ULI Global Awards for Excellence: City Market at O

Spanning two full city blocks, City Market at O (CMO) is a mixed-use redevelopment project in the District of Columbia’s historic Shaw neighborhood. CMO has catalyzed nearly $1 billion of new investment in Shaw and helped stabilize the area. Since 2011, the year construction started, surrounding property values have increased significantly and the demographic profile of the neighborhood has become more diverse. CMO has become the retail center of Shaw, creating an important linkage between downtown and neighborhoods to the north.

A historic 19th-century market, repurposed into a state-of-the-art Giant Food grocery store, serves as the project’s cornerstone. The market stands amid a mix of retail, hotel, and residential spaces, including 407 market-rate residential units, with building amenities that include a block-long rooftop dog park, a demonstration kitchen, an infinity pool, and landscaped courtyards. The project also has 90 units of affordable housing for seniors. Extraordinary creativity on the part of the design, construction, and financing teams accelerated the delivery of housing for seniors and consolidated all loading underground to create an uninterrupted retail experience with minimal impact on traffic and noise.