New Design Released for Dupont Circle Church Development

• February 12, 2015
• 3 Comments

by Lark Turner

New rendering for St. Thomas Parish church redevelopment.

CAS Riegler is working on a new design for the St. Thomas’ Parish Church redevelopment, a project that’s divided the Dupont Circle neighborhood where the church sits.

The church’s primary building burned down decades ago, and since then, the church has allowed the public to use much of the vacated space as a park. A new building is being constructed on the site where the old one used to stand, and the church is selling off part of their land to pay for it. The new church and residential development at 1772 Church Street NW (map) will include about 50-60 units.

The community was critical of the initial design for the project as they felt it was too dense, and CAS Riegler’s Nick Jessee says the team has been working to reduce the massing of the residential building as they work toward a submission to the Historic Preservation Review Board, with whom they’ll meet next month. New renderings from architect Hickok Cole aren’t final, but they show the residential building’s development. (The church design has changed, too.) The residences step back further from Church Street and include projecting bays instead of a more flat and imposing structure.

“That’s been our goal: to really reduce the scale and impact of the residential building and make the church read as the more landmark building on the site,” Jessee told UrbanTurf.

For contrast, here are a couple of the old renderings:

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the_latest_renderings_of_cas_rieglers_st._thomas_parish_church_development/9526

3 Comments

1. Circle Thomas said at 3:51 pm on Friday February 13, 2015:
   That feels like a massive improvement. It'll be interesting to see what new complaints the neighbors come up with, since they're so fundamentally opposed to any development there.

1. Matt said at 5:23 pm on Friday February 13, 2015:
   I like the improvements of the residential structure (although I also thought the original design was fine too) but I think the redesign for the church on the 18th street side has gotten far worse. It went from a creative design that was welcoming and engaging to basically the standard/ugly "downtown DC glass and steel office building" look.

1. 7r3y3r said at 6:35 pm on Friday February 13, 2015:
   The first renderings were fine, all around. The church in the latest renderings looks horrible. But I don't own the land there so my opinion, or any one else's, shouldn't matter.