A historic church in Washington, D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighborhood is about to be baptized by a condominium development.
Dila Development & Construction filed conceptual plans for a nine-story condo at 1610 Columbia Road NW, the Washington Business Journal reported. The surface parking lot site is adjacent to the 22,000-square-foot Washington Chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Dila’s plans, filed with the Historic Preservation Office, claim the condo project is part of a larger redevelopment that will include the “rehabilitation and adaptive reuse” of the church. It’s unclear, however, if Dila is in contract to purchase the religious property, which is owned by the Unification Church.
Also unclear is how many units Dila foresees for the condo building. It said a more “refined concept” would be filed after it receives feedback from the Historic Preservation Review Board.
The condos would be tucked between the church and a Freemasonry temple. There would be a walkway to the church. Historic preservation consultant EHT Traceries is preparing a redevelopment plan for the church, which has not yet been filed; Axis Architects is designing the condo.
The church dates back nearly a century, when it was designed to replicate the Latter-Day Saints church in Salt Lake City. The city’s Inventory of Historic Sites added the property to its register in 1964.
In the 1970s, the Mormon church let it sit vacant for two years before it was sold, then quickly flipped, to the leader of the Unification Church, Sun Myung Moon.
Utku Aslantuk started Dila Construction in 2008. The firm has overseen the construction of more than $450 million in residential and commercial property in the nation’s capital, it claims.
Churches and temples can be some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Between regulations, architecture and landmark designations, however, adapting them for creative reuse can be a major challenge.
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