A New Vision for Washington’s Forgotten 230 Acres
By • August 10, 2026 0 723
In the summer of 1975, I graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and came to Washington for the first time through the Wharton in Washington program.
My roommate and I found a crowded rowhouse at 35th and N Streets in Georgetown. Four women and two men already lived there, and we happily became numbers seven and eight. Like thousands of students since, we discovered Georgetown before we discovered Washington.
Each morning, I boarded an M Street bus to go to my job at the Department of the Army in the Forrestal Building. The ride itself became an introduction to the nation’s capital. We traveled through Foggy Bottom, past the White House, the Washington Monument and the monumental core, then down Independence Avenue before arriving at 10th Street.
Looking back, it was as much a daily sightseeing tour as it was a commute.
Then I would walk into the Forrestal Building. Even as a 21-year-old, I remember thinking how imposing and joyless it felt. It was enormous, built in the stark Brutalist style that was fashionable at the time but has aged poorly. Inside, it was simply a government office building: gray walls, institutional hallways, fluorescent lighting and endless corridors.
Nothing suggested you were in one of the world’s great capital cities.
Fifty years later, little has changed, except that many of the surrounding buildings are now half-empty. That is why I believe the 230 acres of federal property south of Independence Avenue represent the greatest redevelopment opportunity in Washington.
Think about the scale. The RFK campus is roughly 180 acres. This area is even larger.
Imagine replacing today’s isolated federal office complexes with a genuine city neighborhood on the scale of Georgetown or Capitol Hill. Not three separate developments. One great neighborhood.
It would include housing, offices, neighborhood retail, restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies, parks, theaters, galleries and public squares — all woven together instead of separated into isolated districts. Residents would live, work and spend their evenings there. That is always healthier for a city than relying on commuters who disappear every afternoon.
Ironically, this would not be a new idea. Before urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s, much of Southwest Washington functioned as a real neighborhood. While those communities had serious housing challenges, they also possessed the mixed-use urban fabric that cities now spend billions trying to recreate.
Most important, this redevelopment would reconnect the National Mall to Banneker Overlook and The Wharf. Instead of the Forrestal Building acting as a concrete wall, 10th Street could become one of America’s great urban boulevards. The Wharf itself was planned in my Council office, and watching that vision become reality convinced me that bold planning, backed by persistence, can transform an overlooked part of Washington into one of its greatest destinations.
The federal government should lead this effort through a modern version of the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation, the organization championed by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan that reshaped Pennsylvania Avenue. Washington cannot finance a project of this magnitude alone, but together the federal government and the District can. It will take decades. The best projects always do.
Fifty years ago, I rode a bus from Georgetown to an aging government building. My hope is that 50 years from now, another young graduate will make that same trip —not to a concrete fortress, but to one of the finest urban neighborhoods in America.
Jack Evans represented Ward 2 on the Council of the District of Columbia for 30 years and served as chairman of the Committee on Finance and Revenue for 20 years.
