Seven small patches of green tucked into traffic triangles and corner lots along New York Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue in Northwest Washington are getting a second look. The DowntownDC Business Improvement District and the DowntownDC Foundation are requesting proposals from landscape architecture and design firms to turn these often-overlooked pocket parks into more active, welcoming public spaces.
The effort, reported by WTOP, divides the seven parks into four distinct groups, with nearby sites paired for three design teams to tackle. The first group includes two parks near the Herald Square Building, where New York Avenue meets H Street Northwest. The second is a single triangle-shaped park at New York Avenue and I Street Northwest.
Four Groups, Four Very Different Spaces
The third group brings together a pair of parks near the Carnegie Library that organizers have nicknamed the Carnegie Twins, according to the outlet's reporting. The fourth group, dubbed the Bowties, consists of mirrored pocket park triangles sitting at Massachusetts Avenue and I Street Northwest.
Size varies dramatically across the seven sites. The largest of the pocket parks cover roughly 13,000 square feet, while the smallest is just one-tenth that size, per the same report. That range gives each design team a very different canvas to work with, from compact corner slivers to larger triangular lots that could support more ambitious features.
What Firms Need to Qualify
Organizers plan to select four firms total, assigning one to each park group to develop concepts that could bring active recreation, new amenities and other uses to the spaces. Eligible firms must be experienced landscape architectural design outfits with comparable urban park experience in Washington or a similar city, and they must hold a District business license.
The timeline moves quickly from here. Submissions are due October 23, and the four winning firms are expected to be announced by November 12. Public input on the designs is expected in March 2027, with final design concepts due the following month.
The DowntownDC Foundation has separately noted that it formed a DowntownDC Parks Fund back in 2023 to create and support more engaging urban parks, and that the final concepts produced through this process will be used to establish a capital campaign for the proposed designs, according to the DowntownDC Foundation.
Building on Franklin Park's Momentum
The pocket park push follows the momentum generated by Franklin Park's own transformation. Located at 13th and I streets Northwest, Franklin Park reopened in 2021 after a renovation that took nearly a decade and carried a $21 million price tag, WTOP reported. New additions there, including interactive water jets, a children's garden and enhanced seating, have reportedly turned the park into a destination that now draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.
That scale of investment won't necessarily apply to the smaller pocket parks under consideration now, but the comparison gives a sense of what a committed redesign effort can accomplish in downtown Washington. The DowntownDC BID separately maintains an agreement covering day-to-day upkeep of 31 National Park Service spaces within its footprint, according to DowntownDC, underscoring the breadth of green space the organization already manages across the neighborhood.
