All Blog Entries by Mark Washburn

Graphic: SmartAsset

There’s yet another reason to choose Alexandria when it comes to a great location to live, work and play. The city just received the honor of being named one of “The Safest Cities in America” for 2018.

Alexandria took the number two spot in a ranking by SmartAsset, a personal finance website. To come up with the latest ranking, analysts looked at seven different factors, including things like property and violent crime rates, air quality, traffic deaths, the percentage of workers who commute alone and the percentage of area residents who overdose on drugs or drink excessively.

In particular, SmartAsset gave Alexandria high marks for road safety, with one of the lowest rates for traffic deaths in the country. Alexandria

Sales begin soon for a brand new condo development coming to the Capitol Riverfront. The new eNvy residences mark the first condos in the Capitol Riverfront to offer direct views overlooking Nationals Park. This allows future buyers to choose a home with a private view of the park, or to simply come together on the property’s roof terrace for fantastic game views from the comfort of home.

Certain condos in eNvy are also slated to offer views of the nearby Anacostia River and offer views of Audi Field, the brand new home of DC United. The growing neighborhood is already home to a number of restaurants and shops, as well as a boathouse with canoe and kayak rentals.

In addition, the exciting neighborhood offers hotels, area parks for fun and

If you’re looking for DC housing in the New Year, you need to understand what you’re buying. While some people may use the terms condo and co-op interchangeably, they’re not the same. While many co-ops started in DC in the 1920s, the first DC area co-op started in the late 1800s, well before condos arrived in the city. These days more than 100 co-ops exist in DC.

With a condo, you take on a private unit within a multi-unit property, where ownership extends to common use of certain areas. Co-op owners, meanwhile, don’t actually own their own private residential units, but rather hold a share or interest in the entire building.

Residents collectively own and manage co-ops, but a nonprofit corporation holds the property title. As for the selling

For new condos in Brookland, consider taking a look at The Brooklander. This exclusive new condo building houses less than a dozen condos, and is part of a conversion project by Lock 7 Development.

Developers started with two existing retail buildings, constructing the pop-up condo project along 12th Street NE in the Brookland neighborhood. Now an 11-unit residential building, the new building offers a mix of different floor plans for new buyers to choose from.

This includes a trio of one-bedroom, one-bath units and a single one-bedroom, one-bath with a den. In addition, the property offers four two-bedroom/two bath units. The final three remaining units within The Brooklander all include three-bedrooms and at least two-baths.

The new condos

Graphic: Capitol Trails Coalition

A “Bike Beltway” could someday become reality for the DC area. Transportation planners are currently working on a visionary plan to construct not only a large biking loop but also a regional bike trail network that connects up with the surrounding suburbs.

The 60-mile loop alone encircles the entire region, taking cyclists through Maryland, Virginia and DC. The plan involves using interconnected trails running from the Arlington County-DC border down to Alexandria, and then continuing on into the Maryland suburbs. While some trails already exist, the plan involves filling in the gaps, and upgrading sections of some of the existing trails along the way.

Its part of a much larger plan, however, aimed at

Graphic: OLA and Olin Studios

DC has some big plans for its visionary new 11th Street Bridge Park. Modeled after such locations as New York’s High Line, the park will eventually transform an old Anacostia River crossing into DC’s first elevated public park.

Scheduled to open in 2023, the park plans to link up the Capitol Riverfront with Anacostia, together sharing in cultural space and green space, high above the river. While bringing in such features as an amphitheater and an environmental center, the park aims to cover about three-acres with plazas, performances and public art.

The grand plan, however, involves much more than just an eventual park constructed in the area. Supporters hope that it will also someday serve as more of a way to

Lamont Plaza - Mount Pleasant

When it comes to available property in DC, it may take some thinking outside the box, or perhaps outside the triangle. The District has a good supply of peculiar-shaped lots out there, and developers are starting to take notice.

It’s all due to development that began hundreds of years ago. Way back in the late 1700s and early 1800s, DC had a northern boundary, but it didn’t hold development back. When new development began to spread outside the original city limits, the city’s street grid followed. That contributed to the problem.

Numbered streets ran north/south and named streets ran east/west in the city. State-named avenues, meanwhile, ran at a diagonal. Every once and awhile, though, the city street grid ran

There’s now more proof that DC’s population is on the rise. The area just surpassed a major milestone, one it hasn’t seen in decades.

As of July 2018, DC’s population stood at more than 702,000 people. That’s a number the District hasn’t seen since the mid 1970s. While the early to mid 1940s counted a record 900,000 residents, the population of the area was on the decline for years.

In fact, it wasn’t until the 2000s that DC started turning those numbers around. Area leaders credit recent investment made in the District. They say it’s only proven that DC is a great place for families, for businesses, and simply a great overall place for anyone to live.

While decades ago immigrants only made up a small percentage of the local population, they

Graphic: ZGF Architects/Georgetown BID

Supporters of bringing a gondola to the DC area are once again bringing up the plan, hoping to someday make it reality. Some area business leaders and those with political ties believe its still a good idea, years after the plan first came to public light.

Initiated five years ago as part of its 15-year strategic plan, the Georgetown Business Improvement District proposed the gondola to connect Georgetown to Rosslyn. Georgetown doesn’t have a Metro, and proponents believe a gondola could not only be built faster, but with a much smaller price tag than other transportation solutions.

Just two years ago, a study took a closer look at the plan, maintaining the gondola was a feasible proposal. Stretching across

1903 Trinidad Map

It’s now one of Washington’s DC’s hottest areas to live, filled with well maintained Victorians and Craftsman-style row homes. The vibrant Trinidad neighborhood includes some homes that have been recently renovated, with others currently in the middle of new updates.

That wasn’t the case just a few years ago, though. The neighborhood of Trinidad that we know today was at the time in need of updates. Generations old, many of the historic homes of the area desperately needed a facelift, as did the rest of the neighborhood.

Originally named Trinidad by a former landowner who spent time on the Caribbean island, the area we now know as the Trinidad neighborhood started as a country estate. Later deeded to a university, the