Hickok Cole Architects

At a community meeting held last night at the Two Rivers Public Charter School in NoMa, the Wilkes Company introduced its plan for the redevelopment of 300 M Street, Northeast. If all goes well for Wilkes, the parking lot currently occupying that address will become a nine-story, mixed-use building with four retail bays, 401 residential units, and 175 underground parking spaces.

The raw numbers alone suggest a thoughtful effort on the DC-based developer’s part. A majority of the residential units (roughly 67 percent) will be one-bedrooms, presumably catering to the area’s influx of youngish people, and all but 16 of the parking spaces will be reserved for tenants, mitigating the impact of those youngish people on the area’s already difficult parking situation. Traffic flow studies have been conducted, and, as a result, the building’s loading dock and garage entrance will be located on N Street, as near to the Florida Avenue thoroughfare (and as far from area residents) as possible.

In form and facade, the project’s design evinces the same neighborliness as the numbers. Presented at the meeting by Sophia Lau of Hickok Cole Architects (one of the Wilkes Company’s partners in the venture), it features a stepped elevation meant to integrate the site’s “city facing” view across 3rd Street with the residences across M. The retail will be relegated to 3rd, while walk-up loft units, decreasing in height along M, will mimic the row houses they neighbor.

Berk Shervin, president and COO of Wilkes, fielded questions from NoMa residents about the nature of the proposed retail, the route construction vehicles will take, and the state of the soil and ground water at the site, which was formerly home to two gas stations. His answers: locally owned, TBD, and officially within acceptable toxicity levels. He added that AAMCO is and will be responsible for the soil under one of the old stations.

The project, which is at least one year from breaking ground and at least three from completion, will be discussed further at a Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6C meeting in January.