The developer intends to build two seven-story apartment buildings with a total of 189 luxury rental units with first floor retail space. This development, called The Plaza , has thirty-nine two-bedroom apartments and the rest are one-bedroom. It is envisioned that from the entrance of the metro station there will be steps leading up to an open plaza between the two buildings. This space contains a public area with seating under an arbor The site concept will be to continue full bus and pedestrian access to the Metro. 189 parking spaces for the apartment dwellers will be on two underground levels. The present metered parking spaces will be relocated to a covered parking areal between the plaza level and the underground parking. This level is partially open on the Metro side. Parking spaces for the retail shops and for visitors will also be provided at this level. The taxi stand might be moved to Diagonal Road or remain in the bus lane. The developer has focused on the transportation issues of his project and not addressed the traffic patterns of the site as a whole.
The Kiss n Ride lot is presently zoned: transportation/utility. In order to build what is proposed, a major zoning change is needed. Public hearings will be held to decide this issue. On Tuesday, June 2nd he comes before the Planning Commission and on Saturday, June 13th, before City Council.
The upper King Street area is currently the site of major development. The old Colonial parking lot near Owen s restaurant on King Street will be replaced by a development called Metroplace which will consist of three buildings. The first, currently under construction, is a 66 ft high office building with first floor retail to open in the fall of 1998.. The second building which will front on Commonwealth Avenue will be a 77 ft high, 240 room, Hilton hotel and the third building which will front on Cameron St will be an 82 ft high 88 unit time-share. All three buildings will have one central underground parking garage to meet their needs. Construction for the time-share followed by the hotel is projected to begin this year Completion time for a project is expected to be 14 months after the start date. Under contract is a five story office building on the lot between the new King Street Gardens and Crestar Bank on Diagonal Rd. A small eight unit condo apartment building is planned for the lot across from Crate and Barrel . A Hampton Inn is slated to replace Old Town Motors on King Street Construction on the extensive mixed-use Carlyle project across Duke Street continues. The second Carlyle Tower, a residential condo apartment building, is presently under construction. Now that the new Patent and Trade Office building is unlikely to be built at Potomac Yards, both the Hoffman or the Carlyle sites become more promising. The decision regarding the location of the PTO is to be made by GSA this year. In the future, we can expect to see Alexandria Floral , Crate and Barrel , and Table Talk replaced by taller buildings, since they have the zoning to do so.