Rendering of Parking Garage at 818 Michigan Ave NE Credit: Douglas Development Image by Douglas Development.

Just north of the Brookland Metro station, a four-story parking garage will go up so that employees and visitors of DC’s children’s hospital can park and take a 1.5-mile shuttle ride to the hospital. That doesn’t sound like a great use of the land at first, but it turns out other possibilities, like housing or office space, aren’t realistic.

Douglas Development will build over 1,400 spaces on the roughly four-acre lot, which sits at 818 Michigan Avenue NE. It will then lease the majority of the spaces to Children’s National Medical Center for its workers and visitors, a move that will allow the hospital to consolidate five of the six off-site parking locations it currently runs. Though Douglas’ application says consolidating the lots could lead to less traffic elsewhere in the District, the area around the parking garage is sure to see an increase.

The concept sounds a bit absurd. Build a parking garage on such a large lot next to a Metro for people that don’t take Metro? But if you dive into the economics of the situation, you’ll see why plans for the space unfolded the way they did.

A building that used to be on the site.  Image by the author.

Developing here is a huge challenge because of both the location and the land itself

The site presents many challenges. Of the entire four-acre property, only 45 feet of the perimeter sits along a street.. The west portion of the site is blocked by elevated tracks for CSX and Metro, and industrial buildings run along the property lines on the north and east portions of the site. The limited street access sits on an access road (Bunker Hill Road NE) despite the Michigan Avenue address. This is big because if you have little access to the street frontage, you have far fewer options on the site.

In the past, the site served as a filling station, coal operation company, heating oil distribution facility, and automotive service. It was most recently was used as a dumpster storage facility. The multiple industrial uses of the site over the years led to contamination of the soil, so to build, Douglas has to remove the affected soil from the site.

Zoning map of the construction site. Image by DC Office of Zoning.

The lot’s zoning doesn’t make things any easier

Ideally, based on the lot’s size of the site and how close it is to the Metro, this place would be home to transit-oriented development (TOD). But it turns out the District’s longer-term plans for the property were much less.

The Comprehensive Plan’s Future Land Use-Map places the site under both Production, Distribution, and Repair (PDR) and Moderate Density Commercial land use categories. Both land use categories would restrict residential development on the site. The zoning code applies the PDR label to places that typically see heavy truck traffic with loading and unloading operations, land geared toward industrial uses, and little residential nearby.

What about office space, housing, or stores?

Zoning regulations aside, what if the site could be something more than just a the vacant contaminated industrial site that was there until construction began last year? Here are the possibilities, along with the reasons why they aren’t as realistic as we might hope:

Office: The DC office market’s vacancy is in at a 25-year high and the site sits in a heavily residential area. Most projects won’t go forward without a signed tenant, and for those looking for space there are much better options available.

Residential: In theory it sounds like a good fit, but neighbors recently successfully fought back a plan to build a 212 unit complex at 901 Monroe Street NE, just south of the site.

Additionally, the west side of the site has elevated railroad tracks that both Metro and CSX trains use. To maximize the land use the building would probably be built near the west property line, meaning many of the units would probably be roughly 30 feet off an active rail line. Though other developments have been built within close proximity to rail, with 7,000 units coming on-line in DC next year alone, the competition might be too much to overcome for tenants not willing to deal with the nuisance of the nearby trains.

This is what the lot currently looks like.  Image by Jonathan Neeley used with permission.

Retail: It’s hard to put retail at the site too, the first reason being that though it is large in size, there is only a limited amount of space that actually fronts the street. Rather than actually being on Michigan Avenue, which is what the property’s address says, it’s actually is along an access road underneath it.

Additionally, building along that limited street frontage would block access to the remainder of the site. Similar to the parking garage under construction now, any retail would need to sit roughly 200’ off of the access road. For would-be tenants, poor access combined with limited visibility serves a recipe for disaster. And a larger retailer like a grocery store combined with a residential component could bring about similar traffic problems residents are trying to avoid with the parking garage.

Park: Turkey Thicket Recreation Center is just 400 feet east of the site, so there’s really not a need for a park here. Still, it’s possible that a developer might want to build one as a holdover until the market was right to build something else. It’s even possible they could get some kind of tax relief for doing so.

But the numbers wouldn’t add up. Building a park here would require a large capital expenditure to demolish and remediate the site and then actually construct the park. There would be no incoming cash to offset that expenditure for the project until the eventual redevelopment contingent on the sale of neighboring properties. This would be a tough option to choose over a tenant ready to lease.

This makes economic sense for Douglas and Children’s, and it leaves the door open for a positive change in the future

From a developer’s standpoint, Douglas has a vacant lot that can begin generating revenue as soon as a short construction project is finished.

Leasing a portion of the parking garage makes financial sense for Children’s National Medical Center, one of the largest employers in the region. By leasing the spaces here rather than building on their own site, the hospital retains the valuable land around their facility to allow for less inhibited expansion in the future.

A model of the parking garage adjacent to the track.   Image by the author.

Douglas could acquire the adjacent Comcast Service Center site to the east opening up to future development, and the parking garage could be incorporated into a large mixed use development, which would be consistent with the 2009 Brookland Small Area Plan for development around the Metro Station.

The garage would work well in providing a buffer between a new building and railroad tracks. It’s large enough that it could serve both a retail component on the ground floor as well as a large amount of residential units above. The industrial zone to the north also provides another possible opportunity for future expansion and better access.

By no means is a parking garage at a Metro Station that encourages people to drive rather than take public transit an ideal scenario from an urban planning perspective. If it were possible, Douglas would probably prefer building a more lucrative mixed-use project at the site. But as is often the case, the economics are dictating what a site is used for.

Hopefully in the future, as the area evolves and the adjacent properties come available, smart urbaning planning and economic development will come together and justify transit- oriented development at this site.