Plans are moving forward to create a new, mixed-use neighborhood at Poplar Point, the 110-acre site opposite Navy Yard in Ward 8 on the riverfront. The plan includes mixed-use development, a “wellness” spa and what would be the District’s second largest park after Oxen Run.
But the plan also requires the city to raise the height of the land above sea level and do extensive environmental remediation. And there’s controversy surrounding Therme Group, the anchor developer the city chose for the site.
And that’s all aside from the fact that, despite a law ed by Congress in 2006, Poplar Point is not yet under District control.
“Poplar Point is kind of incredible green space right there in Ward 8,” said Anacostia Riverkeeper Trey Sherard. It would be even more incredible if it and the waterfront were easily accessible, he adds. That’s all part of the draft plan, presented to the public May 13.
Development has been a long time coming. Poplar Point is about a mile of waterfront property on the east side of the Anacostia River, framed east and west by the Frederick Douglass and 11th Street Bridges and roughly by highway I-295 to the south. Originally tidal marshland, the area was created between 1880 and 1923, when sediment dredged to restore the depth of the Anacostia was used to create developable land.
The site was divided in two; one side was used by the Naval Receiving Station (NRS) until the 1960s and is currently the site of the US Park Police and USPP Aviation facilities. The other half was shared by the DC Lanham Tree Nursery (DCL) and the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) until the 1990s and is now unused. It is currently in the portfolio of the National Park Service (NPS).
In 2006 Congress ed legislation to transfer the NPS property to DC. But that transfer has not yet taken place. That’s in part because the transfer is conditional: DC must first adopt a land use plan for the site and complete the environmental process. DC also must identify a new site for NPS USPP aviation facilities.
The land use plan must include 70 acres of park land, two sites for federal memorials and be overall consistent with the Anacostia Waterfront Framework Plan created in 2003 by the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative (AWI), a coalition of more than 40 federal and District organizations brought together under the auspices of then-Mayor Anthony Williams and disbanded in 2006.
Several plans have been proposed since then, including a new neighborhood with hotels, offices and residences, the soccer stadium now located at Buzzard Point, a new FBI headquarters and, more recently, Amazon HQ2. All fell through.
This time, however, feels different. That’s in part because development is already happening in the area. In May, Phase 1 of the Bridge District opened at the foot of the Frederick Douglass Bridge. The eight-acre project includes three buildings providing housing—Stratos, Alula and Barsala and retail and event space near the Anacostia Metro Station which wil have an Atlas Brew Works and a restaurant from the team Doro Soul Food.
And on the other side, construction on the 11th Street Bridge Project is expected to begin sometime this year, converting the obsolete 11th Street Bridge into a seven-acre park that includes a cafe, meeting space, playground and a new headquarters for the Anacostia Watershed Society (AWS).
Draft Plan Unveiled
The draft preferred plan for development was unveiled at a t meeting hosted by NPS and the District Deputy Mayor of Planning and Economic Development (DMPED).
The plan calls for a large central reservation for wetlands open to the river. The Stickfoot Branch, currently underground, will be daylighted. The anchor is Therme, a proposed 15-acre wellness spa. In the plan, it is depicted surrounded by greenspace. The anchor sits opposite the WMATA Anacostia garage where a new Metro Plaza is proposed. Further residential and commercial development is situated nearby, along a circle at the base of the Douglas Bridge, south of the site just to the north of the I-295, and on the eastern portion nearer to Anacostia.
AECOM urban planner Alan Harwood, who is assisting DC with the transfer of the site, said the parkland was envisioned as series of interconnected parks—“charms hanging off the bracelet.” They run from the Esplanade of 11th Street Bridge, then a 250-foot wide strip along the Anacostia to the Frederick Douglass Bridge. Parkland amenities could include fishing piers, memorials and plazas, “or hopefully in the future, a place where people can swim.”
The team proposed pedestrian overes to cross I-295 at Chicago and V Streets SE with hope for a vehicular bridge in the future. 70 acres will be parkland, Harwood said; approximately 20 acres will be developed, with about 16 acres located within a quarter mile of the metro station. Another 12 acres are slated for roadways.
Problems Under the Surface
But issues stand in the way. First, environmental activists have concerns about what’s in the ground. For starters, said Anacostia Riverkeeper Trey Sherard, whatever was in the sediment pulled from the bottom of the river a century or more ago is now in the land. That’s without the pollutants left behind from the uses by the nursery and US Navy. Environmental investigations since the 1990s, mostly focused on the District and AOC part of the site, have found metals, pesticides, volatile organic compounds and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the soil.
In 2008 NPS and the District Department of Energy and the Environment (DOEE) agreed to conduct a Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study in accordance with federal law. The RI is supposed to characterize the environmental conditions of the site, including ecological and human risks posed by substances they find. But the RI, anticipated for later this year, has still not been presented. Once it is complete, the FS will present a range of alternatives for dealing with the substances at the site and it will be offered for public comment.
Another problem is flooding. Most of the site is currently at a low elevation with a high flood risk. NOAA estimates that the Anacostia will rise 10 to 14 feet by 2050; most of the site sits between two and five feet above the river. Chris Williams of the Anacostia Watershed Society (AWS) said that the development needs to be done with climate change in mind. Development decisions along the river will not only need to take into rising water levels, they could set the stage for how the flow of the river reacts.
Citing a 10.5 foot future flood zone at the May meeting, Harwood said the site will be built up in steps to 11 feet for the buildings, creating “gentle terraces” to get the development out of the floodplain with parking levels underneath the buildings, as he says was done at Washington Harbor, the Yard and The Wharf.
But Riverkeeper Sherard said that estimates for how high the river would rise were premised on a continuing fight against climate change. “And what we’ve seen is actually quite the opposite,” he said, meaning that 10.5 feet might be on the lower end of what happens in the next 30 to fifty years.
But some of the environmental concerns have already netted wins. Both Williams and Sherard said they wanted to see large green spaces and wetlands close to the river rather than development, as posed in some of the alternatives. That is a characteristic of the draft plan, although details are not confirmed.
Sherard said that if the city would focus on redevelopment of the portion of the site that had previously been built up, it could be a net positive for the river—providing the construction follows the current legislation around stormwater runoff. The draft plan does that.
15-Acre Wellness Spa Proposal
However, a second problem surfaced only a month after the District announced the selection of Therme Group as the anchor tenant. In March, DC announced the wellness spa company won a request for expressions of interest (RFEI). Therme entered a memorandum of understanding with the city to build a 15-acre state-of-the-art wellness facility offering thermal baths, saunas, mineral pools and restaurants.
But a month later, the New York Times published an investigation that alleged Therme misrepresented itself to the Toronto, Ontario government in a similar deal, exaggerating the company’s experience and financial health, throwing their ability to execute the project into doubt. As of April, the Times reported that the company had not yet secured financing for the Toronto project, which must begin construction by Spring 2026.
But Therme expresses confidence in the District project. They have gone out into the community, appearing at District-sponsored events and hiring respected Ward 8 community leader Wanda Lockridge as their community liaison.
“Therme is backed by many respected institutional investors and third-party financing partners,” Lockridge said, when asked about the Times report. “These partners share our commitment to building inclusive, wellbeing-centered urban destinations and have demonstrated their confidence in our capacity to deliver on that vision.”
Residents asked DMPED Development Manager Whitt Smith about the reports at the May 13 meeting, “You said this was a once in a lifetime development and it would be a shame to squander it on such an anchor tenant,” one said.
In response, Smith said that it is very early in the process and the city was still evaluating the site. The transfer requires an environmental assessment (EA) of the impact of the proposed development. “If the environmental assessment shows for the anchor use, we’ll start to proceed with that conversation,” Smith said.
Asked about the EA, DOEE referred the Hill Rag to the Mayor’s Office. The Mayor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
Starting the Conversation
The draft plan is billed as just the beginning. “These are ideas to start the conversation,” Harwood said May 13. “We want to know if you agree with these. We wanted to give you a sense of what we’re thinking and how some of these areas could be treated.”
While the team has a draft preferred alternative in hand, the project is still far from shovels in the ground.
Next, the District must refine the plan based on interagency coodination while preparing an EA that evalutates impacts of the proposed plan. The EA will be offered for public review in the coming months, NPS said. The EA will give the public a comprehensive view of both the proposed land uses and the associated environmental considerations. “The National Park Service is committed to ensuring robust public participation and will widely announce opportunities to engage once the documents are ready for release,” a spokesperson said.
As long-time Anacostia activist Doug Siglin wrote for the Smithsonian in 2017, “Mayor Williams’ planning director Andrew Altman liked to say,” to plan is human, to implement, divine. For a century, the grand Anacostia Riverfront Park has needed far more of the latter.”
It remains to be seen if now is the time that change comes to Poplar Point.
You can follow the project and give your input at www.publicinput.com/poplarpoint
