It looks like the major players in Washington and Baltimore development are going to redevelop a strategic part of the waterfront that was a sign of 60’s urban renewal gone bad. There were 17 teams competing for this project, with the team representing PN Hoffman of the District and Baltimore’s Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse winning.

A team of developers was chosen last night to transform 47 acres of the Southwest Washington waterfront, from the 12th Street Bridge to Fort McNair, into a multimillion-dollar neighborhood with housing, restaurants, shops, offices and cultural attractions.

The team’s lead developers, PN Hoffman of the District and Baltimore’s Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, plan to invest $800 million to turn a concrete-heavy product of 1960s urban renewal into a leafy, park-like setting that attempts to capitalize on the riverfront landscape, with an inviting promenade and tall ships docking at the piers.

The area is now home to the fish market on Maine Avenue, Channel Inn Hotel, the Zanzibar on the Waterfront and other nightclubs, Phillips seafood restaurant and parking lots. The fish market will remain, but it remains unclear whether some of the businesses, such as Phillips, will stay in the new development.

Building is expected to begin in 2009 and take eight years. Monty Hoffman, founder and chief executive of PN Hoffman, said the project’s aim is to bring a human scale to a neighborhood defined more by highway pavement than waterfront pleasure.

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