Make No Little Plans: Burnham Place Announced in Washington, DC

(View Looking North)

(View Looking South with Capitol Building in Distance)

(Train Shed Looking Southwest)

(Interior View of Train Shed)

(Train Shed as seen from H Street)

Burnham Place was recently announced in Washington DC as the cornerstone of a Master Plan that includes over $7 billion of investment that will include upgrades to Union Station as well as the development of a new urban neighborhood atop the rail yard leading into the existing transportation center.

(View Looking North on First Street)

Plans call for over 1.5 million sf of office space, over 1,300 residential units, 500 plus hotel rooms as well as 100,000 sf of retail.  In total, the project will include over 3 million square-feet of mixed use development on 14 acres and will join together several adjacent areas of DC that had been severed for years by the 20 rail lines that run to and into the station.

(H Street Plaza)

Akridge is the developer for the project and the design team includes AECOM (rail and transit engineers), Thornton Tomasetti(structural engineer), HOK (lead architect for Amtrak’s Master Plan), and Parsons Binckerhoff (lead engineer for Amtrak’s Master Plan). 

(First and K Streets Looking South)

Union Station was designed by Daniel Burnham and opened in 1907.  Burnham is best known for his work in the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), the design of the Flatiron Building in New York (completed 1902), and perhaps lesser known for the Wyandotte Building (completed in 1897) and Union Station (also completed in 1897) in my native Columbus, Ohio. 

(Interior View of Train Shed)

At its peak during World War II, Union Station in Washington DC had over 200,000 people a day passing through the turnstiles.  Today, approximately 100,000 people use the station.  With the addition of Burnham Place and the modernization of Union Station Amtrak is hoping to capitalize on the renewed interest in rail and increase ridership further.  The build out for this project is 20 plus years.

(Union Station (front) in the Context of the Proposed Burnham Place (red)

For other relevant information, see the following:

Here are some relevant articles on the plan:

Amtrak:  Union Station Master Plan

The Business Journals:  Amtrak eyes major upgrades at Union Station

Greater Greater Washington:  Amtrak makes no little plans with Union Station

Here is a video of the project:

Burnham Place from trusso1234 on Vimeo.