Temporary Urbanism at work
» Capital Fringe Festival — Annual art show held in various spaces throughout the city. The 2009 event was held in Penn Quarter and Mount Vernon Square, and used buildings such as a former cigar shop that had been vacant since the 1968 riots.
» Artomatic — Monthlong annual art festival. In 2007, for example, it was held in a former Crystal City Patent & Trademark Office space.
» Target’s “Bullseye Bodegas,” temporary outdoor “department stores” on the streets of New York.
Local officials are turning to innovative ways to temporarily fill the region’s increasing amount of empty office and retail space. The District’s Office of Planning has been promoting “temporary urbanism,” which involves filling empty office space and open areas with art galleries, food stands and makeshift tennis arenas.
“We don’t really have a program to do this routinely,” said Harriet Tregoning, the planning office director.
But because of the economic downturn, city officials are working to formalize the permit process to accommodate the concept, she said.
“I think it started to be a trend before the vacancy condition,” she said, pointing out that cities always have at least some vacant buildings.Companies also set up temporary showcases of their products in D.C. as market tests, but many uses are not retail, she said.
At CityCenterDC, home of the Old Washington Convention Center, the Washington Kastles play their home tennismatches on a makeshift court and a trapeze area often sits in one corner of the huge parkinglot. The city expects to break ground on a new mixed-use complex with residential, retailand office spaceat the location near 11th and H streets NW in the spring.
“We just want to do it more routinely, more systematically, liven our streets,” Tregoning said.
Elsewhere in the region, in Alexandria’s mixed-use Carlyle development, the city recently extended the time frame that office space is permitted in the southeast corner of the building at 333 John Carlyle St. City officials reasoned that office space, though it brings in less money than retail, is better than nothing.
“We are concerned about the vacancy there — the absence of retail,” said Mayor William E. “Bill” Euille. “Everybody’s been working on this … personally, for me, I’d rather see something on the first floor [other] than empty storefronts.”
Until interest from retailers picks up, filling the area with office space aids in the development’s vitality and visibility, he said.
“I think having someone in this building is much better than having no one in this building and that, at the end of the day, is what this is all about,” said Alexandria Councilman Rob Krupicka.
