District of Columbia Office of Planning
Mount Vernon Triangle Action Agenda
March 23, 2004

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MOUNT VERNON TRIANGLE ACTION AGENDA

KEY POINTS

• Negotiating a Reality-based Plan for the City’s Newest Neighborhood
• A Public-Private Partnership to create a Neighborhood that Works: providing a brand new community of downtown residents with amenities and services – such as a retail street and grocery store; and a well defined, well landscaped system of streets and open spaces

SUMMARY

THE MOUNT VERNON TRIANGLE ACTION AGENDA
Creating a vibrant new downtown neighborhood in Washington DC

The Mount Vernon Triangle is a rapidly emerging new neighborhood near the heart of downtown Washington. Located on 30 acres of under-built land with great redevelopment promise, the Triangle is bounded by New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey Avenues and is situated just east of the new Washington Convention Center and City Museum at Mount Vernon Square. Surrounded by new developments under construction at Mount Vernon Square and along Massachusetts Avenue, several projects are already in progress within the Triangle, and others are not far behind.

In light of this momentum, City agencies, property owners, and the community have come together in an unusual partnership to create a vision and a development framework for a vibrant new residential and mixed-use neighborhood. This is a framework of great streets, neighborhood gateways, and activity centers, such as a new park and public plaza. They have also agreed to a five-point action strategy to ensure that this vision can be achieved quickly and with lasting benefit to all City residents.

The Mount Vernon Triangle has the potential to be lively and diverse, to contain a mixture of housing, workplaces, shopping, culture, and unique public spaces. This could include 4,000-5,000 new housing units, 1-2 million square feet of office space, 500-800 hotel rooms, 50,000 to 1000,000 square feet of cultural uses, 80,000-120,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, and 50,000 to 100,000 square feet of open space.

The Triangle has the potential to benefit from a confluence of new urban housing demand, arts, and institutions to create a competitive advantage attracting new residents and businesses to the District of Columbia. As a largely unbuilt area, it also presents a rare opportunity to create a landmark neighborhood for the City, with the innovative and exceptional design of its architecture and public spaces.

A PUBLIC / PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP:
Consensus goals and guiding principles

Together, District officials, area property owners, and the community have established target objectives for the Mount Vernon Triangle’s development. These are to:

• Recognize the importance of residential development and retail to foster a "living downtown"
• Respond to current downtown housing market demands of empty-nesters, young professionals and non-traditional families, while still providing options for parents with children
• Create a flexible urban design framework which accommodates a mixture of residential and commercial development
• Promote affordable housing and neighborhood amenities; protect existing communities and their institutions
• Provide locations for nonprofit institutions and non-traditional, innovative businesses
• Welcome smaller-scale performing arts, museum and gallery spaces
• Connect to adjoining residential neighborhoods and to the growing downtown
• Focus public and private actions to accelerate the Triangle’s development, expand the District’s tax base, create jobs, and enhance values

THE VISION:
A framework of great places

The Mount Vernon Triangle is envisioned as a distinctive urban neighborhood containing:

• A diverse population of residents, workers, and visitors
• A core of arts, retail, and cultural activities
• Active building ground floors and street life
• A generous public realm of streetscapes, parks and plazas
• Innovative contemporary architecture and landscape design

A flexible urban design framework accommodates mixed-use development and is composed of great streets, activity centers, and gateways:

5^th Street:
This is the Triangle’s shopping street, connecting to the Mount Vernon neighborhood and the downtown. It is the location of a plaza at the 5^th and K intersection and Park Reserve "gateways" at Massachusetts and New York Avenues.

K Street:
K Street’s wide sidewalks accommodate a gracious linear park linking Mount Vernon Square to the Triangle’s new neighborhood park and community facility.

Residential Streets:
Quieter streets in the eastern portion of the Triangle are good locations for green residential streets with individual stoops and sidewalk gardens.

The Avenues:
The Avenues offer institutions and other uses a great Washington address. With a rhythm of grand entries and generous landscaping, these great formal streets traverse the City from east to west and anchor the Triangle in the L’Enfant plan.

A FIVE-POINT ACTION AGENDA
Coordinating public and private actions to implement the vision