High-Level Debate On Future of D.C.

Nor are they mollified by suggestions that limits be eliminated only in areas away from downtown, at stops such as the New York Avenue Metro station in Northeast. Or that the regulations be retained in historic areas, such as the corridors along the Mall and along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol, as Leinberger suggests.

To lift the limit in any one neighborhood, they say, would compromise the entire city.

"It is a planned city. The views and vistas and the public spaces -- these are sacred spaces," said Patti Gallagher, executive director of the National Capital Planning Commission. "I would state emphatically that we have the Height Act to thank for preserving the city's character."

Furthermore, Gallagher said, the law has helped push developers into neighborhoods where they might not have gone, such as the Anacostia waterfront and South Capitol Street. "There's ample opportunity to spread out, and that does not mean going up," she said.

Privately, some developers, architects and planners grouse that the law imposes constraints that force builders to erect uniformly boxlike buildings with low ceilings. They also say it prevents the kind of population density necessary to draw higher-quality retail.

Yet they are also reluctant to publicly question the law for fear that they will incur the wrath of powerful planners and preservationists.

City officials have broached the subject, although carefully. In 2003, the administration of then-Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) commissioned a study that concluded that the District could generate an additional $10 billion in tax revenue over 20 years if it raised the height limit to 160 feet.

But Williams's advisers, already pushing an ambitious development agenda that included a new baseball stadium, did not publicize the results. "It's a hot-button issue in the District, and you have to choose your battles," said Eric Price, then the deputy mayor for economic development and now working for builder James Abdo.

Nevertheless, the pace of building in the city could make reconsideration of the limit unavoidable. In an analysis completed last year, the Downtown DC Business Improvement District, a not-for-profit organization that promotes revitalization, estimated that 50 million to 60 million square feet remain available under current zoning regulations in the central portion of the city. The area includes downtown, the West End, Foggy Bottom, the Mount Vernon Triangle, the area north of Union Station, Federal Triangle and the Southeast and Southwest waterfronts.

If development continues at an annual rate of 3 million to 3.5 million square feet, as it has for the past five years, the remaining land would be occupied by 2027, if not sooner, the BID estimates. Although that projection is not universally embraced -- the NCPC is among the dissenters -- Richard Bradley, the BID's executive director, said there is general agreement among planners that the city is facing the prospect of a critical land shortage.

"If you look at that pattern, at some point we run out of space," he said. As that moment approaches, he predicted, attention will turn to the Height Act, and "it will be a very big issue."

The first proponent of regulating building heights in the District was George Washington, who decreed in 1791 that "the wall of no house be higher than forty feet to the roof." Washington also stipulated that no house on the avenues would be shorter than 35 feet to ensure that buildings were grand, according to David Maloney, the District's deputy state historic preservation officer.