Renderings and Details of the Plans for the View at Waterfront

• March 5, 2015
• 2 Comments

by Lark Turner

A long-dormant plan to build new residences on the site of the View at Waterfront buildings at 6th and M Streets SW (map) has been revitalized by the developer, Mill City Residential, with new renderings and plans recently submitted to the Zoning Commission.

Mill City wants to build 260 new units in two buildings, one north and one south of the existing I.M. Pei-designed residential towers. The developer will also build in 290 parking spaces. The new buildings will rise to 85 feet in height.

The revised plans, first reported by The Little Quadrant that Could, will likely move forward before the Zoning Commission. In a filing last week, the Office of Planning recommended that the plans be considered by the commission.

The project, designed by SK&I Architecture, is about a block from the Waterfront Metro and just east of the massive Wharf redevelopment. The revised project is smaller in scale than one originally approved by the Zoning Commission.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/renderings_and_details_of_the_plans_for_the_view_at_waterfront/9607

2 Comments

1. Nathaniel Martin said at 11:42 pm on Thursday March 5, 2015:
   Is this the same site for which Phil Esocoff previously designed some towers? If so, this is a huge tragedy. Esocoff's were interesting -- these are deadly dull.

1. skidrowedc@gmail.com said at 3:40 pm on Friday March 6, 2015:
   The façade designs look like 'modernized' public housing. That is, the mindless apartment box that was thrown up in the 60's (social need being paramount, things like proportion and detail were not included); now with the original brick painted two shades of gray, and a white irregular grid wrapping the outside. If that were the situation, I would be respectful: "The architects & developers are doing what they can with this dog," I would think, sympathetically. But this is not the reversal of existing urban errors. These are new buildings. As such, it's hard to have much sympathy. The facades are clunky, and the master plan (where the buildings are located, their approximate footprints and heights, their relationship to streets and landscaped areas, etc.) is mindless. Why aren't they drawing from Modernist models of the urban renewal period of Southwest, almost all of which combine rowhouses and apartment blocks? A denser, more recent version of this mixed model can be found in Vancouver BC, where scores of tower/townhouse developments are hailed as a huge success story. It's easy to see how it could apply to this site--adding density to the currently-proposed scheme while improving the urbanism. And maybe extra density would afford better exterior architectural design...