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Muriel Bowser has been an unabashed proponent of development since first taking office as mayor of Washington, D.C., in January 2015.
Building tens of thousands of housing units was a core part of her agenda, and her administration spearheaded large-scale developments on publicly owned sites, from The Wharf to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to, most recently, RFK Stadium.
“I am pro-development. I always have been,” Bowser told Bisnow on Thursday in her office at the John A. Wilson Building. “I was a pro-development ANC commissioner, and I’m a pro-growth mayor.”
But D.C.’s development wave has slowed, just as the city is preparing to elect a new mayor for the first time in 12 years.
Bowser decided not to run for a fourth term, and real estate leaders have expressed concern that her replacement won’t be as friendly to the industry. The race has largely coalesced around Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, who is aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, and former Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, a longtime Bowser ally.
While construction has started on 105M SF of development in the District between 2015 and 2024, the two slowest years during that span were 2023 and 2024, when 7.8M SF and 4.4M SF broke ground, respectively, according to the Washington DC Economic Partnership.
During a 30-minute sit-down, Bowser spoke to Bisnow about her legacy of advancing big real estate projects throughout her tenure and how she hopes the next mayor will approach the city’s economic growth and development.
“I think focusing on growth is more important than it ever was in D.C. and more important than it ever was sitting in this chair,” Bowser said.
The interview below has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Bisnow: There have been so many big projects that have either been started and/or completed during your tenure. What project are you most proud of that’s been either started or completed?
Bowser: That’s too hard to say.
Bisnow: Any that you are particularly proud of with your efforts to try to get off the ground and make successful, or any that were particularly challenging that in the end worked out well?
Bowser: Well, I think that all of the big projects, the life of these deals is long, and I think the fact that I’ve been blessed with longevity, I can see some from start to finish, and some others that we’ve unstuck and got going. And the list is long. We could start with Walter Reed and really going down to Texas to lure the Whole Foods. And finally, seeing that come to fruition was, and it still is, something that we’re very proud of. But we’re not finished. There’s still a lot of work to do there.
We look at the McMillan Reservoir that had been talked about probably for 30 years, and it was very complicated. A lot of what I thought was unreasonable and unwarranted interventions, disruptions from every part of the legal process. And now, when you go past there, you see new homes coming up. So that’s very exciting for us. Skip over to Congress Heights, and that community was promised a major employer when I got into office, that was what was out there. And we decided that we would go in first and build the Entertainment and Sports Arena. So they all have had a lot of ebbs and flows, but I think at the end of the day, in each case, you’ll see new housing, more opportunities, more local businesses involved in development happening.
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