Temporary ‘Retail Village’ is Pivotal During Permitting Phase of Massive Development

How do you begin transforming 183 acres of Washington’s most underserved quadrant?

If you’re Redbrick LMD, winning the city’s bid to redevelop several parcels of the historic St. Elizabeth's East, a former hospital campus in Southeast D.C., you start with a temporary wood pavilion — but you make it promise more to the community than anything that came before it.

“Temporary” belies the magnificence of the structure, but the Retail Village at Sycamore & Oak is indeed meant to stand for just a few years before it’s disassembled one 60-foot-long, dowel- and glue-laminated timber panel at a time.

In the meantime, from where its footings rest on the surface of a former parking lot, the 23,000-square-foot, indoor-outdoor mass timber pavilion has a big role to play.

Hosting 13 local entrepreneurs ranging from WeFitDC gym to Glizzys DC vegan hot dogs to a "tastemaker" shop run by artist Chris Pyrate, the food, retail, entertainment and event venue is meant to activate the space and galvanize the neighborhood’s entrepreneurial spirit, explained Mei Li, Redbrick’s senior vice president of development, during a recent LoopNet tour of the property.

On the weekday morning of the tour, business owners were opening their doors with infectious music as community members greeted each other, area residents connected their laptops to Wi-Fi and chefs fired up their grills for the lunch rush. “Joy” was the word Li used to describe what she’s witnessed in the space since its mid-summer opening.

With four commercial kitchens, a playground, several rainwater collection tanks, a stage for events with a mezzanine level, some solar-powered EV charging stations and a set of air-conditioned restroom facilities, it’s a shame the whole thing will come down in due time.

While the structure is meant only to activate the space until permits are secured for the next phase of development, it’s pivotal to the area’s long-term plan. Its Congress Heights neighborhood, of which the former hospital takes up the most land, is undergoing a massive renaissance: the city called it its largest and last-remaining section of underdeveloped land.

Established in 1855, St. Elizabeth’s Hospital was the first and longest-operating federal psychiatric facility. Shortly after it began declining past the point of no return in the late 1980s, it was transferred to the District of Columbia and designated a National Historic Landmark.

The city’s master plan for the site, finalized more than 10 years ago, called for the creation of both luxury and affordable housing, speculative offices, small business incubation spaces, education and innovation hubs, as well as spaces for retail, hospitality and more to complement now-existing sports stadium and event programming nearby.

Redbrick answered with a proposal that promised to bring all of the above and more to the once-blighted corner of the capital. The D.C.-area firm’s persistence is starting to pay off with this week’s opening of the Max Robinson Center, a 118,000-square-foot office that it has leased in full to Whitman-Walker Health, a local provider that specializes in community health research, advocacy and HIV care.

Redbrick’s master development proposal includes over 1 million square feet across four parcels, on which it is also delivering more than 250 units of multifamily housing, with 80% of those offered below market rent. It also promises 88 for-sale townhomes; a swath of workforce housing; upwards of 170,000 square feet of additional office space; and a 650,000-square-foot mixed-use project that includes hotel and retail properties.

At the center of it all, the retail village sets the stage, quite literally, for the future.

The pavilion is a major part of Redbrick’s first phase. It may take a few years of permitting before Redbrick can swing a hammer at the historic St. Elizabeth’s buildings, Li explained. In the interim, it benefits both Redbrick and the community to foster the hyper local economy’s interests.

Through a collaboration with the city, along with a dedicated community liaison and an “experience manager” who are both rooted in the community, Redbrick went through an extensive process to establish below-market-rate licensing agreements solely with entrepreneurs from D.C.’s Ward 7 and Ward 8 where the project is located.

“Some of the entrepreneurs have never operated a [brick-and-mortar] business before. We want to provide support for them, which includes job training and business operations mentors.”

Mei Li, Redbrick

“It wasn’t your traditional leasing process,” Li explained. “It’s all done through a program called Incubate the Eight,” named after Ward 8. “Some of the entrepreneurs have never operated a [brick-and-mortar] business before. We want to provide support for them, which includes job training and business operations mentors.” Renowned names like restaurateur José Andrés and billionaire businesswoman Laurene Powell Jobs are attached to the project and its programming.

Redbrick wants the retailers and food operators to graduate from the incubation period and become long-term tenants of its eventual 50,000 square feet of permanent retail space.

And though the retail shops are small, most of the wall panels between them, supplied by Falkbuilt, are modular. “These panels pop off,” explained Paul P. Elias, Redbrick’s executive vice president of construction. “If a business doesn't survive or they find other space to go to, and somebody else comes in and they want a bigger or smaller space, we can move these walls around.”

Elias’ team also hired local contractors for the job. While the mass timber was all prefabricated by StructureCraft in Canada’s British Columbia, “all the other gingerbread, of which there is a lot,” was crafted by Ward 8 carpenters and tradesmen.

As workers start flocking to the adjacent Whitman-Walker office, the pavilion provides them a place to get coffee and lunch and make use of the expanding fiber high-speed internet coming from a new DC-Net tower Redbrick helped establish on top of the office. The pavilion also provides a pre-gaming hub for events at the neighboring Entertainment and Sports Arena, which opened in late 2018 as the home of the WNBA's Washington Mystics.

As a cool breeze wafts through the rafters, it’s hard to believe the entire thing will one day be disassembled and moved somewhere else. For now, it may be astonishing to see what some planks of wood can do for a rapidly changing community.