Building More Than Structures | DCBIA Community Improvement Day 2026
Building a Community Means More Than Building in It
The DMV is where we build, but it is also where we live, work and raise our families. The neighborhoods surrounding our projects aren’t simply locations on a map. They’re our communities, and we believe being part of a community means investing in it.
That belief brought more than 20 CWC employees, family members and friends to East Capitol Urban Farm in Washington, DC, for DCBIA’s annual Community Improvement Day. Alongside volunteers from across the commercial real estate industry, our team helped refresh a community resource that has served Ward 7 for more than a decade.
Originally created by DCBIA and its partners in 2015, East Capitol Urban Farm is an urban agriculture and education center operated by the University of the District of Columbia in partnership with the DC Housing Authority. This year’s “Legacy Refresh” brought the industry back together to extend the life of the farm and create new opportunities for the community it serves.
Months of Planning Behind One Day of Impact
For CWC, Build Day began months earlier. CWC Marketing’s Maura Harris served as the day-to-day lead, joining weekly planning meetings and working with DCBIA and the broader project team to turn ideas into work volunteers could execute. As plans evolved, she helped work through design decisions, constructability, materials, and logistics to bring the many pieces of the project together.
One of those pieces became the day’s most visible transformation.
Bringing the Traffic Garden to Life
CWC Marketing’s Mary Butcher designed a new traffic garden for the farm, drawing on more than a decade of experience in bicycle education. Mary wrote her UVA master’s thesis on the subject and previously developed the first two traffic gardens in DC for DCPS’ Biking in the Park program.
Mary hand-drew a miniature network of streets, intersections, and crosswalks where children can safely practice biking, navigate intersections, and learn the rules of the road. Perkins Eastman translated the design into CAD, and CWC’s Stephan Lagos and other team members transferred it to the pavement ahead of Build Day, giving volunteers the framework they needed to bring it to life with paint.
The team moved quickly. So quickly, in fact, that additional projects and materials were added throughout the day. Volunteers replaced a shed door, installed blinds, cleaned and improved the classroom, and tackled exterior repairs that had originally been wish-list items.
Before the day was even over, UDC had created and installed a sign explaining the new traffic garden and how children could use it, an immediate sign that the space would have a life well beyond Community Improvement Day.
More Than a Day of Service
CWC contributed funding, tools, months of planning and, most importantly, people willing to give their time and skills. We’re grateful to DCBIA, UDC, Bohler, WDG, Perkins Eastman and the many industry partners and volunteers who came together to invest in East Capitol Urban Farm and the community it serves.
Because what we build has always been about more than structures. It’s about the communities around them and our responsibility to leave those places stronger than we found them.
