D.C. officials are tempering expectations for the city’s development rebound, saying that with a slashed budget, only certain projects will get priority. “If your project is a good one, it’ll happen — it just may not happen in the timing you want,” Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Victor Hoskins said at the D.C. Economic Development Outlook forum. “[But we have to move] on the ones that are right at the precipice of happening.”
Development activity in the city slowed drastically in 2010, according to the newly released D.C. Development Report. The total amount of development fell by nearly half to 6.5 million square feet from 2009. The number of projects completed and their combined cost fell by more than half in 2010 to 34 projects combining for $2 billion.
So far this year, 89 projects valued at $5 billion are under construction.
Officials said attracting marquee retailers would be part of an overall development strategy to improve residents’ options and quality of life.
Councilman Harry Thomas Jr., chairman of the council’s Economic Development Committee, said that means city retail that competes with the suburbs.
“When you hear that Walmart is coming to Tysons Corner and all the hoopla around it … how can you wake up in good conscience and say these things should not be in our neighborhood?” he said.
Walmart has begun submitting plans for four proposed sites in D.C.
Hoskins, who took over the city’s development arm in February, said the District also had to address its problem of letting projects linger for years — and sometimes decades — with no action taken, especially in the oft-overlooked neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River.
One of those, the Skyland Shopping Center near Good Hope and Naylor roads SE, has been a D.C. redevelopment goal for 22 years, he said. Hoskins said he has told Mayor Vincent Gray he needs 22 months to turn that around.
The site has been held up by litigation for the better part of the last decade, and recently, Target bailed out as an anchor tenant. Developers of the site are reportedly courting Walmart to fill the spot.
