We are a little late in reporting this development news, which actually happened around May/June. Metro and Donatelli are no longer pursuing joint development of the long-term parking lot at Fort Totten metro station. We previously reported on the joint development proposal here in these posts. You can see from Donatelli’s website that the Fort Totten project is no longer listed on its upcoming projects page. In 2015, Metro selected Donatelli’s proposal to build a mixed-use development with approximately 345 rental units and 10,000 square feet of ground floor retail along with a new parking garage to replace the 422-space surface park-and-ride lot at Fort Totten metro station. The rental market has softened considerably, and lots of building has taken place around Fort Totten metro station with more in store. Fort Totten Square, a project of JBG Companies and Lowe Enterprises, delivered in 2015. JBG had previously proposed rental units for the second phase of Fort Totten Square to be located at South Dakota Avenue and Riggs Road NE. Not too long after completing Fort Totten Square, after seeing the number of rental units in the pipeline, JBG decided to team up with EYA to develop for-sale housing for the second phase instead. The developers hope to break ground on that 160-townhome project by the end of the year. The Cafritz Foundation is still leasing up The Modern at Art Place, a 520 rental unit building at South Dakota Avenue and Galloway Street NE that delivered in the fall of 2017. The second phase of Art Place at Fort Totten is expected to be mostly commercial. That was mostly always the plan. Future phases do have rental residential units on the books. We will just have to see if that actually comes to fruition. So it is no surprise really that developers are realizing that with the number of rentals that were in the pipeline, they would likely not be able to charge the exorbitant rents they had been charging and decided to change their minds.

Metro anticipates reissuing a request for proposals in another year. In the meantime, Metro is interested in hearing what residents would like to see at the site. Likely any RFP would require replacing the parking one-to-one. Based on previous guidance, after construction of a parking garage, there would be roughly 2.3 acres of developable space. The neighborhood needs office space, but as previously stated the second phase of the Cafritz project is supposed to deliver another 100,000 square feet of commercial space. I have always thought Aventine at Fort Totten (née Fort Totten Station, a joint development project between Metro and Clark) unfortunately set a terrible precedent for development around Fort Totten metro. Metro has acknowledged previously that it did not always get transit-oriented development right. Just because something is built next to the metro station, does not mean it is automatically designed well. The way Metro chopped up its properties around Fort Totten metro to offer for development has not been good for the neighborhood. Ideally, Metro would be able to start all over conceiving of the entire Metro property as a whole to be developed. Of course that cannot happen now.

Any design is complicated by the fact that Fort Totten is a major metro station with lots of bus bays, a long-term park-and-ride, and a short-term kiss-and-ride that is kind of awkwardly placed in the middle of everything. In 2011, DDOT released a plan for improving access to Fort Totten metro by redesigning circulation of buses, pedestrians, motorists, and cyclists. The joint development project was supposed to incorporate some of the recommendations in that plan. Now that Metro has cancelled the joint development, it is unclear how much of a priority it is to implement the recommendations of that plan. A couple of recommendations, such as a sidewalk on the south side of Galloway Street and connecting the station to the Met Branch Trail, are finally getting underway, but many seemingly simpler recommendations have not been done yet. Anyways, look forward to hearing more from Metro about their plans for development around Fort Totten metro station in the upcoming months.