The District’s highest court Wednesday ruled that the developers of the McMillan Sand Filtration site in Northeast can proceed with a large-scale project that for years has been mired in legal challenges.
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The D.C. Court of Appeals decision is a victory for the project’s proponents, including Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who has been seeking to redevelop the 25-acre property since she took office in 2015.
Opponents had challenged the validity of demolition permits the city had issued, arguing that officials had not sufficiently scrutinized the development team’s financial capacity to complete the project.
But the court ruled that the challenge was rendered moot by recent D.C. Council legislation mandating that the McMillan project “shall proceed expeditiously and without further delay through all phases.”
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“Effectively, the Council has directed that, whether or not the specified permits were properly issued under the law as it then existed, these permits are lawful by the Council’s decree,” the court wrote in its four-page ruling.
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Andrea Ferster, an attorney representing Friends of McMillan Park, which challenged the permits, said the group would continue its quest to protect the property, a landmark built in the early 1900s that includes 22 catacombs beneath acres of grass and 20 concrete silos.
“It is important to point out that the Friends of McMillan Park has never opposed all development on the site and supports reasonable moderate-density development on the site,” Ferster wrote in an email. “However, the massive development proposed here, including the million square feet of speculative office space, for which they still have no potential occupants, will unnecessarily destroy the site’s most important features — the open space surrounding the historic sand towers and the expansive views afforded by that open space.”
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At the intersection of Michigan Avenue and North Capitol Street NW, the McMillan property is among D.C.’s largest tracts of undeveloped land, one that city leaders have been seeking to develop for decades.
In 2014, the development team — Jair Lynch, Trammell Crow and EYA — won zoning commission approval for a $720 million plan that would include more than 600 residential units, offices, retail, a supermarket, an eight-acre park and a 17,000-square-foot community center with an indoor pool.
The project’s opponents have long argued that the development would overwhelm the neighborhood with additional traffic, create environmental hazards, and drive up home prices in the area.
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At points, the opponents have filed legal challenges, one of which was successful when the appeals court required that the city review the plan a second time to ensure that officials had sufficiently considered whether the development would contribute to displacement in the neighborhood.
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After the developers cleared that hurdle, the opponents challenged the validity of city-issued demolition permits, arguing that the Bowser administration had not adequately studied the developer's finances to ensure that it can complete the project, as required for landmarked properties.
Bowser’s team, seeking to push the project forward, enlisted the council, which over the summer passed the legislation mandating that demolition on the site proceed.
In recent days, several of the project’s opponents have tried to halt demolition on the site by chaining themselves to bulldozers.
Another protest is planned for Saturday.
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