The District hopes to capitalize on 14,000 workers flooding the planned U.S. Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Southeast D.C. by transforming the adjacent St. Elizabeths Hospital east campus into a quintuplet of new communities.
D.C. leaders on Wednesday unveiled a 10- to 30-year draft master plan for the 173-acre east campus, which borders Martin Luther King Jr. and Alabama avenues just south of historic Anacostia. The hospital’s 183-acre west campus, currently under the control of the General Services Administration, is the planned home of a consolidated DHS.
The success of “St. Elizabeths East” hinges on the 3.8 million-square-foot DHS headquarters and a “critical mass of federal employment that would be a catalyst,” D.C. Planning Director Harriet Tregoning said during a news conference in the St. Elizabeths chapel. Private contractors will need office space near DHS. The federal workers might want to live where they work. Those new residents will need places to shop.
“This is the first time that the federal government has crossed the Anacostia,” said D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a key player in the DHS project. “We want what the federal government brings. I have no doubt that there will indeed be great potential here if we do it right.”
The master plan calls for five distinct villages totaling 2 million square feet of new construction and 750,000 square feet of adapted historic space.
Maple Campus will feature institutional and commercial buildings, for example, while Town Square emphasizes low to moderate density residential and office structures. North Campus will consist of medium density commercial, retail and residential facilities.
The heart of the east campus is a 15 minute walk from the Congress Heights Metro Station on the Green Line, and the draft plan envisions either a new station or a “spur line that could extend south to the new National Harbor development” in Prince George’s County. A new road would connect Suitland Parkway with Alabama Avenue.
“Significant transportation improvements” will have to be made to nearby highways if the redevelopment is to be viable, according to the draft plan. Those changes will be the city’s responsibility and not the federal government’s, Mayor Adrian Fenty said.
Planning the east campus transformation has been underway since 2003.
The D.C. Council could consider the master plan as early as December. The search for a master development team would follow its approval.
