DC Mayor’s ‘Comeback’ Plan Includes 7M SF of Residential Development

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday unveiled D.C.’s Comeback Plan, a device for setting the District’s financial improvement targets for the following 5 years that features including tens of millions of sq. toes of housing. 

The targets of the plan focus on boosting incomes, job alternatives, and housing and retail choices.

“It is a comeback that’s centered on fairness,” Bowser stated at a press convention. “That is about ensuring we now have the revenues to help our world-class metropolis providers, our strong community of social applications, and the sources — like our colleges and rec facilities — that hold folks in D.C.”

The Comeback Plan options six targets that Bowser hopes to satisfy by 2028, together with creating 35,000 new jobs in high-growth goal sectors, which may very well be performed by rising apprenticeship applications and filling gaps in coaching and credentialing. The plan additionally requires rising the share of minority-owned employer companies to 33 p.c of all companies, and rising entry to alternative for residents by eliminating key amenity gaps corresponding to meals, housing and web throughout all neighborhoods.

Moreover, Bowser’s targets embody including 15,000 residents to the Downtown inhabitants by including 7 million sq. toes of residential items, the place town will collaborate with builders; retaining present residents to achieve a inhabitants of 725,000; and rising financial prosperity in D.C. by lifting the median family earnings of Black residents by $25,000. 

“Folks keep in and are available to Washington, D.C., as a result of they wish to change the world, as a result of they acknowledge D.C. as a spot the place you’ll be able to deliver massive concepts to life,” Bowser stated. “Our comeback is about unlocking the total potential of our folks, our neighborhoods and our companies.” 

Attaining these targets, she famous, would require constructing higher education-to-workforce pathways, bringing facilities and belongings to all eight wards, and attracting new companies.

One new device the District is utilizing to draw companies is the Vitality Fund, a multiyear, performance-based incentive program designed to help current corporations in goal industries actively planning to relocate, develop or retain their bodily location in D.C.

Keith Loria might be reached at Kloria@commercialobserver.com.