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WASHINGTON, DC-This city’s Department of General Services has issued a Request for Proposals to build the first structure in what will be the precursor to an RPP for phase one of the development of St. Elizabeths East campus. The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development is seeking proposals for the design and construction of a Gateway Pavilion that will serve a number of uses, from casual dining to a venue for hosting such events as a farmers’ market or art shows.
The design/builder will be selected through a two-phase procurement process. The first phase is a qualifications-based review that will end with a short list of three to five teams that will participate in a design competition with first phase submissions due June 20, 2012. For the second phase, bidders will prepare a preliminary design concept for the Pavilion and submit the associated cost to complete the project.
Currently the pavilion project does not have a budget, Ethan Warsh, project manager for St. Elizabeths Redevelopment Initiative tells GlobeSt.com. “We have engineers looking at best practices for this type of facility, evaluating the site and so on. By the second phase we will have gathered enough detail to provide the candidates with an appropriate budget.”
Even at this beginning stage, however, the project is clearly important to the District, as it represents the first piece in what will be a very ambitious project: the development of St Elizabeths’ East Campus. “We want this development to become a national model for innovation and mixed use urban living,” says Feras Qumseya, director of St. Elizabeths Redevelopment Initiative. At 350 acres, he says, the campus “is a beautiful gem in the city and very few people in region know about it. Our goal is to get people to understand what a national treasure this is.” The pavilion, Warsh adds, is an important piece of branding that will set the tone for the entire project.
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Erika Morphy
Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.
