The District government is reissuing its request for proposals to redevelop the Reeves Center — what’s been a long-delayed process for one of the city’s most prominent sites — but this time without a requirement for the eventual developers to manage or move the site’s sensitive technology infrastructure.
The Bowser administration on Friday canceled the first and released a new RFP, coupled with equity goals to increase participation of Black and brown developers and partners, to rebuild the more than 2-acre site at 2000 14th St. NW, along the historic U Street corridor. This latest request, open to both current and new bidders, comes nearly two years to the date that the first such RFP was distributed for the Reeves Center redevelopment, and 20 months after two development team finalists responded with proposals.
Since then, the city held community hearings and comment periods and entered into the underwriting process for the two bids before realizing the technology setup for both the Office of the Chief Technology Officer and District Department of Transportation, currently located in the Reeves building, needed to be extricated from the redevelopment process and managed by the agencies themselves, according to officials from the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.
That includes moving copper lines and rebuilding data center functions in another building, identified this past fall to be 60 Florida Ave. NE in D.C.’s Eckington neighborhood, and decommission those systems in the Reeves Center in an endeavor that is slated to cost the city $47 million and underwent two budget cycles to fund, DMPED officials said. Those tech functions include things like the District’s traffic management system through DDOT and critical technology support from OCTO that would cause major disruptions if they were hampered by an active construction site, per city officials.
