Beside the Diamond, a Lump of Coal

Developer Says Homely Site Can Be a Graceful Gateway to the Ballpark Area

In many ways, it should be the jewel in the crown, the perfect piece of land in the Southeast neighborhood that is being transformed by Washington's new ballpark.

The six-acre parcel that sits just south of Nationals Park is at the gateway to the city, stretching along the Anacostia River just off the Frederick Douglass Bridge.

These days, it may be just about the ugliest place you've ever seen.

The concrete plant that occupies the land is a thriving but not exactly attractive business that supplies many construction sites in the region. Dump trucks roll in and out, front-end loaders scoop up rock, and a dingy four-story tower churning out cement looms over it all. As if that weren't grungy enough, the land is littered with large chunks of concrete and pocked by blue-green pools of water.

Plans to open the riverfront to visitors and less obtrusive businesses have been in the works for nearly a decade. With Nationals Park open, it might finally happen. The company that owns the site -- Florida Rock Properties -- has proposed developing a four-building complex with a riverfront esplanade, stores, outdoor cafes, a hotel, offices and residences. All of it would overlook the Anacostia on one side and the new ballpark on the other.

"It's the last piece of the puzzle," said Claire Schaefer, marketing director for the Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District, which is promoting development around the ballpark. "It's really the entrance point for all the great things along the river."

For now it's more like the missing link -- a Neanderthal presence that Nationals executives try to ignore.

The family of developer Theodore Lerner, which owns the team, is a stickler for details in and outside the stadium -- from shades of paint to flower planting -- and grimace that the gritty industrial site sits at the end of the grand staircase that leads out of the ballpark toward the river. The Nationals even paid to put red scrim on the chain-link fence at the Florida Rock property to dress it up as best they could.

"It's a shame it's still there," Mark Lerner said as he led a ballpark tour just before last month's Opening Day. "But we'll just have to deal with it until it's gone."

Next month might bring a better idea of when that will happen.

The D.C. Zoning Commission is scheduled to vote May 22 on Florida Rock's proposal, which received preliminary approval in March. Even if all goes well for the developers in that vote, they said it will be two years before ground is broken for the new complex. Construction might not be completed until 2015, although the cement plant would be gone and the land spruced up well before then.

This season, there is little to draw fans from the ballpark to the riverfront, even though tying it all together was one of the main goals behind then-Mayor Anthony A. Williams's (D) decision to place the stadium in Southeast. The city agreed to spend more than $600 million on the ballpark project, and neighborhood development is supposed to be part of the payoff.