In the District, including a gym in a new high-rise condominium complex isn’t a luxury, it’s the law.
But a proposed zoning amendment backed by developers, and expected to win approval from the D.C. Zoning Commission, would eliminate a requirement for recreation space in residential buildings built in commercial districts, which includes virtually every hot corridor in the city — downtown, 14th Street, Georgia Avenue, Wisconsin Avenue and H Street among them.
“To the extent we include some recreational amenity space, we do it with great thought, specificity and anticipate the market’s requirements,” Jeff Miller, representing developer Lower Enterprises, told the Zoning Commission during a November hearing, when the proposal was preliminarily approved. “It may be easy to throw a 10,000-foot deck on a roof and call it a recreational space, but generally that is not responsive to the market, nor does it reflect the intent of any specific policy.”
Under current regulations, recreation space ranging from 5 percent to 20 percent of the gross residential floor area within the development is required. The space must be at least half outdoors, either at ground level or on the rooftop.
The Board of Zoning Appeals has handled dozens of cases since 2001 from developers asking for a break from the regulation, which can mandate 15,000 square feet or more of recreation space for a single building.
In a report to the Zoning Commission, Ellen McCarthy, director of the Office of Planning, said the elimination “represents a potentially very significant benefit to developers and builders” by increasing the number of potential units and reducing costly outdoor recreation space. But the zoning commission refused two planning office recommendations: to link the elimination with requirements for affordable units and require some developers to pay a fee to maintain neighborhood recreation.
Eliminating the regulation could result in an adverse impact to federal parkland through the “overuse of elements of the federal park system,” the National Capital Planning Commission ruled last week.
