[CAYMON83]

Originally Posted by aquablue

They should really raise height limits in DC, in certain zones downtown or outside the downtown core. If we were seeing more innovative low rise structures downtown with more residential and retail and interesting exciting architecture i would be less concerned, but some height might at least improve density/vibrancy and design quality (i.e, more housing units) in downtown area. I live here (moved here 19 year ags) and I think Philly has a better downtown core, which is ridiculous as this is the nation's capital and it deserves to have a central shopping/entertainment area that is even more vibrant to reflect the importacet and power of the city. The US Capital should have a more vibrant downtown, at least as good as Philly, SFO, Boston, metros of similar size. The current downtown is not good enough at all and I think the low height limit and over reliance on ribbon-windowed boring modernist office groundscrapers with little character and very little daring in design combined with inadequate retail space and lack of resi towers is major cause. I never want to bother going to F street/7th street because it is too small of a shopping district and hasn't enough to compete with a major mall. Even with the CityCenter dc, i think it won't be enough to compete with those other cities. If Height limits are not possible to change, more conversion of federal buildings and old officesto residential and retail is the only hope downtown to create some kind of a real core where people from all over the inner suburbs will go to shop and play (think manhattan - people flooding in from jersey/LI to take advantage of it). The K street area, for example, is dull and a corporate wasteland. Yet is is the perfect area to build a vibrant street. If heights were raised here, mixed use buildings would allow for more retail and housing options and not just office. Also, low rise buildings offer a boring streetscape. this is not Paris (or other euro cities with block after block of immaculate beauty. Endless conservative and dull corporate boxes lining arrow-straight streets and with no variation in height reeks of communist Berlin, etc. Overall, the buildings are far too conservative and i think the restrictions are a cause of this in part, the other is just lack of interest in design on the part of the city, developers, planners, etc.. The worst example of this has to be in the I to M street areas downtown around the Farragut stations. The other problem i think is that the gallery place entertainment area is constrained by governmental buildings to the east and corporate crap to the west. It needs to rise to create even more options for retail and vibrancy. The city had very poor planning in the past IMO when it came to downtown development but it seems it was hindered greatly by the height limits.

For me, It's either Georgetown or Friendships heights/ Bethesda for shopping b/c I'm not a mall person and I would love for DC to have a Chestnut street downtown/mini Michigan Avenue, with decent sized sidewalks (none of that donkey-path G.Town nonsense) I think if height limits were raised in certain areas around NoMA or NE of the downtown area to around 500 feet, it would create a decent amount of population that would naturally flow into downtown to shop, play and eat and keep certain population groups in the city rather than the suburbs Then again, I'm a centralist and I don't like multi-core cities (Tysons, Bethesda, SS, etc) when the central core i Ts so corporate and sterile and most of the region shops and plays outside DC. I also don't buy the argument that some high rises buildings would impact the beauty of the monumental core (if placed within certain view corridors, the impact visually on the mall area would be limited. London has been successful with doing this to reduce impacts on it's major historical focal points.

DC has to raise heights in certain areas but done in a way as to not impact the monumental core. Therefore, a cluster approach would work best and good places to build would be on current areas downtown that are far from the federal areas.. Design also needs to be asking for more audacious designs. Does DC
s core want to be more than this or just a corporate ghetto with a smattering of small shopping areas that could never match the great cities of the world.

+1000000000000000000000000
I wish I could have written this as well as you did. I agree with everything you said.

In my dreams Conn Ave between Dupont and Farragut Square is DC's Grand High End shopping boulevard bursting with foreign tourists, city dwellers and suburbanites in town for a taste of the big city. The surrounding streets are DC’s resemble Chicago’s Gold Coast or NYC UWS with their high density housing. Farragut Square and Franklin Squares are as teaming with life as Madison or Union Squares in NYC. F Street Metro center to Gallery Place is a more mid-range shopping/hotel district brimming with life 7 days a week.

Instead, Conn Ave south of the circle is mostly dead on the weekends (expect for a few bars and restaurants at night). Talbots and the Filenes spot sit vacant for years, as other retail gradually closes. The high end corner location designed for Tiffany’s on Conn and K Street is instead filled with a Bank. There is no residential base as the area is a sea of lackluster office boxes. Farragut and Franklin Sq are basically deserted except for the homeless. Metro center is vastly underutilized with the F street shopping district being underwhelming and even that quickly gives way to retail-less office blocks that will need to be completely rebuilt if F street to City Center to Gallery place are ever to become an intergrated urban core.

The District has moved in the right direction over the past 10 years, but without either 1) the high limit being raised or 2) as massive conversion of office space to retail/hotels/residential its always going to be an office ghetto with a few vibrant blocks. Not a civic center worthy of SF/Chicago or even Philly/Boston.