Logan Circle Condominium Offered $500,000 for Air Rights, Some Want More

The owners' association of the Zenith Condominium (1439 1437 Rhode Island Avenue NW) has been offered $500,000 by an abutting developer for the right to build seven stories of condominiums over the Zenith's driveway. According to one person familiar with the offer: "Several owners are very unhappy with the proposed deal."

Worth half a million?

They feel the condo association should hold out for more money.

The owners' association has hired its own evaluator. The evaluator is scheduled to return an opinion in the next week.

The counter-party in the agreement are representatives of Madison Investments, who is planning to build an eight-story residential condominium at 1427-1429 Rhode Island Avenue, directly to the east of the Zenith Condominium. They hope to get the deal done before September 15.

According to a document circulated at an August 7 meeting of Zenith Condominium unit owners, in exchange for the $500,000 dollars, the Zenith condo owners will agree to sell 1,151 square feet of driveway area on the east side of the Zenith property and "grant... a seven-foot wide 'light and air' easement along the entire east property boundary".

In return, the developers of the new condo will "grant Zenith Association a perpetual, exclusive easement for the use of a gated, covered street-level vehicular accessway".

Over the accessway will be seven stories of residential space. The space above the accessway on each floor will be part of a two-bedroom apartment that will extend into the lot that the developers already own, according to drawings by the developers.

See the drawings (particularly, page 7 of 13), which were submitted to Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 2F/Logan Circle in March, here.

The historical preservation aspects of the project were approved by ANC2F at its meeting of April 10.

The blog District Source published articles about the progress of this development on March 29, April 14, and April 30.