The Latest Renderings for Parcel 2 of the McMillan Redevelopment

• April 7, 2015
• 4 Comments

by Lark Turner

North perspective across the Service Court.

Vision McMillan Partners unveiled the latest renderings of its redevelopment plan for the 25-acre sand filtration site on Tuesday.

The renderings and an explanation of the design changes to the site were posted on Vision McMillan’s website and shared on social media before the page was taken down. The site explained the changes the development group, including Jair Lynch Partners, EYA and Trammell Crow, planned to make to the buildings on Parcel 2 of the site. The Historic Preservation Review Board is currently reviewing the design of the mixed-use building planned for that portion of the site.

A perspective from First Street NW.

Overall, the project includes 146 townhomes, 531 apartments, a grocery store, other retail and medical office buildings. The Parcel 2 building includes 250 residential units, of which 25 percent will be designated affordable, and 15,000 square feet of retail. The building is designed by MV+A Architects.

The design changes published Tuesday include a reduction of the scale of the building on Three Quarter Street, changes to the masonry details and shifts in the way the metal panel is treated in the design. Vision McMillan Partners will present its latest plans for Parcel 2 to the Historic Preservation Review Board on April 23.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the_latest_renderings_for_parcel_2_the_mcmillan_redevelopment/9736

4 Comments

1. Nathaniel Martin said at 8:34 pm on Wednesday April 8, 2015:
   In terms of scale and density, the proposed development seems very appropriate (the idea that the McMillan site is some sort of treasured "park" that must be entirely preserved at all costs is utterly absurd, though of course, at least a portion of the historic architecture must be preserved, as this plan does). Unfortunately, the architecture of the new development shown in these renderings is awfully bland. I would have hoped for some more interesting sculptural qualities -- picking up on the form of the cylindrical towers perhaps -- or some more innovative facade treatments. These look like they could be most anywhere. Very diasppointing.

1. Daniel Wolkoff said at 8:20 am on Thursday April 9, 2015:
   It is really the theft, by corrupt city council and collusion with developer conglomerate, of a national historic site, to be over-urbanized in our area of DC with virtually no parks. The green space is critical to our health, so we must condemn and investigate a DC govt. that fenced it off, and waited for the "hot" real estate market, for the corporations it serves. . The adaptive re-use that Friends of McMillan and McMillan Coalition for Sustainable Agriculture support, would really capture and use the water, and keep the Sand Filtration facility available for clean water security. You can allow the demolition of criticlclean water facility, while half the western hemisphere is in drought emergency. Our food can be grown at McMillan, must stop the demolition of the 20 acres underground.VMP is getting our tax millions of dollars to pay it's expenses for demolition of the Sand Filtration Site,,,our land, protected historic structures, and a life saving facility, as hemispheric drought emergency threatens our food supply, and water. We all need to join the lawsuit to stop the demolition. VMP is already in the $300 million range, out of our pockets! The 20 foot diameter, 5 mile mitigation tunnel, is another $157 million gift form taxpayers to VMP. They cannot do the development on the site without the tunnel. The combined storm water and sewage problem had reached crisis level. The tunnel is for VMP,, and is being promoted as "Neighborhood Protection", which is another scam. They let the neighborhood flood for 30 years,,,never cared when African Americans owned these homes being damaged. When yuppies bought,, and put in basement apartments so they can have a college student tenant pay off their mortgage, suddenly the DC govt. gave a damn. Had this flooding been in Kalorama, they would have re-built the entire sewer system and that is exactly what was deferred by WASA for 180 years. The separation of sewage and storm water is exactly what is needed, but they ignored it for so many decades,, it's now too expensive..Too expensive to do the right thing. Jeff Soule of American Planning says that the amount of runoff from Washington Hospital Center parking lots is still going to overwhelm the tunnel, during heavy rains. Why isn't Office of Miserable Planning addressing the WHC parking lot issue,,,why is Jemal building a parking garage at the Brookland Metro for Children's National Medical Center? There is some reason, one being Trammel Crow and EYA want the big fancy McMmillan site to make more money than actually addressing the problem across the street at WHC. Notice DCwater is cancelling a tunnel project right in Rock Creek Park, Piney Branch or Broad Branch,, and they will get "green infrastructure",,nice trees, ponds, drainage, recharging curbs,,,BECAUSE, no big development is going to happen there, no Armed Forces Retirement home 80 acres, more development than the Pentagon, no McMillan VMP,,, also the people who live in this upper NW area are not going to go through the disruption as being experienced in Bloomingdale. All to avoid proper upgrading of the sewers! The Mayor GrayTaskforce on Bloomingdale Flooding, wrote that the problem goes back to the 1830's, what BS,,The problem is WASA not doing proper work for 180 years,,,get real, you gonna blame people in 1830! The real problem with storm water runoff , is that it never goes into the ground, like nature intended The Office of Miserable Planning and DC Zoning allow any amount of paving, parking lots, impervious surfaces( like the recent unnecessary parking lot at Franciscan Monastery, right over similar flooding at Brookland Metro). The near total paving over of the land, keeps the storm water from percolating into the ground and recharging, and maintaining the "ground water table". so that is why when we have even slight drought, like in not so past years, the trees start to die, and small, newly planted trees need irrigation bags, their roots are not deep enough to get water from the ground. All the storm water runoff going into the waste treatment plant is environmentally destructive and a failure of DC WASA to restrict paving. The tree cover, and the natural cycle of streams, are what DCWater is destroying.....No streams either as they are also "ground water",as well.

1. Daniel Wolkoff said at 8:30 am on Thursday April 9, 2015:
   Read the Hill rag, and Mid City series on the scandal of VMP, and DMPED hiring Fonataine to suppress DC community rights. This is a dictatorship!Part four of Jeffrey Anderson’s series “Eyes on McMillan” “Spin Doctors,” takes a close look at the politics behind the mysterious “astroturf” fake PR campaign and the Create McMillan Park signs. http://www. capitalcommunitynews.com/ content/spin-doctors City Council hearing video below, Brookland residents landscape architect Mary Pat Rowan and historic restoration artist Daniel Wolkoff testify to Muriel Bowser Chair of the City Council Committee on Economic Development. This link goes to the testimony on McMillan Park from February 2014 http://youtu.be/uXkOgHV7Lhw The rest of the series is linked below. Tour the magical spaces of McMillan Park, http://vimeo.com/ 111638481, and please consider donating to our legal fund to stop the city’s plans to demolish our park: https://www.crowdrise. com/savemcmillanpark. See the first installment of a new series in MidCity weekly taking a close look at what’s being going on at McMillan, “Eyes on McMillan,” the first objective investigative piece on this whole process and saga that I know of: http://www. capitalcommunitynews.com/ content/mcmillan-development- arrives-crossroads-0 Part two of this series, out February 20th, “The Empire Strikes Back,” looks at the city’s hiring of a firm in Baltimore to ‘discredit and neutralize’ persons such as myself who seek a more transparent, open process to revitalize McMillan Park: http://www. capitalcommunitynews.com/ content/empire-strikes-back Part three, out on March 9th: The Long Strange Trip: http://www. capitalcommunitynews.com/ content/long-strange-trip-2 Part four, out April 8th, with a careful look inside the very strange DMPED/VMP PR campaign paid for with tax dollars: http://www. capitalcommunitynews.com/ content/spin-doctors And see this scathing comment on the disinformation campaign your tax dollars paid for to discredit and neutralize community opposition to "the Monstrosity on Michigan Avenue" and the Friends of McMillan Park: http://intowner.com/2015/03/ 18/sleazy-dealings-between- the-city-and-developers- exposed/ We need greenspace, not a VMP McPark,, we need a Glen Echo arts and educational campus for our families, we need a DC Wolf trap outdoor concert stage, with sunset vistas..You own McMillan, so stop the theft!

1. skidrowedc@gmail.com said at 7:20 pm on Monday April 13, 2015:
   Returning to the subject at hand, I have to agree with Nathaniel Martin. These designs are placeless; they could be anywhere from China to Chattanooga. Even with the caption, I really can't tell where north is, or which are street elevations, because the façade gymnastics have no apparent relationship to sun exposure, views, or context. In fact, in solar terms, the facades seem to be backward -- larger, unprotected glass areas facing east and west (where it's difficult to control solar gain), with smaller, recessed glass areas facing north and south (where solar gain is easily controlled with basic passive devices). Or maybe they're so anonymous that I simply can't tell. To the extent that visionless NIMBYs often whine inappropriately about lack of brick, especially red brick, in new project designs, there's the flip side: architects who inappropriately avoid brick--and/or insist on charcoal coloration, as if decades of smog had stained the brick. To the extend that visionless NIMBYs often whine inappropriately about lack of regional or neighborhood design elements being incorporated into new projects, there's the flip side: architects who absolutely and inappropriately ignore the context. The fact that these are provided by an entity calling itself "Vision MacMillan" only makes it worse, seemingly drawing attention to the lack of vision. It's actually baffling to me how any architect could work on the MacMillan site and draw no inspiration or aspiration whatsoever from the existing structures.