14th and P including the Studio Theatre. Photo by NCinDC.

ANCs and other community groups have a reputation for taking an anti-change, knee-jerk anti-development point of view. Just look at yesterday’s discussion of the Georgetown ANC, including many of the comments. Over in the 14th Street area, however, a committee of residents and business owners appointed by ANC 2F has created a very thoughtful and sensible set of recommendations for the ARTS zoning overlay on 14th and U Streets.

They spent three months carefully analyzing the thinking about and discussing the future of the neighborhood. They met with merchants, developers, neighbors and planners. And, in the end, they produced a report that’s neither knee-jerk anti-change nor knee-jerk pro-development, but one that tries to employ sensible incentives to shape a lively yet livable neighborhood.

14th Street is a bustling commercial corridor with an uncertain future. Its numerous theaters and galleries give the area a special arts focus, which spurred the creation of a special zoning district to preserve and encourage arts uses. However, many galleries are closing. Restaurants and bars have multiplied, bringing more foot traffic for other businesses and replacing vacant storefronts, but also threatening to push arts uses out and bringing greater levels of noise. A number of furniture stores have opened in the area, which could create a burgeoning “furniture district” that becomes a regional draw, but could also contribute to displacing the arts. The economic downturn may claim several retail stores or other businesses, and according to committee chair Andrea Doughty, many are looking to 14th Street for a sign about whether urban retail districts can truly thrive and grow.

How can the community shape its future? The report recommends tweaking the limits on restaurants and bars, maintaining some limits but adapting them to something that could work better. It would limit the percentage of bars and restaurants on every block and require some non-restaurant, non-bar ground floor retail, along with requiring some arts uses. But for developers who include extra arts in a building, the report also recommends granting more “bonus density” than is available today, including one extra story of height, as an incentive. Here’s the report, or for something shorter, here’s a summary of the recommendations.

Today, the ARTS overlay lets developers build extra density in a project if they include space for arts in the building. However, “arts uses” include restaurants and bars. The only differentiation is that the overlay also limits the total “linear frontage” of bars and restaurants to 25% of the total frontage. In theory, that would ensure a mix of restaurants and bars and other uses. However, that hasn’t worked in practice. For a long time, the area was under 25%, and nobody considered the balance when opening businesses. Now, the district has either reached or nearly reached the limit, which could mean no new restaurants and bars can open. That’s not right either, as the popularity of the area has created demand for restaurants and bars, and other retail or arts uses are not able to fill the remaining space. New development projects are less likely to be profitable without the opportunity to include any food or drink establishments anywhere in a new building.

Instead, the committee suggested removing restaurants and bars from the list of uses eligible for bonus density. For the percentage, their recommendation resembles my suggestion: they would increase the percentage limit to 40-50%, but consider the limit over a smaller area. Right now, the limit applies over 10 blocks of 14th and 6 blocks of U, meaning a restaurant at 9th and U limits the possibility of one at 14th and N. The committee suggests considering the percentage only for each “square,” such as the east side of 14th between S and T.

To ensure an active streetscape, the report also recommends requiring 75% of the ground floor of any new development to contain retail. However, a bar or restaurant could only fulfill half of that requirement, forcing some diversity of uses even on a project by project basis in addition to square by square. This wouldn’t apply to buildings under 60 feet in width, as smaller buildings obviously don’t have room for two different retail uses and it wouldn’t be fair to completely preclude a bar or restaurant from such buildings.

In the Arts and Culture section of the Zoning Update, the Zoning Commission already recommended requiring some arts uses in new buildings equalling 0.5 FAR, or essentially half of one floor. The committee strongly endorses this requirement, but suggests changing it to 5% of the total floor area of the project, exempting buildings under a certain size, and expanding it to include major, large-scale additions and alterations of existing buildings.

Meanwhile, the committee recommends offering even greater bonuses to developers who build arts uses into a project. They created a two-tier list of uses. The “least financially competitive arts uses,” such as theaters, jewelry making, arts schools, bookstores and small galleries would give the developer a 3 to 1 bonus: for each square foot they give to these uses, they could build three additional square feet in the building. Meanwhile, uses such as architecture, graphic design, movie theaters, large art galleries and museums would provide a 2 to 1 bonus.

In addition, buildings containing some of these uses could potentially build ten feet (one story) higher than the current zoning allows. Most of 14th Street, for example, is C-3-A, which allows buildings up to 65 feet, with the ARTS overlay extending that to 75. This recommendation would expand that to 85 feet. However, developers could only take advantage of this extra bonus by applying for a “special exception,” which the Board of Zoning Adjustment reviews to ensure that the exception does not harm the public interest. The buildings would also have to continue to comply with rules in the overlay like the “45 degree line” rule, where starting 50 feet above the ground, the building has to step back at least at a 45 degree angle from adjacent residential zones.

Map of the ARTS Overlay. Image from the DC Office of Planning.

HPRB would also review all projects, since the entire area is part of several historic districts. Whether rightly or wrongly, they’ve lowered other buildings’ height in the past to better line up with older, historic buildings, and “shaped” them to better fit into the appearance of the district by selectively cutting out pieces. This alleviates many residents’ fears of a “glass canyon” like K Street. At the same time, any such limits reduce the ability of a developer to take advantage of the bonus density. If a building can’t add more floors or more square feet, it won’t benefit from the inclusion of arts uses. As the report points out, HPRB generally uses the allowed zoning envelope as a guide, and would try to strike a balance between creating a building that fits into the area with something that encloses enough space to pay for its construction.

Most of the other recommendations address consistency and administration. They suggest creating an ARTS “district” instead of an “overlay,” or if the overlay remains, splitting it into two separate districts, one for 14th Street and one for U. On 14th, they would rezone the residential parcels along 14th, such as the east side between Riggs and S, to the same commercial classification as the rest of the street. Obviously, the buildings there could remain residential, but the law wouldn’t force them to remain that way forever. The committee also urges the DC government to adequately fund compliance in the Office of Zoning. In the past, that office has not been able to adequately monitor the various overlays, leading to many violations. These zoning tools cannot help shape the community if nobody enforces them.

Overall, this is an amazingly detailed and thoughtful report. A group of eight residents and business owners carefully considered all of the zoning rules in the area and met with many people. They’ve created a set of recommendations that apply some new rules but also introduce some incentives as well. On balance, it shouldn’t hinder the ability of developers to fill in the dead spaces along the street, but will hopefully also preserve an arts focus for the area.

ANC 2F (whose territory includes 14th Street south of S) and 1B (which covers the north side of U from 16th to 14th and both sides east of 14th, along with the east side of 14th from U to S) both voted to endorse the report. Dupont Circle’s ANC, 2B also borders the area, covering the south side of U from 16th to 14th and the west side of 14th from U to S. Commissioner Ramon Estrada represents that corner, and has often taken a more strongly anti-development and anti-bar and restaurant stance than many of his neighboring commissioners in the other ANCs. Estrada told ANC 1B that 2B “would not be supporting the Committee’s recommendations in their entirety,” which was apparently a surprise to the other 2B commissioners. Estrada opposes splitting 14th and U into separate districts, and unifying the zoning, which probably means removing the residential classifications on some of the blocks.

As a resident of ANC 2B, I plan to testify in favor of the report at their meeting tonight. If you live in the Dupont Circle area or southwest of 14th and U, come to Brookings, 1775 Mass. Ave. at 7 pm to give your opinions. If I were writing the zoning code, I might have made a few small differences and perhaps erred a bit more on the side of flexibility, but this is an excellent report that clearly represents the collective consensus of the committee’s members. I hope the commissioners will endorse the plan. This represents the best of resident involvement in zoning: a detailed, thorough look at the issue culminating in a very thoughtful and reasonable set of recommendations.