The Gordon

630 11th Street NE
Washington, DC
Multi-Family Development

Project Architect: MMg
Project Design: MMg
Completion: Q2 2004

Highlights

The property consists of a 9-unit apartment building on Capitol Hill. The building rests on 5,500 SF lot. The property also features five (5) parking spaces in the rear with exposure to a rear and side alley.The existing building was built in 1966 and includes an area of 5,768 SF on three levels. Each of the units is separately metered and includes individual central HVAC units.

One block from H Street NE, a dynamic one-and-a-half mile stretch in Northeast DC, is known for its nightlife, restaurants, pop-ups, festivals and communal atmosphere.H Street Festival is one of the most anticipated and highly attended single day festivals in Washington D.C.

The festival is 11 blocks long and has 14 staging areas that are diversely themed and programmed to target the different segments of audiences. The staging areas feature music of different genres, dance, youth-based performances, interactive children’s program, fashion, heritage arts, poetry and many morehttps://www.hstreetfestival.org/. The festival started as a 500 participant bloc party more than 12 years ago, it has now grown into a 150,000 participant event. The change is immense and the impact is lasting. By using the arts as a principle motivator of the festival, it has proven the arts can be a valuable agent in impacting economic growth. The festival also has a direct impact on reducing commercial building vacancy rate on H Street Corridor from 75% to under 5%. H Street Festival has successfully utilized arts as an engine for the growth for the historic neighborhood.

Neighborhood

In the 19th century, H Street around North Capitol was the center of a small settlement called Swampoodle which became an entire neighborhood by the 1850s. It played an important role in the construction of Washington, D.C. by providing the workforce needed to build projects such as Union Station.

H Street was separated in two with the railway track where it intersected with Delaware Avenue when Union Station started to be built in 1907. This split created distinct neighborhoods east and west of the railway which have grown independently. In 1902, it was originally planned that H street NE would be cut for 600 ft at Delaware Avenue. Thanks to involvement of the Northeast Washington Citizens’ Association, the plan was changed to having a 750 ft tunnel built to retain the connection between the two sides of the track.

The H Street NE/NW neighborhood was one of Washington’s earliest and busiest commercial districts, and was the location of the first Sears Roebuck store in Washington. H Street NE went into decline after World War II and businesses in the corridor were severely damaged during the 1968 riots. This part of the street did not start to recover until the 21st century.
A Giant supermarket along the H St. corridor

In 2002, the District of Columbia Office of Planning initiated a community-based planning effort to help revitalize the H Street NE corridor. Because it is nearly 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long, the resulting H Street NE Strategic Strategic Development Plan divided H Street into three districts: the Urban Living district (between 2nd and 7th Streets NE), the Central Retail District (between 7th and 12th Streets NE), and the Arts and Entertainment District (between 12th and 15th Streets NE).

In the mid-2000s, the Arts and Entertainment District began to revitalize as a nightlife district. The Atlas Theater, a Moderne-style 1930s movie theater that had languished since the 1968 riots—was refurbished as a dance studio and performance space, and is now the anchor of what is now being called the Atlas District. H Street NE became home to the H Street Playhouse, a black box theater where Theater Alliance and Forum Theatre are in residence; live music venues, such as the Red and the Black and the Rock & Roll Hotel; and restaurants and bars such as the Argonaut, Dangerously Delicious Pies, Showbar Presents the Palace of Wonders, the Pug, and Sticky Rice.

H Street NE rapidly re-developped after 2007. The median sales price of houses on or near H Street NW from July to September 2009 was $417,000. H Street NE was voted the sixth-most hipster place in America by Forbes magazine in September 2012. This process of gentrification led to tensions with some previous residents, who felt that they were becoming less welcome as the neighborhood changed and worried about being priced out.

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