What could St. Elizabeths east look like? Here's a recap of the master developer pitches

St. Elizabeths east is the largest public-private economic development project in the District's pipeline. Nothing is more important to the success of that project than the choice of a master developer.

Keep reading for a rundown of the St. E's east master developer bids, based on presentations made during a Sept. 30 community meeting.

In July, the District released the names of the five teams that bid to lead the construction, or adaptive reuse, of roughly 1.6 million square feet of mixed-use and technology-focused development on the 183-acre Congress Heights campus. We noted at the time, as did others, that those teams lacked the big-name developers drawn to other big D.C. projects, such as Walter Reed and McMillan.

It turns out there are notable names in the running, but they are mostly behind the scenes. Businesses such as NVR Inc., Transwestern, JBG Rosenfeld Retail, Streetsense, Perkins & Will, Perkins Eastman, and Interstate Hotels & Resorts, among others, are players — each having chosen a side.

The first phase of St. E's east is generally focused near the Congress Heights Metro station. It will include space for three pre-selected tech anchors — Microsoft for its Innovation Center, Citelum for its lighting lab and VimTrek for its 3D building modeling demonstration center — residential, office and retail development.

The District has committed more than $100 million to rebuild virtually all of the infrastructure at St. E's, though a contractor has not yet been selected to lead that multiyear effort. The decades-long full buildout of the campus could bring up to 5 million square feet of academic, commercial, residential and retail uses.

Michael Neibauer covers economic development, chambers of commerce, transportation and politics.