L'Enfant Plaza - Structures and Changes at L'Enfant Plaza

Structures and Changes At L'Enfant Plaza

Washington Metro's L'Enfant Plaza Station opened on July 1, 1977. The initial entrances were in the courtyard of 400 7th Street SW and at 7th Street SW at Maryland Avenue SW. The entrance inside L'Enfant Plaza, which connects with the "La Promenade" underground shopping mall, opened in October 1977. In June 1992, Virginia Railway Express opened its new $1.1 million L'Enfant Station on Virginia Avenue. L'Enfant Plaza also boasts a 16,050-space parking garage underneath the plaza's northern section, the second largest in the city.

L'Enfant Promenade descends on either side of Banneker Overlook to form Benjamin Banneker Circle. F Street SW runs southeast from the circle to 9th Street SW. A pedestrian walkway and bridge leads northwest from the park to I-395, which crosses the Washington Channel just west of the park.

L'Enfant Plaza originally housed an 800-seat motion picture theater. The theater struggled financially, and closed in the spring of 1970. The American Film Institute (AFI) began renting the theater shortly thereafter for screenings of its films. The theater re-opened as a commercial movie house in August 1972. It closed again, and in February 1973 opened as a stage for live plays. In April 1973, the AFI moved to the Kennedy Center. A month later, the theater reopened yet again as the "new" American Theater (a live theater). It closed again, and reopened in May 1975 under new management. The space continued to operate as a movie and stage theater into the late 1980s, until it closed permanently. It is now used by the NTSB as a conference center.

In 1981, Eastern Realty Investment Corp. (the real estate investment arm of the Electric Supply Pension Scheme, a pension plan based in the United Kingdom) purchased L'Enfant Plaza itself, La Promenade, the North Building, the South Building, and the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel building.

L'Enfant Plaza suffered a very serious fire in the mid 1980s. A serious fire consumed the top four floors of the U.S. Postal Service headquarters on October 15, 1984. More than 200 firefighters needed two hours to put out the fire, one of the largest in D.C. history. It caused an estimated $100 million in damages and injured 25 firefighters. (District of Columbia law required sprinklers in very few buildings.)

Property tax issues dogged L'Enfant Plaza in the late 1980s. In 1981, L'Enfant Plaza and its constituent buildings and shopping mall was the city's most expensive property, valued at at $78 million ($189 million in 2011 inflation-adjusted dollars). In 1985, the assessor's office in the District of Columbia Department of Finance and Revenue valued the hotel at $83.7 million ($171.3 million in 2011 inflation-adjusted dollars). Eastern Realty challenged the valuation, and the D.C. property tax Board of Equalization and Review reduced the assessment to $65.1 million ($133.2 million in 2011 inflation-adjusted dollars). Eastern Realty still felt the valuation was too high, and asked a D.C. Superior Court to lower the structure's value to just $44.5 million. The court declined to overturn the equalization board's ruling. In 1986, the tax valuation was set at $98.5 million ($197.9 million in 2011 inflation-adjusted dollars), but after an appeal and the assessment dropped to $62.1 million ($124.8 million in 2011 inflation-adjusted dollars). The 1987 assessment was $93.2 million ($180.7 million in 2011 inflation-adjusted dollars), but when the equalization board refused to reduce the assessment Eastern Realty sued. A private appraiser hired by the owners valued the hotel at $54.6 million in 1986 and $63.4 million in 1987, while the city appraiser claimed $83 million in 1986 and $85 million in 1987 (unusually large discrepancies). The differences meant that Eastern Realty owed either $2.3 million or $3.3 million for 1986/1987. In July 1990, the court reduced the 1985 assessment to $44.5 million, the 1986 assessment to $54.6 million, and the 1987 assessment to $63.4 million. Another round of tax battles ensued over the next three years. The city assessed the hotel at $93.2 million in 1988, $97.4 million in 1989, $102.2 million in 1990, and $103.9 million in 1991. A second D.C. Superior Court reduced the assessments to $63.4 million for 1988, $71.1 million for 1989, $61.7 million for 1990, and $63.9 million for 1991. Similar tax battles occurred over much the same period regarding the North Building, with similar results. In the midst of its tax battles, Eastern Realty spent $35 million in 1988 to renovate the office buildings and hotel at L'Enfant Plaza. The upgrades included adding sprinkler systems and smoke detectors through all the structures, upgrading the elevators, and improving the electrical system. The electrical system upgrade caused a major problem for the owners, however. In February 1992, contractors working on the electrical system caused a short beneath the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel that injured two workers, and forced the hotel and about a third of the mall's businesses to close until power was restored (which occurred more than two weeks later).

In early 1996, Eastern Realty sold the South Building to VIB Management Fund, a Dutch real estate investment company, for $52 million. In September 1996, a second Dutch real estate investment firm, Sarakreek Holding N.V. (itself a subsidiary of the Tiger/Westbrook Real Estate Fund of New York City), purchased the plaza, North Building, hotel, and shopping mall for $185 million. That year, sports team owner Abe Pollin briefly considered building his MCI Center (now known as the Verizon Center) at L'Enfant Plaza, but built it in Chinatown instead.

In 1998, the Urban Land Institute recommended redeveloping L'Enfant Promenade to create a more tourist-friendly environment as well as creating a link with the southwest waterfront. Although this concept garnered little attention at the time, it proved to be the genesis of a major plan that emerged around 2010 to radically change the nature and look of L'Enfant Plaza. A year later, Sarakreek Holdings replaced the Pei-designed fountain with a glass pyramid skylight over the center section of La Promenade.

In 2001, Sarakreek Holdings sought to sell its L'Enfant Plaza holdings. The same year, VIB Management Fund sold the South Building to Heyman Properties (a local D.C. real estate investment company) for $55 million. On November 3, 2003, the JBG Companies, a local real estate investment and development firm, purchased L'Enfant Plaza, the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, and the North and South office buildings from Sarakreek Holding for $200 million. Under the terms of various agreements and contracts of sale, the cost of upkeep for L'Enfant Plaza's automobile access ramps, landscaping, maintenance, stairwells, three-level parking garage, and the roadway around the plaza itself (but not L'Enfant Promenade) are divided between Heyman Properties (which pays 18.22 percent of total costs) and JBG Companies (which pays 81.78 percent).

JBG Companies hired architect César Pelli and the architectural firm of Hickok Warner Cole to draft a 10-year, $200–$300 million master site plan that would renovate all three existing buildings, bring improve street-level retail opportunities, and add one or more residential buildings (similar to the "Banneker Village Center" plan proposed by the city). In May 2004, the National Children's Museum proposed building its new museum in the center of L'Enfant Plaza. But when the pace of redevelopment of L'Enfant Plaza slowed, the Children's Museum decided in November 2004 that it would build elsewhere. In February 2005, L'Enfant Plaza was considered as a site for the Smithsonian Institution's new National Museum of African American History and Culture. But in January 2006, the Smithsonian chose a site on an empty block of Madison Drive NW between 14th and 15th Streets NW (west of the National Museum of American History).

Various proposals to redevelop or eliminate Banneker Park in the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s also threatened to radically change the nature of L'Enfant Plaza. By the early 1990s, the park and suffered from lack of maintenance, deterioration of some of its features, and the fountain had stopped running. In 1996, the nonprofit Washington Interdependence Council won permission from the National Park Service (NPS, which managed the park at the time) to raise $3 million in funds to build a life-size statue of Banneker for the park and to make other improvements (such as bas relief sculptures depicting Banneker's achievements on the limestone circle surrounding the overlook). In 1997, the NPS partially restored the park (including restoring signage, getting the fountain running again, and adding a small interpretive exhibit), and D.C. and federal officials sponsored a rededication ceremony there. The following year, Congress approved construction of a Banneker memorial in the park. By 1999, however, the park's renovation had expanded into a $17 million project that included a visitor center, clock, history exhibits along L'Enfant Promenade, and a skyway over I-395 to connect the park to the waterfront. However, the NCPC rejected the placement of a statue in the park, ordering the Washington Interdependence Council to study a statue in the middle of L'Enfant Promenade.

The skyway idea, however, captured the interest of city planners and became part of a plan to build a baseball stadium at the southern end of L'Enfant Plaza. The D.C. City Council approved a plan in March 2002 to redevelop the southwest waterfront which included construction of a tour bus parking garage beneath Banneker Park and stairs down from Banneker Park to Maine Avenue SW. The skyway/stairs concept soon became caught up in other plans for Banneker Park. In 2004, the city proposed razing Banneker Park and building a new baseball stadium on the site. The proposal called for covering over a portion of I-395, and creating a skyway or stairs to link the stadium with the waterfront. The city's proposal also would have implemented the Urban Land Institute's 1998 proposal and created "Banneker Village Center," a project which would redevelop L'Enfant Promenade and line it with retail businesses, high-rise residences, and tourist attractions. But when the stadium threatened to complicate planning for the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, city officials withdrew their support so that the waterfront development could proceed. Even though the Banneker site had drawn the most interest from Major League Baseball, the cost of using the Banneker Park site also cost the proposal support. (The stadium, named Nationals Park, was later constructed in 2007 in Southeast Washington.)

In 2004, the D.C. Preservation League listed Benjamin Banneker Park as one of the most endangered places in the District because of proposals to redevelop the park's area. The League stated that the park, "Designed by renowned landscape architect Daniel Urban Kiley ... is culturally significant as the first public space in Washington named for an African American and is usually included in Black History tours".

In 2006, the District government and the Federal Highway Administration issued an environmental assessment for "improvements" to the promenade and park that described some of these redevelopment proposals. In 2011, a proposal surfaced that would erect a structure housing a "National Museum of the American People" at or near the site of the park.