, from architect DLR Group, has been revised in response to community feedback. The bar/lounge, which will be open to both hotel guests and outside visitors, will now get its own dedicated entrance directly off the hotel's south façade. The building's east and south facades will also get an expanded green screen, and the developer has identified sections of the east and north facades that could accommodate one or more murals, with plans to commission Ward 8 artists to create artwork. Together, the developer says the changes are meant to soften the building's edges and tie it more closely to its surroundings.

The filing also addresses a recurring community question: why the project doesn't come with a community benefits agreement (CBA). The new filing notes that the site's Northern Howard Road zoning — adopted in 2019 after an earlier planned-unit development for the Bridge District was appealed and extinguished — already bakes in many of the benefits a CBA would typically cover, including a 12% affordable housing set-aside, mandatory ground-floor retail along Howard Road, and LEED Gold requirements.

The hotel would slot in as the next chapter of the Bridge District, which already includes roughly 758 apartments and 44,000 square feet of retail completed in Phase 1, with another 272 units under construction on Parcel 5. The proposal will go back before the Zoning Commission in September. 

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/plans_for_first_major_hotel_east_of_the_river_look_to_advance/24908.