[RP TownTalk] Fwd: Sharing: DCMud Blog Post re: Arts District Hyattsville

[Dwight Holmes]

Source:
http://dcmud.blogspot.com/2010/03/four-years-later-arts-district-at.html


Four Years Later, Arts District at Hyattsville Chugs Along

Hyattsville in PG County is not exactly the center of "urban chic" in the DC
Metro area, but a mixed-use project, lead by EYA with retail by StreetSense,
is trying to stake a claim to being Maryland's H Street. Most of the
residential in the West Village, the first phase of the Arts District at
Hyattsville that began in 2006, has sold. After several years of threatening
to do so, the development team this month broke ground on the retail element
of the second phase, the East Village, and has signed on tenants: Tara Thai,
Busboys and Poets and, most recently, Yes! Organic Market. Construction on
the one-story retail element is scheduled to begin in earnest in May and to
complete by fall 2010 with occupancy in late 2010 or spring 2011;
construction on the East Village residential element is expected to begin
late this year.

The $200 million Arts District is a new, 25-acre residential neighborhood
off of Route 1 in PG County (a.k.a. Rhode Island Avenue in D.C.), just two
miles from the District border and two miles from the University of
Maryland. Jack McLaurin, a Principal at Lessard Group architects, said his
firm tried to create a "depot main street architecture" for the project,
hearkening back to old railroad towns, since a railroad line runs along the
property. Lessard "tried to funk it up" to make the new project look like
"someone had come in and revitalized an area that had been there for a long
time." Faux adaptive reuse?

The project is delivering in two phases: the West and East Villages (i.e.
East or West of Route 1). The West Village includes 132 townhouses, 10 of
which are live-work space for artists, and the rehabilitated Lustine
showroom, which serves as a community center with an art gallery and gym.
Aakash Thakkar, a Vice President at EYA, said 102 of the residential units
are settled, most are built, and the team "hopes to have it sold and
completed by the end of 2010." To put it in perspective, sales began on the
West Village in 2006.

The East Village will include 41,000 s.f. retail, 275 multi-family units and
183 townhouses. The project originally was to have fewer multi-family units,
but EYA recently received approval from the Prince George's County Planning
Board to add an additional 198 units in one, four-story building and to
reduce by 21 the number of townhouses. Thakkar said at this time EYA has not
decided whether the multi-family units will be rental or condos and that
construction on the three buildings will not begin until early next year.
The townhouses, however, should start sales as early as this April, with
construction set to begin in the 3rd quarter of this year.

McLaurin said the West Village has more of an art deco feel than the updated
design for the East village, where the team simplified the design to reduce
costs. "No vinyl siding" the architect assured DCMud, but "we tried to work
with interesting color combination with the brick and hardie panel." The
multi-family buildings are broken up to look like a series of taller
townhouses, and to keep with the depot idea, the multi-family buildings have
space for ground floor retail or artists work spaces, with "larger window
patterns" and "doors on ground level units." McLaurin said he wanted to
create a "distinct" feel, so that people would know they were not in
"anywhere U.S.A."

Guy Silverman, Managing Principal at StreetSense, said his company is the
majority owner on the retail, but has been working closely with EYA so that
the two developers are "very aligned...in terms of how we envision the Arts
District." Silverman said this will be the first location for both Yes!
Organic Market and Busboys and Poets and that the choice of Hyattsville
"speaks volumes" about the project and the developers' efforts to create an
urban neighborhood feel. Tara Thai is also signed on, bringing the total
spoken-for retail space to 60%. StreetSense is now looking tenants like a
yoga studio, a drop off dry cleaners, a small spa or maybe even an organic
pet food store to fill the remaining space.
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