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Tuesday, 13 February 2024
In Washington, D.C., A Community-Designed Space Drives Responsible Forestry

 (© Photo Courtesy StructureCraft)© Photo Courtesy StructureCraft


Emerson Collective & Redbrick LMD: Project Owner
Winstanley Architects & Planners: Architect of Record
Adjaye Associates: Design Architect
StructureCraft: Structural Engineer of Record and Builder
Banneker Ventures: Construction firm
HEP Construction: Construction firm

Located on the historic former St. Elizabeth’s campus, the Retail Village at Sycamore & Oak is a transformative new community-led mass timber development in the Congress Heights community of Washington, D.C. The 23,000 square-foot retail village offers wellness and entrepreneurial support services, food vendors, visual art, apparel brands, a small grocer, plus convening and event space. It also provides year-round community resources, shopping, jobs, and serves as a cultural destination.

Sycamore & Oak rests at the intersection of individual economic development, community elevation, and planetary regeneration.

Community Involvement in the Design

During the design process for the building, Emerson Collective sent out a survey asking the site’s Congress Heights neighbors what they wanted to see from the project. In addition to the restaurants and retail shops, the site includes a large event space with a stage and an outdoor play space for kids. Those features came from suggestions in the 350 survey responses the company received.

“We took all of that feedback, we analyzed it, and we incorporated it,” Dana Hall of the Emerson Collective said. “We think of this as a space that was co-created with the neighborhood.”

Efforts to include community members in the process continued even after construction began—Hall said representatives have given more than 300 tours of the property over the last six months. Many of those tours went to curious passersby.

“I see people walking in from the metro pathway, they stop and they start taking pictures,” said David Osei, Redbrick construction manager for the project. “They’re excited about it, and you see a smile on their face.”

 (© Dana Hall, Program Manager at Emerson Collective. Photo Courtesy Emerson Collective)© Dana Hall, Program Manager at Emerson Collective. Photo Courtesy Emerson CollectiveHall goes on to say, “The biophilic response of visitors is nearly instantaneous - we’ve heard gasps of awe as people step onto the main platform and gathering space and take in the cool, shaded, comfort with the familiar look and even smell of wood. Many community members have nicknamed the building the ‘Tree House’ as a play on its name; what it is built out of; and the fun, open, shaded, intimate warmth of the space.”

The Building is a Showcase of Sustainability

As the largest free-standing mass timber building in Washington, DC, the Sycamore & Oak Retail Village demonstrates the connection between providing individual economic opportunity, elevating community, and regenerating our planetary ecosystem.

Hall explains, “FSC-certified timber, specified for every practicable use of wood on this nearly all wood building, reinforced the design aspiration that the project represents the highest standards of performance. Being able to demonstrate a commitment to traceable, sustainable materials with best practices of stewardship was as important as maximizing small and minority business participation in the project’s construction (nearly every business involved in assembly and final construction were local, minority, small businesses) and hyper-local representation in the choice of tenants (all 13 tenants are Black-owned businesses from the surrounding community).”

Says Saud Jabali-Nash, President of HEP Construction, "HEP Construction was honored to be a part of this project especially with growing up in the Congress Heights area all my life. Growing up so close to the site filled me with immense pride in knowing that I helped be a part of such a transformative project in my neighborhood. We are very thankful to Banneker for entrusting HEP Construction to execute at a high level to bring this project design vision to life."

Located less than 2 miles from the Capitol building, the White House, and close to every major Federal Department Headquarters, Sycamore & Oak can be a showcase and a platform for the next generation of forestry industry - and how that new chapter can be more inclusive and regenerative.

According to Hall, “The interim retail village structure is a test-bed for a variety of different approaches that will reduce its impact on the planet. We built the building, which will be on the site for three to five years, to be able to be disassembled and moved. Considering the end-of-life use or reuse of project materials is necessary for us to reduce our overall resource demands.”

 (© Photo: Dror Baldinger FAIA, courtesy of StructureCraft)© Photo: Dror Baldinger FAIA, courtesy of StructureCraft“We also built the project to evolve and change based on the needs of its occupants and the community they serve. The easily movable interior walls makes the space infinitely reconfigurable. The site has high efficiency heat pumps that provide heat and cooling as well as all electric kitchens for the four restaurants. Finally, we are exploring a large battery storage system tied into our forthcoming solar array that will reduce grid dependency or improve grid resiliency.”

William Passmore, a managing partner at Redbrick, said that sustainability is a fundamental component of the company’s approach to all of its projects. “This is a very, very high aspiration project from a sustainability point of view—you could think of it as an attempt to attain national leadership,” Passmore said. “We want to use this as an opportunity to really demonstrate some leading edge technologies.”

Water and Sunlight as Resources

A 5000-gallon cistern will collect rainwater and use it to water plants grown on site; one section of the building features openings in the roof to let in rain and sunlight. Osei, the construction manager, says those plants will one day include fresh produce for use in the building’s restaurants.

The site’s water systems can also collect and release up to 140,000 gallons of rainwater annually. Capturing stormwater runoff, particularly during heavy rain events, can help prevent flooding and reduce the amount of pollution from city streets entering nearby waterways.“For local typical developers, their goal is to get the water off site as much as possible,” Osei said. “But we asked ourselves a ton of difficult questions like ‘how do we use the rainwater on site?”

“In the future, we plan on adding to that sustainable design by incorporating more vegetation, fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices,” Osei said. “Our plan is to utilize all that rainwater and all that sunlight to grow this vegetation, and then hand it right back to the vendors.”

Economic Viability

Passmore said that, as far as he knew, the D.C. government had not specified that it wanted a sustainability-focused project when the city put out a request for proposals to redevelop St. Elizabeth’s East. That’s something of a limitation when it comes to scaling up the innovations included in the project; while both Emerson Collective and Redbrick prioritize sustainability, few other developers will likely follow their example without specific policy incentives.

 (© Photo: Dror Baldinger FAIA, courtesy of StructureCraft)© Photo: Dror Baldinger FAIA, courtesy of StructureCraft“This building went up very, very quickly, because when it arrives, it’s almost like Lincoln Logs,” Passmore said. “So you save some money like that—you don’t have to borrow money from the bank for as long, you don’t need your investors to be invested as long, in order to get through the build.”

“We’re discovering that if you build a building very judiciously, and you’re careful about how many materials you use in the building, and where you put the windows, and you think about where the sun is—you can make the building more efficient,” he said. “In addition to making the building more sustainable, that actually reduces costs… we’re starting to see that sustainable buildings don’t need to be more expensive.”

More about StructureCraft:

StructureCraft was the structural engineer of record and builder for Sycamore & Oak. Bringing structural engineering and construction under one roof adds great efficiency to the building process, saving on schedule and budget. With 26 years of experience delivering unique, expressive structures in all materials, StructureCraft is known worldwide for timber engineering, having designed and built over 5 million square feet across North America and Asia. The firm, a member of SE2050, is committed to the use of sustainable materials to create beautiful, efficient structures that people love.

For Sycamore & Oak, StructureCraft’s mandate was to create a sustainable, low-carbon space that could be later disassembled and relocated. The resulting structure was fully prefabricated with 100% FSC-certified wood and joined with screws and hidden thru-bolts. The elegant finished space features 60’-span queen-post trusses and an exposed mass timber deck, all designed for durability and exposure to the open air.


In addition to winning a 2023 FSC Leadership Award, The D.C. Department of Energy and Environment recognized the project with one of five 2023 Sustainability Awards. The Washington Building Congress awarded the project a 2024 Craftsmanship Award.

Special thanks to the Washington Informer for their generous contribution to this story. Their original article can be viewed here.