The Battle for McMillan

At the edge of Washington, D.C.’s Northwest quadrant sits a curiosity: a vast stretch of flat open land, six city blocks long, with a series of huge cylindrical cement structures resembling silos jutting into the sky.

This is the site of the former McMillan Reservoir Sand Filtration Plant. It has been inactive, vacant, and closed to the public for nearly 25 years. It's a unique site with a fascinating history, and the plan that's in place to develop it into a mixed-use complex has become one of the most contentious projects in the city.

The McMillan Sand Filtration site sits on the borders of Bloomingdale and Stronghold, residential neighborhoods full of early 20th century rowhouses. It’s about 2.5 miles north of the U.S. Capitol Building and the White House.

At 25 acres, it is one of the largest undeveloped parcels of land in the District.

Although the site itself was industrial in nature, a promenade designed by Frederick Law Olmsted wrapped around its perimeter. It was used by neighborhood residents for recreation and relaxation beginning in the early 20th century. However, during World War II the entire site, including the walkway around the perimeter, was completely fenced off to protect the city's water supply from potential tampering. The land has been inaccessible to the general public ever since.

By the 1980s, new water purification processes came into wide use, and McMillan's slow sand filtration method had become obsolete. In 1986, the Corps of Engineers decommissioned the plant and declared the land surplus.

In 1987, the District of Columbia government purchased McMillan's land from the Army Corps of Engineers for $9.3 million with the intention of developing it for public use.

But the land sits vacant and closed to the public to this day. The reasons are complicated.

In 1991, the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board designated McMillan a Historic Landmark and nominated the site for the National Register of Historic Places. 

The catacombs beneath the surface of the site are constructed of unreinforced concrete and cannot support construction above them. Community members who wish to preserve the catacombs argue that this can only be accomplished by leaving the majority of the site as open green space.

However, the site holds great potential for development and increased revenue for the city. It’s in a prime location, bordered by North Capitol Street (classified by the District Department of Transportation as a "principal arterial" roadway) and Michigan Avenue (classified as a "minor arterial"). The Washington Hospital Center, the Washington DC VA Medical Center, and Children’s Hospital sit across Michigan Avenue from the site and the main campuses of Catholic University and Howard University are less than a mille away. In addition to serving the employees of these institutions, developing McMilllan would serve nearby residents who currently have access to few easily walkable amenities.

Since closing, the site hasn’t gone entirely unused. Beginning in 2012, DC Water, the city's water utility agency, appropriated the underground caverns as a means of water overflow storage.

DC Water's McMillan Stormwater Storage Project helped to alleviate flooding that plagued the Bloomingdale neighborhood south of the site.

The Vision McMillan Partners group, comprised of the private companies EYA, Trammel Crow, and Jair Lynch, won a competitive bidding process and has been charged with designing and building a mixed-use development on the site. Vision McMillan's plan includes 146 townhouses, more than 500 apartments, retail, a major grocery store, a community center with a pool and other recreational facilities, a park, and new roads. The design integrates the above-ground silos and other structures designated as historic for adaptive reuse. Some of the underground cells will also be preserved; since they are structurally unable to support the weight of new buildings, the development will create green space above them.

The DC Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development estimated the project would bring 3,000 construction jobs, 3,200 permanent jobs, and more than $1.2 billion in tax revenue to the city.

In 2016, Vision McMillan solicited a general contractor and announced plans to have the first new buildings completed by 2018. But community members opposed to the development have been delaying the process ever since through a series of appeals filed to the D.C. Court of Appeals.

The most common reasons voiced by community members opposed to developing the site are that the current plan doesn't have enough green space, that the development will negatively impact traffic, and that the density will alter the character of the existing neighborhoods surrounding McMillan. But delaying the site's inevitable redevelopment comes at a cost as well. Residents west of the site enjoy easy access to necessities like grocery stores and amenities like parks. The area surrounding McMillan is comparably a food desert with no proper grocery stores and little public space.

DC is one of the most expensive housing markets in the country. Vision McMillan states that 20% of the development's housing units will be affordable to households earning between 50% and 80% of the area median income.

According to The Coalition for Smarter Growth, the project is consistent with DC's Comprehensive Plan and Future Land Use Map, and transportation management plans have been revised to respond to concerns raised by community members and city officials. A transportation impact study conducted by the planning and engineering firm Gorove/Slade concluded that "the Planned Unit Development will have no detrimental impact to the surrounding transportation network as long as the report's recommendations and mitigation measures are incorporated into the PUD" (Gorove/Slade 2014).

Merging old and new, the plan envisions mixed uses with density gradation from low to high, plus numerous landscaped spaces and passageways wisely deployed across the sustainably developed site. In fact, almost two-thirds of the site will be parks, rain gardens, circulation spaces and service courtyards open to the sky. Thus, making the entire 25-acre site a public park is not only unnecessary, it would sacrifice the many benefits of fruitfully combining new workplace, dwelling and recreational opportunities with preservable pieces of history. - Roger K. Lewis, The Washington Post, August 1, 2014

In 2020, the DC Court of Appeals issued an injunction that indefinitely barred Vision McMillan from beginning demolition work. The Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development has said that the city loses $6,500 each day the project is stalled, yet community members opposed to the development continue to file appeals.

The site is still vacant and closed to the public, almost a quarter century after the District acquired it.

DC residents can keep track of McMillan's status through  ANC5E  and the  McMillan Advisory Group .