8th Street Elevation of the Proposed Mixed Use Building at 507 8th Street on Barracks Row
Elevation of the proposed project from 8th and E Streets, SE.
Shakespeare’s Barracks Row Rehearsal Space Wants to Be Retail/Office/Residential. But…
by Larry Janezich
Tuesday night, Michael Oxman, architect and part owner of the building housing Shakespeare rehearsal space on Barracks Row, unveiled details of the proposed re-development of the former warehouse into a mixed use retail, office, and residential project. Oxman was seeking ANC6B approval of the Historical Preservation application for the design of the proposed Barracks Row structure. Rehearsals for the Shakespeare Company are due to relocate to new facilities in Southwest in the near future.
ANC6B approved the historic preservation application, by a vote of 6 – 1 with one abstention, but opposition to the project’s proposed fourth floor by the Historic Preservation Office is likely to be a deal killer. Preservationists say that the fourth floor is, in the words of Planning and Zoning Committee resident member Ken Jarboe, “a pop up in a commercial property.” Jarboe could have added, “in an Historic District.”
Oxman’s plan provides for the largest retail space on Barracks Row on the first floor, office space on the second floor, and 12 micro residential units on a third and fourth floor. Despite ANC support, Oxman will probably have to go back to the drawing board on this one.
For more on this project, see previous CHC post here: http://bit.ly/1OexKk1
CAPITOL HILL CORNER 
Wow–there are objections to a sensitively scaled and designed 2-story addition to a 2-story building that sits a couple of doors up and across the street from a 4-story (but for the artificial subterfuge of a mansard roof that magically converts a “story” into an “attic”) building, but there were none to a 94’6″ incompatible building across the street from Eastern Market?
This rendering is a huge improvement upon the grey eyesore of dead space that this building currently is. A four story building is not unreasonable along a commercial corridor and only one block from a Metro stop. Additional retail and commercial space is in high demand in this area.
The benefits of this renovation outweigh the HPRB’s objections.
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