“I’ve been through this before,” says H Street Main Street Executive Director Anwar Saleem, “in 2004.”
He’s at a June 24 open house on the H Street NE Small Area Plan, the District Office of Planning (OP) effort to re-energize the corridor in the face of storefront vacancies, shifting retail patterns and renewed debate about its public image.
At the event, OP laid out the essentials of the plan: zoning maps, retail projections and long-range development scenarios meant to guide the next chapter of one of the city’s most closely watched corridors. Residents attending were encouraged to place stickers next to concepts they agreed with and write comments on post-it notes.
It is, in many ways, a reset of a reset. Saleem was there when H Street was last comprehensively reimagined in the early 2000s, when the District adopted a revitalization framework that helped set off a wave of redevelopment and culminated in the long-promised but finally abbreviated streetcar era. That system arrived, ran through fits and starts, and has since been pulled out—leaving behind a corridor that planners now describe as “resilient,” but uneven.
The new plan tries to account for that unevenness. It highlights shifting retail patterns, lingering vacancy, and the corridor’s evolving role between Union Station and the massive redevelopment envisioned at the RFK campus. H Street doesn’t need a new vision because the old one was unsuccessful, they say. It needs a new plan because everything that was supposed to stabilize it has changed or been undone.
“I think the plan is properly ambitious,” said one attendee who asked to only be identified as Bill. “I think it may suffer from the need to do a lot of things at one time, because everything has to work in tandem, and if they do one thing and fail somewhere else, the whole thing fails.”
Another was more direct: “I just kind of feel like there’s not enough focus on transit.”
In part, this is the key difference between the 2004 and 2026 plans. While the former plan was centered on transit as a spur to development, the 2026 planning fcuses on land use without considering solid transportation planning already initiated by the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) and WMATA.
That absence is striking given the scale of transit questions already circling the corridor. The plan gestures toward future bus improvements and broader mobility goals, but avoids locking itself to any single transit design. That omission, attendees suggested, is increasingly difficult to ignore.
The Plan So Far
According to the draft study, H Street’s challenges are no longer simply about attracting investment. The Office of Planning argues the corridor has become physically and economically fragmented. While the western blocks closest to Union Station continue to benefit from Metro access, newer housing and stronger foot traffic, the eastern end has struggled to recover from the pandemic, losing more than a third of its visitors since 2019. The report attributes that decline to a combination of limited residential development, weaker transit access, zoning constraints and growing competition from destinations such as Union Market.
The study paints a corridor that is busy in places but disconnected overall. About one-quarter of ground-floor storefronts now sit vacant, with vacancies concentrated in the central and eastern sections of H Street. The report argues that those empty storefronts interrupt what should be a continuous retail district, making activity feel isolated rather than reinforcing the corridor as a destination. Rather than recommending a single catalytic project, planners conclude that recovery depends on rebuilding the “building blocks” of a healthy commercial corridor: more housing, stronger local businesses, safer and more attractive public spaces, and more reasons for people to spend time on H Street throughout the day.
To accomplish that, the draft recommends changes on several fronts. It calls for zoning changes to encourage additional mixed-use residential development, noting that every 100 new housing units could support roughly 600 to 1,600 square feet of retail space.
The plan also proposes investing in sidewalks, trees, lighting, seating and other public spaces, expanding arts programming, easing barriers for live entertainment and local businesses, and revisiting height limits and zoning regulations in parts of the corridor.
“This is really ambitious,” said Phil Coppage at the event. Coppage is the owner of Cynthia Bar and Bistro (504 H St. NE) and the founder of the nascent Greater H Street BID Association. He wondered aloud how recommendations would be paid for. He acknowledged that builders want to ease restrictions on inclusive zoning (iz) to make it more profitable to build higher on H Street. “I doubt that’s going to be a possibility,” he said.
Throughout the report, planners argue that H Street’s identity as a locally owned arts and entertainment district remains one of its greatest strengths, but that identity will only succeed if more people choose to spend time there.
Bill’s partner said public safety was a crucial issue to address. But it would be difficult to confront the reputation, she added, without altering the core of what makes H Street, well, H Street. “It feels cyclical,” she said. “To attract people down here, you need to improve the public safety. But how do you do that without affecting the vibrancy and culture?”
Transportation appears throughout the report, but mostly as a supporting element rather than the organizing framework. The study calls for coordinating with DDOT and WMATA on ongoing street design and transit studies, improving pedestrian comfort and safety,and maintaining access for businesses and arts venues. It repeatedly describes H Street as the connection between Union Station and the future RFK redevelopment noting improved connectivity is essential to the corridor’s future. Yet it stops short of recommending any specific transit project, instead treating those decisions as parallel planning efforts still underway.
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The Elephant that Isn’t in the Room: The Gold Line
But in the room, the more immediate concern was whether the next phase of planning is again moving ahead of the infrastructure that will define it.
What was not formally presented—but hovered over nearly every transportation discussion—was the District’s evolving Gold Line bus rapid transit project. DDOT representatives were present. But even as planners discussed lane configurations, curb space and bus priority concepts, participants repeatedly referenced a system that is widely understood to be moving toward a center-running alignment on H Street, even if they have not yet seen a plan. Those with knowledge of the process said planning had begun, but formal agreement has to be reached between DDOT and WMATA before plans and engagement can go public.
For some, that is a key part of planning. “What we care about on H Street are two things, that it stops on H Street three or four times, so we’re not just like waving as people are going by and that it’s used as an opportunity to improve transportation, the transportation infrastructure,” said Coppage. “That’s going to be the trick,” Coppage added, “is how you take the streets the way they are, insert bus rapid transit, and make it better for everyone.”
OP referred questions about project coordination to DDOT. DDOT did not respond with comment prior to publication.
Jarrod Bennett is Executive Director of Atlas Performing Arts Center (1333 H St. NE) the heart of the arts district. Bennett said performances attract both performers and audiences from the wider DMV, many of whom drive in to the Atlas. “This is critical for us,” Bennett said. He engaged DDOT representatives about the way transit could affect parking and deliveries, which are key to the continued vibrancy of the center. Representatives said that the goal of transit would be to increase road capacity by running a more efficient transportation service, but acknowledged that limits of curb length and access would mean that parking could be lost.
One attendee captured the tension directly: “I mean, I feel like it’s pretty critical, right, to all this, especially in this neighborhood… we had a plan to redo H Street completely, put in transit-only lanes… and we just stalled.”
Saleem was optimistic. He said he was pleased that planning was taking place, and encouraged residents to share their concerns with OP. “They need to let them know. They need to ask to be involved in focus groups. I think that’s very important,” Saleem said “They need to share information about the things they don’t agree with, because if you don’t go through that process, [DC] will never get that information.”
OP will develop a final report with further analysisand recommendations for release in September 2026. A third open house is set to take place in August. Visit website for updates on the project: PublicInput.com/HStreetStudy
