Robinson Terminal North, a major piece of waterfront development in Old Town, could heat to City Council review by the end of this year or early next year.
Robinson Terminal North is the last of the large industrial sites in the city’s Waterfront Plan and one of the final pieces of a long-held aim of the city to have a fully walkable waterfront.
The project itself is an extensive mixed-use project straddling the northern tip of N. Union Street. The Robinson Terminal North development includes multifamily residential, ground-floor retail and a restaurant.
At a community meeting last week, applicant attorney Ken Wire said the Robinson Terminal North development is currently “transitioning out of concept review” after a series of community meetings. Wire said the “hope is to submit a special use permit application this summer.”
The project is scheduled to go to the Board of Architectural Review on July 16 and will proceed through other city agencies and commissions in late July running through October.
A timeline for the development approval process said the goal is to get the project to public hearings in December of this year or January 2025.
Wire said there’s still a lot of work left to be done on the application process. The first of two development special use permits (DSUP) for the project will be submitted this summer.
“Concept plan 1 is five sheets of paper,” Wire said. “Concept plan 2 is 20. A DSUP is 100.”
Many of the public questions about the project have focused on the environmental remediation work at the former industrial site and the impact that could have on surrounding homes and the nearby Potomac River. The developer fielded some questions about the environmental impact at the community meeting but Wire also said that, during the fall/early winter, the developer will “move on from vague answers on contamination to specific ones.”
