Team Plans $200M Mixed-Use Project for Former Wax Museum Site

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WASHINGTON, DC-The former home of Washington, DC’s Wax Museum is all set to begin a new life. A team steered by Lowe Enterprises will orchestrate the site’s rebirth with the creation of CityVista, a mixed-use development of 678 residential units and approximately 117,000 sf of retail space.

The development team, selected by property-owner the National Capital Revitalization Corp, includes Bundy Development Corp, the Neighborhood Development Co. and CIM Group. The project will cost $200 million to realize.

CityVista will sit at 5th and K streets in the Mount Vernon Triangle area, about one-third of a mile from the new Washington Convention Center. The residential segment of the development will feature 243 apartments and 435 condominiums contained in three structures, with 20% of all the units reserved as affordable housing. The retail portion will offer a 55,000-sf Safeway grocery store containing a Starbucks, Bergmann’s Dry Cleaning and SunTrust Bank; and there will be an additional 62,000 sf of retail.

CityVista will not have an office element, and that is just fine with the neighbors. “The Request for Proposal we put out included retail space and housing because it was part of the Mt Vernon Triangle plan for the neighborhood’s revitalization,” an NCRC spokesperson tells GlobeSt.com. “A lot of what we put in the RFP was driven by the needs and desires of the community.”

Redevelopment of the former Wax Museum property has been a longtime goal for the city, but the road to realizing that goal has not exactly been smooth. NCRC had originally settled on a Horning Bros.-led development team back in 2001, but negotiations broke down after a year and NCRC ended up reissuing the RFP with the Lowe group winning the assignment in 2004. Work on CityVista is on target to begin this fall, with a staggered completion date beginning in 2007 and wrapping up in 2008.