Prospects for a new central library on the site of D.C.’s old convention center have been dashed in favor of a 400-room hotel and retail hub, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced Monday.
The 10-acre parcel bounded by New York Avenue and Ninth, H and 11th streets, now dubbed “City Center DC,” will be redeveloped with a mix of office, condominiums, apartments, retail and public spaces, Fenty said.
Former Mayor Anthony Williams had sought to construct a new central library on that site to replace the languishing MLK Library nearby. The library was the “cornerstone” of Williams’ proposal to turn the old convention center land into “the place where residents living in the eastern and western halves of the city come together to learn, to share, and to experience,” he told the D.C. Council in 2006.
The council rejected the proposal just before Williams left office.
“This is the most valuable piece of property on the East Coast,” Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans said Monday. “To build a non-income producer on this site didn’t make sense.”
Under the plan announced Monday, the site will become a “living, breathing, shopping, 24-hour destination,” Fenty said.
The mayor and developer Hines/Archstone-Smith announced they have reached a 99-year lease agreement for the last piece of the $850 million City Center puzzle — the 53,000-square-foot, District-owned parcel toward the northeast of the site.
The tract is to feature a high-end hotel and roughly 100,000 square feet of retail — perhaps downtown’s second department store.
The idea of a new central library isn’t dead, Fenty said, but “it’s not going to be on this site.” John Hill, president of the D.C. Library Board, said the quest for a new library on the convention site became hopeless as Fenty was “not supportive of the same project that Mayor Williams was.” But the push remains for a new central library, Hill said, perhaps in the Carnegie Library at Mount Vernon Square.
Construction on City Center’s first phase is expected to start by early 2009 and finish by the end of 2011. The second phase, to include the 400-room hotel, will follow.
