123-Unit Residential Project Planned For 4th and L Streets

• March 5th 2014

by Lark Turner

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Developers are hoping to break ground on a ten-story, 123-unit building in Mount Vernon Triangle in August or September of this year.

The development, which is requesting several zoning variances, received ANC 6E’s support Tuesday night, and will soon go before the Board of Zoning Adjustment (BZA). The mixed-use building at 1031 4th Street NW (map) will have ground-floor retail that the developers said will potentially be occupied by a “fast-casual” restaurant.

The planned building, which is being developed by Blue Skye Housing, Paramount Development and Ellisdale Construction with architect BKV, stretches 110 feet tall, with mostly one-bedrooms.

The design currently needs BZA approval for rear, side and roof structure setback variances, as well as a parking variance — which the development team says is due to the shape of the building’s lot. A couple of commissioners said that after looking in detail at the site’s layout, which is L-shaped, it did seem to genuinely need a variance.

Currently the plans call for 25 parking spaces. Adding the additional ten spaces that would bring the parking lot up to zoning code would require using two ramps in the space, which developers said was a large waste of space and money for a small gain.

One commissioner agreed, also citing the “40 percent” of DC residents who don’t own a car. That statistic has been trotted out at ANC and BZA meetings more and more as developers run out of room for parking lots despite the city’s minimum parking regulations. The building would, however, have lots of bike parking.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/plan_for_ten-story_apartment_building_gets_anc_support/8200.