How can plans and zoning regulations shape vibrant, mixed-use, walkable communities? On April 23, 2025 we hosted a discussion with Code Studio, one of the national leaders on using innovative form-based approaches to zoning to guide change and protect what’s best about our neighborhoods.
Speakers: Colin Scarff and Rene Biberstein, Code Studio; Moderated by Ellen McCarthy, Ward3Vision
This event is part of our informational series as the District kicks off DC 2050 — the Comprehensive Plan rewrite in spring of 2025.
Here are some key Downtown DC revitalization documents for you to review. The latest edition of the State of Downtown Report, by DowntownDC Business Improvement District (BID), will be available April 22, 2025.
DC’s downtown is vital to the success of the entire city and region. We’ll stay engaged and partner with DowntownDC BID, Golden Triangle BID, DC government, and the community to catalyze downtown’s transformation into a great place to be – to live, work, shop and visit.
Please accept these comments on behalf of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. CSG advocates for walkable, bikeable, inclusive, transit-oriented communities as the most sustainable and equitable way for the DC region to grow and provide opportunities for all.
We wish to comment on the performance of DC Office of Planning and DC Office of Zoning over the past year. The efforts of these are helping to bring much needed dedicated affordable housing to sought-after locations, and to help make housing in general more available. We commend the Office of Planning, Office of Zoning and the Zoning Commission for their commitment to public engagement, and careful, deliberative process.
Chevy Chase Comp Plan amendments and Small Area Plan implementation
We have engaged in key planning and zoning efforts, including a focus on Ward 3 and the Chevy Chase Small Area Plan, and rezoning process to implement important recommendations and policies from the Small Area Plan (ZC 23-24).
The zoning changes to the Chevy Chase area are modest, but important for opening up this exclusive neighborhood to low income residents, African American families, and other people of color who are greatly underrepresented in the Chevy Chase neighborhood. Discrimination has excluded people of color, both historically and systemically.
The rezoning changes will help to expand housing capacity and diversify Chevy Chase main street, and utilize the public land of the library site. This public site will benefit the community and the city by creating modern public facilities and dedicated affordable homes. Dedicated affordable homes in this neighborhood and Ward 3 are an extreme rarity. Figure 1 (below) illustrates this: at 12% of DC’s affordable housing goal for Ward 3/Rock Creek West we are hardly where we should be. The Chevy Case rezoning, the library mixed use redevelopment and the future rezoning of Wisconsin Avenue, and Connecticut Avenue should accelerate this part of town’s move towards a more inclusive community.
U Street Police & Fire Stations rezoning to implement Comp Plan
We have also engaged in the extensive Zoning Commission review process for the U Street Police Station (ZC 23-02 & ZC 23-25) to align the zoning of this site with the Comprehensive Plan amendments of 2021. This process took dozens of hours of public hearings. The resulting rezoning and future public land disposition offers the chance to build more than 100 dedicated affordable homes, along with market rate apartments, and new police and fire facilities in the highly sought-after U Street neighborhood. U Street has experienced a major decline in low income and African American residents, so this public land redevelopment contributes to reversing this trend.
Looking ahead
This coming year, we look forward to engaging in the follow up zoning changes from the Wisconsin Avenue Development Framework, Connecticut Avenue Development Guidelines, and launching of the Rhode Island Ave. corridor planning study. But the biggest planning activity is the Comp Plan rewrite. We are hopeful that this rewrite will take on the need to make it easier and less costly to build more housing in high demand locations, and fully utilize form based zoning as a critical tool to ensure great public spaces, and buildings scaled for people, and walkable neighborhoods. We ask the administration and Council to provide the resources needed to set up a successful process to address our housing and equitable development goals.
We urge the Zoning Commission not to further shrink the housing capacity of the site, and to accommodate its other essential uses – a new police station and fire station. This is an important public land site for needed affordable housing. The proposed text amendment is a reasonable approach to making the most of the opportunity for new housing, supporting new public facilities, while also being respectful of the desires of nearby neighbors.
How can we build more homes while ensuring neighborhood-friendly buildings and great public spaces? Emerging approaches to zoning offer simpler rules for creating great places, while reducing delay, uncertainty, and the cost of new housing.
We ask the DC Council to support the Emergency Rental Assistance Reform Amendment Act (B25-994) to avert a crisis driven by unprecedented levels of unpaid rent. The bill would ensure that DC law establishes the right incentives to bring tenants and housing providers together to save and stabilize at-risk housing to serve low income DC residents.
Thanks to advocates like you, the DC Zoning Commission made the right decision on July 11 and approved rezoning proposals to add substantially more housing capacity in two sought-after locations in DC: U Street police and fire stations site, and the Chevy Chase civic core and Connecticut Avenue main street below the circle.
