The developers of the apartment building known as the Bentley have been granted a demolition permit to tear down the squat steel and brick structure occupying half of the new apartment's footprint, and construction on the new building, just south of Rhode Island Avenue on 14th Street NW, should begin soon.
Sarah Alexander of
Torti Gallas Architects confirms that the team is expecting to receive construction permits "very soon.
"We're looking forward to having it come online," she adds. "I think 14th Street in general is a good place to be doing a new project. Right now [the lot] is an empty tooth in what is generally a very nice streetscape." The Bentley will be across the street from
Birch and Barley and the (in)famous
Barrel House Liquor store.
The Bentley, formerly known as the Irwin (the developer's first name), has been a proposal since 2011. The new name is meant to play homage to the former car dealerships that dominated the 14th Street corridor. In addition to changing the name over the years, the building's design has changed significantly through the planning and approval process, as this
chronology from UrbanTurf shows.
The current design calls for five stories and 51 units, "mostly studios and one-bedrooms," Alexander says, "with some two-bedrooms on the top floor with terraces." The building has an interior courtyard and 20 parking spaces for residents.
The ground floor also has 4,000 square feet of retail, which has not been leased yet. Torti Gallas designed the space with a ventilation shaft that could be used by a restaurant--"I think they'd be happy to have a restaurant," Alexander says of the designers--but the space is still up for grabs.
The building should deliver by the last quarter of 2014.