Buchanan Partners and Pinkard Group have filed an application with the Zoning Commission via MIRV Holdings LLC to rezone a surface parking lot in Brookland, Bisnow reported. The area at Michigan Avenue NE and Irving Street NE is 5.5 acres and could become the home of a mixed-use project, which would be designed by Perkins Eastman, who served as lead architect on The Wharf. 

If they are able, the team plans to break ground on phase one within 12 to 14 months. The first phase is a 260-room hotel dual-branded by Residence Inn and Courtyard Marriott. The hotel would take up 25 percent of the site and will include somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 square feet of meeting space and a a restaurant, Bisnow said.

Phase two would include a residential building with ground-floor retail, Bisnow reported. Phase three and four could vary as either residential, hotel, or office space given the market conditions at the time.

The development team has met on many occasions with D.C. officials, Bisnow explained, and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development has expressed its support in the form of a letter.

Bisnow noted that rather than going through a Planned Unit Development (PUD) process, the team chose to file as a Mixed-Use (MU-5) plan. This will help alleviate potential appeals that come with PUDs, and would allow for more flexibility in the future.

Kingsley McAdam, a principal at Buchanan Partners, explained the Bisnow that the project will help serve the nearby medical centers and universities. 

“Our goal is to craft a 24-hour development with a hotel, retail services, and amenities for the medical users and the universities, and we think residential is a compatible use to all those activities," McAdam said to Bisnow.