DC is hitting restart on its plans for Poplar Point

Absalom “Ab” Jordan Jr., a longtime community leader who lives near Poplar Point. Image: Washington Business Journal.

From Washington Business Journal:

For years, Absalom “Ab” Jordan Jr. peered across the Anacostia River — especially as cranes heralded a waterfront revival in Navy Yard — and wondered when the time would come for his Southeast D.C. neighborhood.

One of the brightest opportunities has been at Poplar Point, a contaminated, federally owned, 110-acre waterfront property near Bethlehem Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, where Jordan volunteers. But for all the hope of its neighbors, and decades of promises and pitches unrealized — from a soccer stadium to a new FBI headquarters — nothing has yet come of the site. That’s even as other gargantuan, long-awaited D.C. sites, from McMillan to The Wharf to St. Elizabeths East to Reservation 13 to Walter Reed, are either well underway or completed.

It is one of D.C.’s few remaining big developable blank slates, and once again, the District government hopes to effect progress. On July 25, D.C. closed the window for companies to submit their offers to represent the city and guide it through the project’s initial development, a key step in a yearslong bid to see Poplar Point rebuilt as a riverfront destination on par with billion-dollar bets like The Wharf in Southwest and The Yards in Southeast. That company will provide “real estate advisory services, land-use planning, and construction and development management services to support the planning, design and redevelopment of Poplar Point,” per the request for proposals.