Developers Celebrate Long-Awaited Groundbreaking Of Mixed-Income Shaw Condo Project
A long-planned project is now underway that will bring a mix of market-rate and affordable condos to D.C.'s booming Shaw neighborhood.
The local development team of Roadside Development and Dantes Partners were joined by their partners and D.C. officials Tuesday to celebrate the groundbreaking of the 79-unit condo project at the corner of Eighth and O streets NW.
The project, expected to deliver by the end of 2022, includes 24 affordable condo units. The 79 condos also include five townhouses along Eighth Street NW and 3,300 SF of retail.
"Providing affordability is important, especially ownership, because when we come into a neighborhood and we make changes, it's the stakeholders who actually have ownership that benefit," Lake said in an interview with Bisnow at the event.
Financing for the project was provided by Grosvenor Americas, M&T Bank and EagleBank. Shalom Baranes Associates is the architect, McCollough Construction is the general contractor and Urban Pace will market the condos for sale.
D.C. selected Roadside and Dantes to build on the site in 2014. The District closed on the sale to the development team on April 2, according to public deed records, which show several separate sales between the two parties that day totaling $4.84M.
A series of complications caused it to take seven years from when the team was selected before the deal closed and the project could break ground. The team went through the planned unit development process and received Zoning Commission approval in 2017. The approval was then appealed in November 2017 before the D.C. Court of Appeals dismissed the case about six months later, court records show.
The development team also had negotiations with the District that led to an increase in the amount of affordable housing, Lake told Bisnow, and it had to reach an agreement with an adjacent church that had used the lot for parking. Lake said it reached an agreement to give the church parking in the developer's nearby City Market at O project.
The coronavirus pandemic complicated the deal's financing, Lake said, making lenders more risk-averse and requiring more partners than it would have during normal times.
"Three institutions came together to help us fund a project that normally would have been one phone call and we would have started," Lake said. "There are so many layers you have to deal with. All that combined dragged it out a lot longer than it needed to."
The project sits one block from City Market at O, the award-winning, Giant-anchored mixed-use project that delivered its first phase in 2013. That 1M SF project, also built by Roadside, features 418 apartments, a 182-room hotel and 87K SF of retail.
Dantes also partnered with Roadside on the Hodge on 7th, a 90-unit senior housing project that delivered in 2013 as part of City Market at O.
Dantes Partners Managing Principal Buwa Binitie told Bisnow Tuesday that the two projects represent an important strategy of providing a variety of housing options in D.C.'s neighborhoods to make the city more inclusive.
"We want an inclusive city, so it's not just one particular demographic that is catered to, and that's why the Hodge exists today," Binitie said. "Being able to provide housing, especially for the missing middle, which don't have options, is a big thing."
Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development John Falcicchio, speaking at the groundbreaking, said it took a large amount of work to get the deal closed, but he said it represents an important step toward Mayor Muriel Bowser's goal of adding 36,000 housing units, including 12,000 affordable units, by 2025. He said the District in March surpassed 14,000 new units since Bowser set the goal at the start of 2019.
"Each time that Richard [Lake] and I would have a conversation early in the morning or late at night in order to advance this project, it wasn't just about what would happen on this patch of ground, but really about how we as a city come together to make sure more of our families can live here, play here and thrive here," Falcicchio said.
