The many lives of 4000 Connecticut Avenue: What would you do with a 660,000 square-foot complex, steps from transit, UDC, embassies and the Van Ness and Cleveland Park communities?
The Washington Business Journal reports the former Intelsat headquarters and former Whittle School campus is now, officially, for lease, and being marketed to prospective tenants under the brand “Connstellation Space.”
Read the building’s tenant brochure, and it’s clear its marketers have an ideal use in mind: for education, and perhaps for just a single tenant.
“Originally designed to inspire America’s brightest aerospace engineers — this is a place where students, teachers and staff will feel valued,” the brochure reads. “Connstellation is built for a visionary to set new trends in education.”
Owners 601W Cos. and Berkley Properties did, after all, spend $187 million to modernize and renovate the property for Whittle School. And, at least two DC officials would like to see it put back to work in education. One is Ward 3 Council member Matt Frumin, who made crowding in Ward 3 public schools one of his campaign issues. Another is retiring UDC President Ronald Mason, who can see 4000 Connecticut from his office, and who envisions the site as an extension of the university.
Frumin told WBJ that “[l]ots of District entities have looked at it, and I hope that we can come up with an idea that’s compelling so that the city can take advantage.”
A 2018 conceptual drawing of the Intelsat HQ-turned-Whittle School campus.
That compelling idea doesn’t have to be a single use, or single tenant. Frumin himself listed retail, affordable housing, a senior wellness center, and a combination of those uses as possibilities. Also, Intelsat and Whittle were never the building’s the sole occupants during their respective tenures.
Over the years it has housed embassies, a bank branch, a travel agency, an architecture firm, the DC Office of Cable Television, WJLA, and a daycare center. It remains home to MedStar Health offices (at the 3007 Tilden Street entrance), and one of the healthcare company’s simulation training and education labs.
Connecticut Avenue redo delays: A projected springtime unveiling of DDOT’s concept designs for an upper Connecticut overhaul will instead be an end-of-year reveal. Cuneyt Dil of Axios reports DDOT “needs more time to consider suggestions from supporters and opponents.” And remember, these are the concept designs. Dil reports the engineering designs will take another year to complete.
“Meanwhile, this is all just more time for supporters and opponents to get their word in,” Dil told Fox5.
A new home for the DC government archives: We somehow missed this Washingtonian article when it was published in May 2022, but it’s a good way to catch up on efforts to give an estimated 500,000 DC government documents, dating back to 1792, a home on the UDC campus. Currently, the documents are scattered, and “many of the DC government’s most important documents have been kept in an old horse stable tucked away down an alley in Shaw.” More recently, DGS released concept designs for the new DC Archives, which will be constructed at the current site of UDC’s Building 41. And during the 2024 budget process, archives advocates have been pressing the mayor and the DC Council for additional funding for construction, and for staff needed to “help undertake the tremendous amount of work needed to prepare for the move.”
A rendering of the future DC Archives, as viewed from Van Ness Street.
Remembering an “embarassing” honor: The Washington Post dug into its own archives to look back at local James Beard Award winners and finalists, Bread Furst founder Mark Furstenberg among them. In 2017, Furstenberg was awarded the title “Best Baker.” At the time, he told the Post that he was embarrassed by the whole thing, and what made him proudest was “not national recognition, but the incredible recognition of the neighborhood.”
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Travis Lee Price III, FAIA says
1. Sell to Amazon for their DC HQ #2
2. Create a major new school of the arts and architecture: Global, Get more reality into a city too overloaded with government
3
RS says
Really disappointed that the Connecticut Ave project is getting delayed. This will just allow more time for fringe interest and minority yet vocal opponents reduce this much needed project down to a few revamped bus stops. DC needs to be using all of their resources to disincentivizing driving as the primary means of transit. The roads in this city already can not handle the volume of people driving on a daily basis, which will only get worse as the population continues to grow.