1617 and U: How you can help the District can make the most of land it owns

Update: On Mon., June 26, 2023, at 4 p.m., the zoning commission will meet to vote on whether to approve the proposed map amendment described here, ZC 23-02. We encourage you to submit testimony in support of upzoning 1617 U St. NW and 1620 V St. NW here (see below for detailed instructions on how to do so, and many thanks to those of you who have submitted supportive comments already!). Comments must be submitted to the zoning commission 24 hours in advance of the hearing, so your deadline is this Sunday, June 25, 2023, at 4 p.m.

On Feb. 23, 2023, the zoning commission voted to approve set-down for ZC 23-02 as a rulemaking case. A set-down is a preliminary step by the commission to consider whether a case is ready for a hearing; the Feb. 23 vote indicated that the commission feels the proposed map amendment is, indeed, ready for its hearing, where they will vote on whether or not to approve it—that’s what’s happening on the 26th.

The District owns it and increased its Future Land Use Map designation from moderate to high-density during the 2021 amendments to the 2006 Comprehensive Plan. The buildings on it will be torn down and replaced, and because of the increased allowable density, there’s the opportunity for housing to be built on top of the new buildings. Also, there should be a library, and, if the District ground-leases it, it can use the land’s value to subsidize the cost of the homes on the site.

Who is she?

She/they/it is 1617 U Street NW. We’d be excited about more housing on U Street regardless, but increasing the density of publicly owned land is something GGWash has advocated for quite some time.

The zoning commission will meet next Thurs., February 23, 2023, to consider the Office of Planning’s setdown report for 1617 U, which recommends an upzoning. You should tell the zoning commission you support it, particularly if you live nearby. More details on why I’m excited about this, and how to submit a comment to the zoning commission, are below.

This ask sounds familiar

If you subscribe to our emails and live in the District, you may recall one from me back in May 2021 asking you to contact the DC Council (which was, at that time, considering amendments to the 2006 Comprehensive Plan’s Future Land Use Map), to support “upflumming” the Engine 9 site (that’s 1617 U). Many of you did! Thank you! The FLUM change happened! When amendments to the Comprehensive Plan were passed by the council in October 2021, 1617 U’s designation was changed from medium- to high-density.

But because the FLUM is the FLUM, not zoning, an “upflum” doesn’t mean a zoning change. Changes to FLUM designations increase the potential future density of a site; changes to zoning designations legalize what can be built there. Zoning designations change through a process wholly separate from FLUM changes, and are decided by the zoning commission.

The zoning commission will meet next Thursday to determine that OP’s application for a map amendment—the setdown report—is complete and ready for a future hearing, at which an upzoning will be voted on. Within the setdown report is a proposal to change 1617 U’s zoning designation from MU-4, which permits “moderate-density mixed-use development,” to MU-10, which permits “high-density mixed-use development with a balance of uses conducive to a higher quality of life and environment for residents, business, employees, and institutions.” MU-10 can be applied to “areas where a mixture of uses and building densities is intended to carry out elements of the Comprehensive Plan, small area plans, or framework plans, including goals in employment, population transportation, housing, public facilities, and environmental quality.” Upzoning 1617 U means more stuff, including housing, can be built there.

To my great delight, the District government filed the map amendment. I love this for us because it means that the District is proactively identifying what it thinks should happen with land it owns, rather sitting on it, bidding it out, and awarding a developer the bid. In the latter scenario, the developer would then have to request that the property be upzoned to accommodate whatever it proposed, which throws everyone into a tizzy because a developer had the temerity to speculate on the land. Politics.

Who doesn’t like this?

The zoning commission has little reason to, when it reject the proposed map amendment, because it’s not inconsistent with the Comp Plan. The Office of Planning’s setdown report, which contains its written recommendations pertaining to the map amendment (which is worth reading in full – on this page, click on “OP Setdown Report” and download the PDF), correctly notes that leaving the site as MU-4 would be inconsistent with the Comp Plan:

“The site is currently within the MU-4 zone which is described as a moderate density mixed use zone. As noted, it is no longer consistent with the revised FLUM designation for high density residential, moderate density commercial and local public facilities. (FLUM change 8050).”

Of course, as usual, there’s a small fuss around “the clandestine idea of a 9+ story building,” made by some folks who don’t generally like this stuff and reliably show up in public forums to say so. But right now there’s no project in trouble, because there isn’t a project yet.

When we organize people around individual projects, it’s to ensure that something representative of systemic change is bulwarked by support. 1617 U is emerging as a model of how the District can maximize the use of the land it owns. Let’s make sure it’s not a one-off.

OK, OK, I just want to send in a comment!!!!!!

That’s right. Please do so before Wed., February 22, at 4 pm. Comments to the zoning commission must be submitted 24 hours in advance of the commission’s meetings, which are on Thursdays at 4 pm.

To submit a comment on the Office of Zoning’s Interactive Zoning Information System page:

1. Click on the red button that says “Go to File & Manage Cases,” which takes you to this page.
2. You will have to create an account.
3. Once you’ve logged in to IZIS, click on “Submit Comments in a Case” in the menu on the left-hand side.
4. It will take you to this page (log in, if you can’t see it), on which you’ll enter “23-02,” which is the case number for 1617 U.
5. Click “Select Case” once the case record is pulled up.
6. You’ll land on a page with form fields. It should look like this:

Then, write your comment! It can be as long or as short as you want it to be, but be sure to use your own words about why you’re in favor of upzoning 1617 U. Maybe you live nearby and are totally cool with it. Maybe you’ve been waiting with bated breath to YIMBY something in DC and wish I asked you to do things like this more often :) Maybe you, very sensibly, understand that the only way to get any housing on this site is for the zoning to change, and if it’s going to change, it should be changed to the densest zoning designation possible. Maybe you read the setdown report and think it’s good. Maybe you thought this site was zoned for this much density already. Maybe you don’t live anywhere near 1617 U, but you live near a public parcel, somewhere, and you want it to be upzoned. Maybe you see agita over an upzoning and feel you must out-crank the cranks who are opposing it. We’re all cranks here, so go off.

Then what?

I don’t know exactly what is going to happen if and when the map amendment is approved and 1617 U is upzoned. Thursday’s hearing is on whether or not the setdown report, OP’s application for a map amendment, is sufficient. We’ll likely make a similar call to action when the upzoning is actually to be voted on. Which is to say: No one knows what’s next, exactly,, and that’s OK.

What I do know is that an MU-4 designation means that nothing more than the renovation of the existing police and fire station can exist at 1617 U Street. Building housing at 1617 U Street is not possible without increasing its density, which is why we first pressed for an upflumming…without which a zoning change would not be possible. An MU-10 designation means that around 200 units can be built at 1617 U, and the Office of Planning is recommending that any project on the site be subject to IZ+ requirements.

GGWash has devoted a lot of energy over the past few years to pushing the District to do better by the land that it owns. As I wrote in a comment supporting an acquisition-disposition (yes, really) in October 2022:

In 2021, I had the pleasure of serving on Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Saving DC’s Rental Housing Market Strike Force. The strike force’s report includes two long-term recommendations that I pushed heavily for as a representative of GGWash; emphasis on the following type is my own to indicate the most essential action in each recommendation: “Leverage federal funding to create more rent-and-income-restricted housing to meet the Mayor’s Housing and Homeward DC Goals through improved acquisition programs for land, commercial buildings, and unassisted, naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) buildings,” and “Support increased density to produce more housing across all types of land use and explore procedural improvements to advance equity by spurring affordable housing production.”

…

As a general matter, public land acquisitions are good practice: The District owning the land underneath a privately developed, privately owned affordable project, funded by HPTF dollars, offsets some foreclosure risk and allows the District to incorporate the value of the land to its assets. I have to imagine that, as a result of the disposition-acquisition of Belmont Crossing, the District has untangled some of the legal and financial challenges that may have stymied acquisitions in the past, particularly the accounting for the land itself; we expect the District, particularly the Department of Housing and Community Development and the Deputy Mayor’s Office for Planning and Economic Development, to build upon this new precedent.

The potential of 1617 U has featured heavily in my recent performance-oversight testimony for both the Department of Housing and Community Development and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development:

The District routinely upzoning its own land to the maximum density allowed by the Future Land Use Map is a better practice, and more politically saleable, than having a development team apply for a map amendment after it’s been awarded a project. This is already happening: 1617 U Street was “upflummed” from medium- to high-density by amendments, passed in 2021, to the 2006 Comprehensive Plan. Last month, the Office of Planning filed a map amendmentto change the site’s zoning from MU-4 to MU-10. Because the police and fire stations need to remain at the site, building housing on it would not be possible without legalizing greater density on it.

Public ownership of land, and the allowance of the maximum possible density on that land, will be necessary for any social housing program; I’ve focused GGWash’s efforts on land acquisition not just because I think it’s a good idea, but because, as an organization, we want to ensure that there is a strong foundation on which to build publicly owned housing in the future. We are supportive of a social housing program and would like to see Councilmember Lewis-George’s Green New Deal for Housing reintroduced.

So, I mean, really, this, from the setdown report, is really exciting to see.

The map amendment would not be inconsistent with the Comprehensive Plan. The policies cited in Appendix I and as discussed in the Citywide and Area Elements sections, work together to support the proposed density and height to permit more mixed-uses and housing in a transit-accessible area with public facilities and amenities supporting of future residents’ well-being. The future development that would be better enabled by the proposed zone would help the District towards attaining its affordable housing pipeline goals including 12,000 affordable units by 2025 as identified in the Housing Equity Report and the Upward Mobility DC data, which could help the Planning Area exceed its minimum goal of six percent of affordable units by 2025.

I’m proud of our work at GGWash to enable land-use changes like this, and grateful to the many of you who have continued to show up to say this sort of thing should be normal. See the above instructions to please submit any comments in support of 1617 U by 4 p.m. next Wed., February 22.

This post has been updated to reflect that on Thurs., Feb. 23, the zoning commission will make a decision on the Office of Planning’s application for a map amendment to 1617 U Street, not on the upzoning itself. That vote will likely occur in the first half of 2023