Howard University and a group of development partners have broken ground on a massive new residential tower in Shaw, a 504-unit building called The Hazel that will rise on the former East Towers parking lot at the intersection of 8th, 9th and W Streets NW. Construction financing of $214.1 million is backing the project, with completion anticipated in the fourth quarter of 2028.
The groundbreaking was announced by Howard University alongside developers Lowe, Affinius Capital, FLGA and Davenport Group, according to a statement from Lowe. As CoStar News reported, the project sits on land owned by Howard University, with the development team having secured the financing needed to get shovels in the ground. The $214.1 million package came through a hybrid facility arranged by Barings and its affiliated C-PACE provider, CounterpointeSRE, according to Bay to Bay News.
Roughly $90 million of that total came as C-PACE financing from CounterpointeSRE working in collaboration with the DC Green Bank, the outlet reported. The development team also executed a long-term ground lease with Howard University covering the 1.85-acre site, a structure that lets the university retain ownership of the land while the developers build and operate the property.
A Years-Long Path to Groundbreaking
Getting to this point wasn't quick. Developers initially hoped to break ground in 2023 but ran into financing challenges that pushed the timeline back years, according to the Washington Business Journal. The building takes its name from Hazel Scott, the late civil rights leader, the publication noted.
Howard's own project update, posted in September, describes The Hazel as an 11-story, 525,000-square-foot building with 504 residences, including 40 affordable units, about 15,000 square feet of retail and 246 below-grade parking spaces, per Howard University's Real Estate Development office. An earlier project description, however, called for a ten-story building with up to 500 residential units and roughly 27,000 square feet of retail, according to a posting on BLDUP. The two accounts differ on the building's height, unit count and retail footprint, and neither source resolves the discrepancy.
Part of a Bigger Shaw Buildout
The Hazel is envisioned as one piece of the Duke District, a planned redevelopment of multiple Howard-owned parcels at the north end of Shaw next to the university's main campus, per Lowe's announcement. It's not the only major residential project reshaping that stretch of the neighborhood. Howard and Greystar are separately partnering on the Fusion Building, planned to include 280 student housing units, ground-floor retail, a new dining hall and a wellness center, according to UrbanTurf.
Other affordable and mixed-income projects have recently taken shape nearby in Shaw. S Street Village, an $83 million, eight-story community about 0.2 miles from the Shaw-Howard University Metro station, will include 90 affordable apartments, Manna's new headquarters and a renovated New Community Church, according to the National Council of State Housing Agencies. That project was backed by $36 million in tax-exempt bonds and tens of millions in tax credit equity issued by the DC Housing Finance Agency. Separately, a 79-unit mixed-income condo project broke ground at Eighth and O streets NW with 24 affordable condos, five townhouses and 3,300 square feet of retail, as reported by Bisnow, though that project's initial end-of-2022 delivery target has long since passed.
A Cooling Regional Market
The Hazel is breaking ground as the broader Washington, D.C. multifamily market shows signs of pulling back. Developers delivered 14,300 units across the region in 2025, part of a wave that has added roughly 60,000 units to the market since early 2022 and expanded inventory by about 15%, according to Northmarq. That surge pushed area vacancy to 5.2% by the end of 2025, up 50 basis points from a year earlier, while transaction counts fell 7% over the same period.
Northmarq's outlook notes the construction pipeline ended 2025 at its lowest level in a decade, with annual deliveries projected to fall below 10,000 units in 2026 as the market works through the recent glut. Bisnow has separately described D.C. as facing a difficult environment for new housing construction, a backdrop that makes The Hazel's $214.1 million financing close and groundbreaking notable even as other developers pull back.
