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Hine, Slow and Steady as She Goes

March 17th, 2010 by Elizabeth Festa · 10 Comments · Eastern Market

Uploaded to Flickr by Bill on Capitol Hill from his photostream

For those who are curious about where your fancy new hotel or Armani Exchange is, when the wrecking ball is coming to 7th and Pennsylvania (next summer, it seems), when you can feed the pigeons in the  public piazza to be named Bard Square in apparent homage to future tenants Shakespeare Theater, and when you can buy socks in the neighborhood (just hearkening back to a Hine public discussion last summer about what new development could bring to the Hill) the Hine Jr. High School building plan is now online.

It is filled with exciting information on things such as how Stanton/Eastbanc is now in the process of negotiating the  ground lease with the city, to be followed after 120 days by D.C. City Council consideration of the land disposition documents. So that’s what the Council is up to when the Nats take to the field this spring!

But, wait, your voice is needed, too.

“One of our first activities will be to formally solicit your comments on the preliminary design concept,” the winning design for the old school site in the heart of the Eastern Market neighborhood, the Stanton-Eastbanc people write.

“When the design phase begins, we will schedule to meet with you for your input …these initial meetings will be the first of many and we look forward to working with you on this exciting project,” the team promises.

Ken Golding of Stanton, when asked for special insight into a project that is sure to knock the Virginia or Maryland-purchases socks off the neighborhood when demolition, construction and the unveiling come, steered clear of anything glamorous.

“As for the timeline, you now know as much as I know. We have moved along according to plan and completed what we call the Term Sheet and are now working on the ground lease and other related documents such as easements,” Golding said.

Meet you at Bard Square in September 2014.

Here is the timeline, from the website:

Stanton-EastBanc Selected September 2009
Term Sheet Negotiated Signed February 26, 2010
LDDA Sent to Council Spring 2010
Architectural Design Commences Spring 2010
Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) Summer 2010
PUD/Zoning Filed Fall 2010
PUD/Zoning Approved Spring 2011
Construction Drawings and Permits Thru Spring 2012
Ground Breaking Summer 2012
Completion Fall 2014

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  • Max

    4 years? 2 years until demo? That seems like an awfully long time for a plan that has already been developed and approved by the city

  • Sandra Moscoso

    anticlimactic….

  • Larry

    I agree with Max. A term sheet is just a preliminary and non-binding document. Why are we getting a story on something that is not really a story? Or, put differently, maybe the real story is why isn’t this further along?

  • http://brunchandthecity.wordpress.com/ Claudia Holwill

    It does seem like a long time but development projects as large as these need a lot of careful planning outside of the building design, and the design that was chosen was not a finalized plan that could allow for immediate groundbreaking. I agree that more details could have been addressed earlier but with so many players, I’m not really surprised by the slow pace.

    A general timeline was addressed in the community meetings last summer – we were told that once the city made its selection, there would be several more steps before construction could start, so it will be about a year (possibly longer) before ground is broken. For example, a plan needs to be developed for what to do with the weekend vendors during the construction, parking and traffic studies need to be conducted, and the developers are seeking further community input to ensure that the design is taking as much into account as possible.

    Since the developers launched a site dedicated to the process and gave their preliminary timeline, we thought our readers would like the update, even if we didn’t have a full investigative story on it.

  • cap2hill

    What the old Hine school site needs is a grocery store. We need a store that able to accommodate the needs of the West Capitol Hill customers. We need a store like Trader Joes. Trader Joes buys their produce from local growers which will not hurt the Market but will aide them in their sales. We need to have better access to a grocery store rather than the corporation of Safeway.

  • Steve

    Perhaps someone could unplug the window A/C units along 8th Street in the meantime.

  • Hill Home

    I agree with cap2hill above. Granted there is the Organic store, but their prices are way too expensive and there needs to be other choices besides organic foods. I would LOVE to have a Trader Joe’s in the new development.

  • bsr

    The reasons prices at the Yes! Organic Market are high is because of the astronomical rent they pay to….Stanton Development Corporation! If Stanton builds a Hine development, any grocery store or Trader Joe’s trying to operate there will pay the same astronomical rents, or higher, because of the stranglehold monopoly Stanton has on what cap2hill calls “Hill West.” I don’t care if there’s a Trader Joe’s or not, I’m focused on the incredible height and bulk of the building this plan envisions and the absurd number of parking spaces they propose in their plan. If I’d wanted to live in Friendship Heights, I’d have bought a house up there on “Wisconsin Avenue West.”

  • ET

    Isn’t Yes! moving to the new development?

    Personally I think NE close in needs a grocery store more than SE.

  • R

    My hope is that Stanton will reach out to the neighborhood to help expedite the project as quickly as possible.

    While I’m not happy with how we got to here and considering one of the other top proposals was self-financed allowing for a quicker time frame, I hope Stanton can move quickly and utilize support in the community to keep the pressure on the city to get this thing moving. Then again, as a financed project Stanton may want a slower timeline as they finalized financing.

    Let’s hope that isn’t the case and this timeline gets shorter rather than longer.