Construction on New Monroe Street Market Building ‘The Everton’ Almost Complete -

By Katie Ward

As students finish their semester scattered across the country, construction on the newest Monroe Street Market building has continued to be able to welcome them back to D.C. in the fall.

The newest building, located on the southeast corner of Seventh and Monroe Streets, will be called The Everton and will complete the final phase of the Monroe Street Market development.

The building will include a courtyard with a fountain and sunning pool, grills and fire pit; an outdoor dog run and dog spa; and a rooftop deck with a view of the campus and Basilica, according to Bill Dvorak, the vice president of Pritzker Realty Group, the company leading development.

Courtesy of Monroe Street Market

The Everton will have 158 units ranging from studios to two-bedroom-and-den apartments, and will be “an advancement in design and efficiency, offering a variety of floor plans designed with students and roommates in mind,” said Dvorak. The building’s site advertises that it will bring “a new level of sophistication and intrigue to Monroe Street Market.”

“The first three buildings at Monroe Street Market (Cornerstone, Brookland Works and Portland Flats) have proven to be a great option for students seeking off-campus housing but with close proximity to campus and access to a complementary mix of local and national retailers,” Dvorak said.

Courtesy of Monroe Street Market

According to a December 2018 Biznow article by Jon Banister, “the first four multifamily buildings of Monroe Street Market opened in 2013 with 562 apartments and 57K square feet of retail, plus 45 townhouses.”

Pritzker and H&R Retail, both in charge of leasing the retail space, are in discussion with potential retailers but have not signed any lease on the space yet. The retailers added to The Everton will join Monroe Street Market’s many food and drink options including Busboys & Poets, Starbucks Reserve, BGR, &pizza, Chipotle, Potbelly, Wardman Wines, and the Brookland Pint, all frequented often by Catholic U students.

The largest two retail spaces for The Everton, a 13,688 square foot space on the Seventh Street corner and a 2,844 square foot space on the Eighth Street corner, will be separated by the building’s lobby.

Brookland residents have been clamoring for a grocery store for years. A January 16 post by ANC 5E01 representative Nick Cheolas attributed the delay in development of the street block to attempts to sign a lease with a grocer in response to neighborhood demand for one. Cheolas summarized his thoughts on why a grocery store lease had not yet been signed: because of the small (16,000 square feet) L-shaped space for a grocer, the less-densely populated neighborhoods to the north and west of the site (including Catholic’s campus), and that redesigning the space would require a longer zoning approval.

“So, in the end, a major grocery store at this space didn’t work out, and developers shifted their focus to a ‘small format’ grocer/neighborhood market,” Cheolas theorized in his post.