The co-developer of The Grove at Parkside, an affordable apartment building at 600 Kenilworth Terrace NE, expects to begin construction next month. The Grove will be the third residential structure in the 3.1-million square foot, $750 million mixed-use Parkside development.
“We specialize in affordable housing,” says Peter Farrell, managing partner of CityInterests LLC, master developer of Parkside, in the Ward 7 community of Kenilworth-Parkside.
CityInterests and Gilbane Development Company are co-developers of The Grove.
Farrell says CityInterests is finalizing the building’s development financing, after which construction will begin immediately. In mid-October, the company received sheeting and shoring permits, and he expects to have the other permits in time for the construction start date.
Farrell says construction should be done within 16 months of the start date. CityInterests’ management company, Edgewood Management, will handle leasing.
The site of the building is currently an empty lot. The six-story building will have 186 apartments, among them studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom units. There will be 65 parking spaces.
There will be different affordable housing tiers throughout the building, from units for people making 30 percent of the area median income (AMI) to 60 percent AMI, which is $107,500 for a family of four. Farrell figures the mix will be 20 percent for the former category and 80 percent for the latter category.
In the overall Parkside plan, CityInterests is developing up to 2,000 residential units, for rent and for sale, and both affordable and market rate. Already built are Victory Square, a 98-unit senior affordable housing building, and 100 market-rate townhouses at Parkside.
Still to come are a 186-unit market-rate apartment building and a 100-unit townhouse project combining market rate and workforce rate, the latter another affordable housing category for incomes of 80 to 120 percent area median income.
Farrell says the master plan for Parkside includes commercial, of which 750,000 square feet has been completed; 50,000 square feet of retail, currently in the works; and a park.
Already opened are four schools and the Unity Health Clinic, a primary care clinic. The schools are the Parkside Learning Center, for infants to age 5; Neval Thomas Elementary School, a district public school; and Cesar Chavez Public Charter Middle School and High School.
Farrell says CityInterests acquired the future Parkside site, an approximately 20-acre undeveloped land assemblage near the Minnesota Ave Metro stop, in 2004.
“It was an interesting real estate opportunity but also an opportunity to go east of the Anacostia River and help develop a new paradigm in community development,” he says.
“The purpose is to build a whole new community with schools, retail, great quality housing stock and commercial in an area ... that had been overlooked for a long time,” he continued.
Farrell says the Parkside development is adhering to the mandate of the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative, a non-profit.
He called Parkside an “audacious undertaking,” but one whose “residents deserve this kind of development.”