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Renderings by Metropolitan Development, who will rebuild on Kelsey Gardens’ land.
Washington City Paper has a long tradition of covering Kelsey Gardens in Shaw. Back in 2005, we wrote about former councilmember H.R. Crawford manipulating tenants to move them out of the building. Then, last May, I wrote about a murder that occurred at the complex, and the plan to redevelop it.
“There were a few lingering residents. But the place was basically vacant,” I recorded at the time.
What’s happened since then? Well, not too much—-Kelsey Gardens is now down to two occupants. Thanks to DC North, now we do have a sense of when a groundbreaking will occur.
“We’re thinking we’ll start in February,” said Jim Wurzel, construction manager at Metropolitan Development, the Vienna, VA, company that owns the site. “We’d like to start sooner, but that’s realistic. We’ll hopefully be done by January 2012.”
…[After the tenants leave], Metropolitan will cut off services to the complex and put up a temporary security fence. That will remain until the company is ready to raze the current buildings—probably near the end of the year. Finally, around February, building will commence.
The entire area hit some walls this year. There’s little buzz these days about the Radio One project up the street, and the CityMarket at O development is stalled until 2010, at last reporting.
