NoMa is a rapidly developing new neighborhood in Washington, D.C., just north of Capitol Hill and Union Station and named for its location North of Massachusetts Avenue. For over 150 years, most of the 35-block area served as an industrial warehouse and distribution area for freight trains coming in and out of the District. The Government Printing Office has been located here for over 100 years and today prints the Congressional Record and delivers it to Congress from its NoMa facility. But as trucking displaced rail service as the main means of delivering goods to cities, the area declined and many warehouse structures were abandoned.
With the new century, however, a renaissance began in NoMa. In 2000, the newly created XM Satellite Radio established its studio and headquarters in a renovated century-old printing warehouse near the intersection of New York and Florida Avenues. At the same time, other public and private organizations were leasing large blocks of office space close to Union Station, including CNN, CareFirst, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, U.S. Department of Education and agencies of the District of Columbia government.
Through the leadership of Washington’s Congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a unique public/private partnership was formed to fund a new Metrorail station at New York Avenue which opened in 2004. The General Services Administration (GSA) chose NoMa as the location of a consolidated headquarters for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and occupied the building in August 2007. Finally, in May 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced its decision to relocate its headquarters and 700 employees to NoMa in 2008.
Private-sector developers, facing burgeoning demand for close-in office and residential space within the District, began to realize the neighborhood’s potential and started planning for the development of up to 20 million square feet of mixed-use space over the next ten years. In 2007, the BID’s first full year of operation, private developers invested over $1.5 billion and broke ground on over 3 million square feet of office, residential, hotel, and retail space within NoMa.
Click here to download the 2010 NoMa BID Neighborhood Profile.
