Forest City Unveils Design For 225-Room Hotel at the Yards

• February 14, 2017
• 3 Comments

by Nena Perry-Brown

A rendering of the proposed hotel at Parcel L1

Last summer, Forest City Washington received zoning approval for the residential portion of a two-part development on “Parcel L” in The Yards. Last night, the developers unveiled the design and details for the hotel portion of the site to ANC 6D.

As proposed, Parcel L1 at 227 Tingey Street SE (map) will house a 225-key high-end hotel with roughly 6,200 square feet of retail along the street level.

The ten-story building will also have a neighborhood bar, a restaurant on the northeast corner that will be able to expand and utilize a portion of the ground-floor conference space, and a rooftop bar and event space. There will be no parking under the hotel; a valet stand positioned on Second Street will utilize the first underground level of the garage under Parcel L2 to park valeted vehicles for hotel, retail and restaurant guests.

A rendering of the proposed hotel at Parcel L1

The Studios Architecture-designed building will primarily be composed of grey masonry brick, recalling the surrounding historic red brick buildings. A 6-foot setback will create landscaped balconies for the hotel guests along the third floor.

On the southern end of the site, Parcel L2 will deliver a 285-unit residential building with ground-floor retail. The entrances to both the hotel and the residential buildings will be along Second Street, facing what will become Tingey Square.

The development team has not yet filed an application for design review, nor have they met with the Office of Planning; the application will likely be filed in mid-March at the earliest to aim for a May or June hearing with the Zoning Commission.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/preliminary_design_for_parcel_l1_hotel_at_the_yards/12199

3 Comments

1. Jay said at 12:23 pm on Tuesday February 14, 2017:

   Looks nice. Not too glassy and not too modern. Clean lines that should pass the test of time.

1. skidrowedc@gmail.com said at 5:17 pm on Tuesday February 14, 2017:

   Clean lines depend on proportions. In the rendering, however, almost all the proportions I see are the result of circumstance—hotel rooms are X feet wide; the building’s floor-to-floor is determined by cutting up the zoning height limit, and so forth—and they aren’t very good. So far Studios has produced a wrapper around the real estate.  It’s marginally more interesting than the default glass box, I suppose, but I’m just not seeing enough architectural effort.

   The architecture comes when (if) the architects manipulate the underlying real estate’s proportions and rhythms.  We see a tiny bit of this here- the recessed spandrels between the 2nd and 3rd floors, the corner window.  But not much. I hope that Studios will do more manipulation to create good proportions, to guide the eye across facades, to reduce the monotony. While they’re at it, maybe they’ll introduce some humanity via smaller-scaled detail, which is currently entirely absent. And perhaps reduce the overall gloomy quality that dark grey brick imparts.

1. Nathaniel Martin said at 5:32 pm on Tuesday February 14, 2017:

   How does skidrowedc always beat me to the punch? I had the exact same reaction—while I am glad that this is not another dull glass box, the proportions are somehow unsatisfying. I also think the multitude of mullions in the windows is overly fussy. Larger panes, perhaps with asymmetrical mullion patterns, could make the building feel more distinctive.