UDC says making progress, facing challenges in housing students at 4250 Connecticut

4250 Connecticut Avenue (Nov. 2015 Google Street View image)

A UDC official says the school is making progress on a deal to turn 4250 Connecticut Avenue into student housing, but that the project faces major challenges.

The Bernstein Management Corporation bought the building from Fannie Mae late last year. Fannie Mae still occupies the building and plans to move out in 2019 once its new, consolidated downtown headquarters is complete. UDC wants to move students in by August 2020.

At the Thursday, July 27th meeting of the UDC Community-Campus Task Force, UDC Chief Financial Officer Troy Stovall said that two major challenges face this project: purchasing the land from WMATA (by UDC, Bernstein or city) and developing a design for 450 to 500 beds for what may be a combination of undergraduates, law or graduate students, and perhaps some faculty, with one to four students or faculty per suite. The number of beds was determined by a survey last year that revealed a demand for 600 beds. (Forest Hills Connection and Van Ness Main Street representatives have requested a copy of the survey.)

This development would include ground-floor retail. Van Ness Main Street, Bernstein and UDC have put out a request for proposal (RFP) and plan to fund a retail study to determine what would work best for this building and this community. ANC 3F will invite Bernstein to present an update at its September 19th meeting.