Construction Update: Matthews Memorial

The rendering above was one of the images, we were shown concerning the Matthews Memorial Terrace project.  The building in the lower left hand corner is the Community Service Center of Hope, while the building on the right is "The Terrace", both of which will be located at 2632-2634 Martin Luther King Jr Ave SE. 

Recently, I did some digging to determine where the project stood and according to the rendering I obtained from the July 2009 progress set, the Community Service Center of Hope now looks like this:

From that same set, I've included the front elevation of the community center along MLK and the floor plans for terrace level, ground floor, and 1st floor.

The rendering that was released as part of the December 2, 2009 permit set for the Matthews Memorial Terrace project (the apartment component), looks like this:

The rendering above shows the 'side' of the building, with the rear of the Community Services building on your right. See the highlighted elevation marker on the site plan below to orient yourself (approximately), noting that MLK is the diagonal street running on the left hand side of the plan:

The actual elevation from the permit set, is above.  And the front elevation of the building along MLK is below:

As briefly noted above, the project contains two buildings: a residential project, "Matthews Memorial Terrace" and a community services building, named "Community Service Center of Hope".  The residential building occupies 80 feet of frontage along MLK and will be four stories along this front.  There are 5 total levels of units located over a parking structure (52 spaces).  The residential building will include a community room, a meeting room with kitchen facilities, and a terrace level courtyard that functions as a green roof over the parking structure.  In addition to the main lobby along MLK, an additional main entrance will be located on the terrace level.

The residential building will provide 99 units of housing for three different target populations: seniors (62 and older), families qualifying for public housing (those relocated from the nearby Barry Farm public housing community), and other low income qualified families whose incomes are below 60% of the area median income.  Approximately 1/3 of the residential units are programmed for each target population.

It appears that the project was rebid, so that one general contractor would be awarded the contract for both the Terrace (Residential Building) and the Community Center.  It appears that bids were due January 20, 2010.  Groundbreaking was supposed to have occurred February 2010, but I'm going to assume that because of the snow, this has been postponed until March--primarily because I haven't seen any activity....

Stay tuned for more details, as I get them.