1011 M Street MW, a 78,000 square-foot building slated for development at the corner of 11
th and M Street NW, three blocks east of Thomas Circle, is a couple of steps closer to groundbreaking.
Sarah Alexander, associate principal of
Torti Gallas and Partners, the Silver Spring-based architects designing the project, says that the building concept has been approved by the Historic Preservation Review Board [HPRB], and is now in the design-and-development phase. 1011 M Street NE is among those properties in
Community Three Development LLC’s portfolio.
Permitting from the District is underway, Alexander says, with groundbreaking slated for spring 2014. Once permits are obtained from the city, the developers must secure final approval from the HPRB.
1011 M Street NW will be one mixed-use building that looks like two: a nine-story, yellow-brick portion on M, plus a six-story, red-brick section on 11
th. The two will in effect embrace the 11 M Cleaners building at 1131 11th St NW.
Included in the 87-unit project will be one level of underground parking as well as 3,000 square feet of retail space at ground level.
Elliot Liebow, the DC-born urban anthropologist who set his acclaimed 1967 sociological text
Tally’s Corner at this very intersection, would no doubt be astonished by plans for its redevelopment. Liebow died in 1994, but his study of the impoverished men who once occupied this corner sold more than two million copies – a remarkable feat for a work that grew out of his PhD dissertation for
Catholic University of America.