5600 Second St. NE, site of proposed storage facility
Johnson Development wants to build a self-storage facility at 5600 Second Street NE (across the street from Fort Totten Square). Because the project is over 50,000 square feet, it has to undergo large tract review. DC’s Office of Planning asks for comments from ANC 4B by September 19, 2016. ANC 4B’s Design Review Committee is meeting at 6:30pm on September 19 at Shepherd Park Library to review the application.
The developer wants to tear down the building that housed the former print shop and build a four-story self-storage facility. The property is located in an industrial zone (renamed Production-Distribution-Repair zone in the zoning update). Renderings show a facade that is broken up with different materials, a mix of brick and siding, playing off the facade of Fort Totten Square and designed to look more like a residential building. As far as storage facilities go, the rendering is not terrible. The building will have either a green roof and there will be graded streetscape in front. (Maybe we are being nostalgic, but we kind of like the old buildings that are there now. So many cities are repurposing their old industrial buildings in cool ways. But we digress.)
Rendering of proposed storage facility
The application notes that the Comprehensive Plan General Policy Map (GPM) designates the property as a “Land Use Change Area” to encourage adaptive reuse to become a mixed-use community. The developer says self-storage is not inconsistent with this general policy map because it is changing what was an industrial use to a more community-oriented use in that as density increases, demand for storage space will increase. And the developer believes this use fits with the interim green enterprise use contemplated by the plan. Whether these conclusions are reasonable is up for debate, but a self-storage facility is permitted under the current designation.
The developer also notes the Future Land Use Map (or FLUM), adopted as part of the Comp Plan, designates the property as a mixed-use space (moderate density residential and commercial), but of course the FLUM is not a zoning map. And the developer says self-storage is similar to a retail or service use and in fact may have less impact than similarly-sized commercial or retail uses (paraphrasing). Readers might recall, the FLUM became an issue in the 901 Monroe Street NE case in Brookland where the DC Court of Appeals relied in part on the FLUM to reject the developers’ attempt to change the zoning designation for that property (paraphasing greatly). See this Washington Business Journal article for more on that case.
There is lots more in the application about urban design, controlling storm runoff, traffic flow, etc. Note that the developer says it does not have to do a traffic impact analysis because it does not estimate more than 25 trips/peak hour, which it says is DDOT’s threshold for having to do a traffic analysis. (The developer estimates 23 trips/peak hour during evening rush). We already know that intersection is kind of a mess, with drivers trying to exit Walmart’s parking lot and drivers making illegal U-turns in the middle of the street, so at the very least, that needs to be addressed by DDOT. Loading will take place in the interior of the site. With a likely 14-foot clearance, the building will not be designed to handle really large truck deliveries (no 18-wheelers here).
2nd – 3rd Street NE intersection
We are sort of agnostic about a self-storage facility. On the one hand, the small area plan designates this property as a development opportunity site (as acknowledged by the developer in its application) and that is reflected in the general policy map and FLUM. On the other hand, some people complain about more density in the neighborhood, so this is one less building that will be developed with potentially hundreds of more residents and commercial uses, creating more traffic. Once this facility is built, it will not be going anywhere for a long time. And as far as industrial uses go, it is not a super obnoxious use and will be useful to residents. So there are tradeoffs. Plenty would welcome more residents/mixed use spaces; others do not want more density. We would say we will have to decide what kind of density we want as a community, but residents already decided that with the small area plan. And the plan contemplates four corners of development around the South Dakota Avenue/Riggs Road intersection. But that is a different post for a different day.
Next Stop...Riggs Park 
I’m curious abou how many storage facilities are needed in our area. One just opened in Brookland, and there’s the huge one in Mt. Ranier. Is this really a good neighborly use of space?
This is an industrial zone. Self-storage is lame and boring, but not every industrial space can be a fun brewery. This space isn’t in a highly visible location. If we want something more interesting (like the land use plan suggests we do), maybe we need to be pushing to have this area rezoned?