Looking down from the 12th floor of Capitol Plaza, a new office building in the NoMa community immediately west of Union Station, shows a panorama of brownfields, commuter parking lots, bus depots and a web of train tracks.
To the south, the U.S. Capitol beckons. The New York Avenue Metro Station is to the north.
Within 10 years, the area north of Massachusetts Avenue NE will welcome an estimated 36,000 new workers in 20 million square feet of office, hotel and retail space. Thousands of new residents are expected to move into some 6,000 planned units, as a community once shunned is reborn.
Developers are sinking billions of dollars into NoMa, and with a new business improvement district, they’ll lay out a little extra to protect their investments. District and business leaders — including Mayor Adrian Fenty and District Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton — formally launched the NoMa BID, in which corporations pay a few cents more in real estate taxes to finance targeted neighborhood services, on Thursday.
The BID, with a $2.5 million annual budget, will focus on cleaning, safety, branding, marketing, community outreach and streetscape improvements. It will attempt to do what the city cannot.
“The BID’s role is to support, promote and revitalize the neighborhood,” said Bruce Baschuk, chairman of the improvement district’s board and president of J Street Development.
NoMa houses XM Satellite Radio, CNN, CareFirst, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Government Printing Office.
Next month, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and its 1,100 staff members will move into their new headquarters.
“One of the great, prideful things I have is creating XM, and I think the next thing is really helping to develop this neighborhood,” said Hugh Panero, XM’s chief executive officer and a BID supporter.
Just as the NoMa BID gets going, another has been proposed, this one for an area encompassing the new Washington Nationals’ stadium and the Washington Navy Yard. The proposal, now before the D.C. Council, has been dubbed “Capitol Riverfront” and includes much of near Southeast and Buzzard’s Point in Southwest.
