Gas Station Mogul Pitches 13-Story Hotel With Rooftop Bar In Mount Vernon Triangle
A local developer is moving forward with plans for a 13-story hotel with a rooftop restaurant in Mount Vernon Triangle after preservationists' efforts to extend historic protections to the property failed.
Eyob “Joe” Mamo, who built his fortune with a D.C. gas station empire, has filed plans to turn a 3,700 SF vacant plot at 917-921 Sixth St. NW into a 46K SF hotel. Mamo, under the name 921 6th Street LLC, is working with local firm FILLAT+ Architecture to develop the property and submitted plans to D.C.’s Board of Zoning Adjustment last month.
Mamo purchased the land, which was at the time occupied by three 19th-century townhomes, in the summer of 2020. The properties were the subject of an unsuccessful effort in 2021 from the D.C. Preservation League to wrap them and some of the neighboring commercial buildings on K Street into the Mount Vernon Triangle Historic District, the Washington Business Journal reported at the time.
The preservation league found evidence that some of the homes dated back to the Civil War and discovered that members of the D.C.’s free Black community lived at 919 Sixth St. during and after the war, the WBJ reported. Similar structures once occupied by Black families in the neighborhood have also been demolished.
The preservationists' application was denied and the buildings were demolished, a league representative told Bisnow.
The hotel is allowed by-right, but Mamo is seeking an exemption to do away with the loading dock requirement and include a penthouse restaurant. The restaurant would "contribute to the mixed-use Mount Vernon Triangle neighborhood and provide a unique amenity to hotel guests and the public," the applicant's statement to the BZA says.
"Moreover, providing an eating and drinking establishment in the penthouse will bring new patrons to the neighborhood, add additional eyes and ears on the street, and help to create a more active, pedestrian friendly streetscape," the application says.
The penthouse eatery would be an extension of a planned ground-floor restaurant.
Douglas Development Corp. owns the commercial buildings around the corner on K Street, which now contain a Stellina Pizzeria and a Rebel Taco, which were also nearly subject to the new historic district boundaries.
Neither Mamo nor FILLAT+ Architecture founder Peter Fillat responded to requests for comment. The BZA is scheduled to hear the case on Dec. 6.
