If You Don’t Build It, They Will Go Somewhere Else

Dave Alpert did a very interesting post the other day about the creative mix of regulatory strategies DC used to create the appealing mixed-use neighborhood that you can find downtown roughly between the Gallery Place and Metro Center stations. But why the need for a creative mix of regulatory strategies:

Without the residential requirements and incentives, however, other areas such as NoMa haven’t developed the same mix of residential, arts, and retail uses as downtown. With limited supply and high demand for office space in DC, we need some incentives to keep parts of central Washington from becoming completely overtaken by offices, leading to dead zones at night and severely limiting retail opportunities. This is already a huge problem in Judiciary Square and along Massachusetts Avenue.

Like just about everything, this reminds me that Washington DC should really let people build some proper skyscrapers somewhere. The underlying reality is that creation of new office space in the Washington, DC metropolitan area is largely driven by a dynamic far outside the control of the city government. The only question is where do the offices go? If you look at the high, high rents in the K Street corridor and the “golden triangle” area it’s clear that the market wants to located more offices there. But it can’t, because the area is totally built-out and you’re not allowed to build any tall buildings. Consequently, office monoculture either spreads to entirely overtake new neighborhoods, or else offices migrate outwards to the periphery of the metropolitan area. That’s bad for the city’s tax base, and bad for the environment.

If we took the parts of the city that were long ago “completely overtaken by offices” and allowed taller office buildings to be built there, then market pressure on other areas to become office districts would be reduced. At the same time, a greater proportion of the region’s overall job base would be in the city, which would increase the desirability of downtown-proximate locations as a location for housing. And that would help bring the housing/office balance in NoMa and elsewhere closer into balance.

Every day going to and from work, I pass by the former Convention Center site, now standing vacant. And while I think the plan in place for redeveloping the location, I think it’s incredibly frustrating that DC’s “no tall buildings” rule means that this incredibly valuable patch of land can’t be developed in a truly dense, neighborhood-transforming way.