Morning Real Estate Review

Builders woo buyers with smaller floor plans (Washington Post)  Builders are finally stepping away from McMansions as recession-era buyers focus on practicality, affordability.


Lehman buys remaining stake in Archstone (Reuters)  Lehman pays $1.58 billion for the last chunk of the apartment giant.

Rents higher near White House, Capitol (Washington Post) Shockingly, a Costar report says that rents are higher near the centers of power.   Rents seem to be at even more of a premium during the Obama administration than they have during previous presidencies.

Texas steakhouse to sign on as first retail tenant in CityCenter project (Washington Post) The Dallas-based restaurant group will take 17,000 s.f., though a lease has not yet been signed.

Housing prices showing signs of stability (Wall Street Journal) As affordability has steadily improved, numerous housing indicators show that prices are starting to trend upward in pockets throughout the United States.

Today in Pictures - 455 Eye Street

Equity Residential's mixed-use redevelopment encompassing several historic properties at 443-459 Eye Street, NW is close to beginning construction.  With a predicted groundbreaking in August, and with Clark now signed up as the General Contractor, developers will soon begin tearing down the non-historic portion in favor of a residential tower with 174 units.  Hickock Cole Architects has designed the new building.

Washington D.C. real estate development news.  Photos by R

Your Next Place

By Franklin Schneider  

Yeesh. I'm not the sort of person who's easily intimidated (when I was 21 and visiting friends in New York, I spotted a famous Calvin Klein model in a record store and immediately went over and chatted her up; she looked me up and down and without saying a word, turned and walked out the door) - but this historic Capitol Hill home was intimidatingly classy. I kept waiting for guards to come out of nowhere, pick me up, and forcefully eject me through the front door. I wouldn't even have protested.

It's packed with authentic period details, from the woodwork to the fireplaces, to the pocket doors, to the quirky corner sink in one of the bathrooms, and even the hinges. You know a house is nice if,

hours later, you think to yourself, "man, that house had great hinges!" The family room is massive, and the centrally-located formal dining room is nice enough to make you stop eating standing up while looking at your laptop. The kitchen has everything you want in a kitchen - acres of counterspace, tons of storage - and the rest of the house is huge. The master bedroom suite includes a private balcony, and out back is a sizeable deck, a stone patio, and a small sheltered garden.

It's also mere steps from Capitol Hill, Congressional Offices, etc. You could actually fall asleep every night to the soft, soothing sounds of our elected officials screwing up.

415 Constitution Avenue NE
4 Bedrooms, 4 Baths
$1,200,000

MRP’s Penn Quarter “Trophy” Office Loses Investment Partner, Gains Investment Partner

MidAtlantic Realty Partners, LLC (or MRP) announced it has a new joint-venture partner in ASB Real Estate Investments to build its previously announced Class A “trophy” office building planned at the southwest corner of Ninth and G Streets in Penn Quarter and intends to begin construction this summer. The former investment partner was Rockpoint Group LLC.


Regardless of the change in ownership, it doesn’t appear that anything else will be different - MRP is still going to the dance, just with a new date on its arm.

Construction on the former National Capital Area YWCA site is set to commence this summer, and it’s still planned as a nine-story, 112,000 s.f., LEED Gold building with a glass curtain wall. It’s also still being designed by San Francisco-based Gensler.

So life’s pretty much the same 900 G Street, and for MRP, save for the hand that feeds it.

Washington D.C. real estate development news

HPRB Votes Down 16th Street Mixed-Use Church and Office Building Design

During a concept review hearing yesterday, the Historic Preservation Review Board voted 5 to 2 against granting The Third Church of Christ, Scientist and ICG 16th Street Associates, LLC an exception that would allow them to build a mixed-use church and office building more than 90 feet high at 910 16th Street (between K and I), where the church currently stands. This would have broken a restriction placed on the historic district of 16^th street, which leads to the White House and is where The Third Church of Christ now stands.  The review did not include discussion of the highly contested demolition and rebuilding of the church.

Historic Preservation Office staff members David Maloney and Steve Callcott presented a 16-page report urging the Board to deny an exception for a number of reasons, including incompatibility “with the character of the street as a whole” and a fear of creating a precedent of breaking the height rule on 16th Street.

According to the report, "The proposed structure would exceed the 90-foot height limit in several respects. The street facades would extend above the limit to 93.7 feet, calculated from the allowable measuring point on I Street. An extra ninth floor would rise to 107.7 feet, with a 30-foot setback from 16th Street and a 15-foot setback from I Street. The top of the mechanical penthouse would be at 123.7 feet.”

Originally, the project was proposed as an 11-story building with a copper façade. Following comments from the HPO, ICG and architect Robert A.M. Stern Architects partner Graham Wyatt scaled it down to a 9-story building with a stone façade for it to blend better with neighboring buildings.

Since the height restriction has been controversial for years and because this is a historic district, Maloney said it would create a slippery slope with a precedent that other developers could use to break this rule and begin to break down the historic district's uniformity.

“The physical nature of the historical district … is established by the requirement that has been in place since 1894 not to exceed 90 feet,” Maloney said.

ICG principal David Stern, Third Church member Darrow Kirkpatrick and Wyatt represented the project.

Stern said he hoped the project wouldn’t be judged on what might happen, while Kirkpatrick called the report a “substantial burden on our religious beliefs” (though it should be noted the only thing in question was the height of the office building, specifically the addition of a ninth floor, which would not include any part of the church, according to the renderings presented by Wyatt).

The hearing lasted approximately three hours, though it wasn’t until the final twenty minutes that board member Rauzia Ally asked Wyatt what seemed like the most important question: Why does it need a ninth floor?

His answer was that the church is set back into the building and takes up valuable office space, which would be reclaimed by adding a ninth floor. The board was not impressed.

The room filled almost completely for the hearing, and various arguments took place throughout the day including attacks on Wyatt’s architecture, complaints about the lack of religions iconography on the building and arguments about from where in the city can one actually see the extra floor (which is set back 30 feet in the plans).

Several members of the area’s ANC spoke, including 2B chairman Will Stevens, who complained that the staff report never mentions the ANC and said, “Not only will [the ninth floor] not detract, it will add historical flair.”

Former Washington Post columnist and University of Maryland professor emeritus Robert Lewis argued in favor of the extra floor by questioning if it would actually set a precedent.  David Alpert founder of Greater, Greater Washington said, “Historic preservation is … becoming the anti-height movement.”

Gretchen Pfaehler, Nancy Metzger and Robert Sonderman also voted to adopt the staff report’s recommendations.  Pfaehler explained her decision concisely: “That’s the law.”

Washington D.C. real estate development news

Your Next Place

If Batman was real, this is definitely where he’d live.  I said this to a nice middle-aged couple at the open house and they looked at me like, “this guy is why they shouldn’t have free food and wine at open houses.”  I actually had a really scathing comeback, but they couldn’t understand it through my huge mouthful of crudite.

This place is a palatial mansion to rival any in the District. Built atop a hill overlooking Rock Creek Park, this 7000+ square foot house sits on almost a full acre, and boasts features like an oak-paneled library, a circle driveway, a huge pool, massive conservatory with floor-to-ceiling windows, and a home gym that you get to through a semi-hidden entrance in the master closet.  (See, Batman!)  Recently renovated by Brook Rose Development, so everything is fresh and shiny and new, but still classy and sophisticated, sort of like my aunt after her last botox/chin tuck procedure.

The conservatory is the crown jewel of the house, a massive amphitheater-like room with the biggest skylight I've ever seen in a house; you could launch a cruise missile through it easy.  The master bedroom has a sitting area and enough room for several california kings, and french doors open onto a balcony.  The walk-in closet is so big that it has an island; think about that.  An island!  The master bath looks like something out of “Ocean's 11,” and the library is wonderfully dark and atmospheric.  Out back, the flagstone pool area is truly massive; if you have a pool party you’ll have to hire extras just so your, like, eight friends sitting poolside doesn’t look super depressing.  There’s also a one-bedroom pool house/cabana.  I was going to make a Kato Kaelin joke here but then I realized Kato Kaelin jokes haven’t been funny since 1995 (if they ever were).  Clearly, all the real laughs nowadays are in Batman references.

2808 Chesterfield Place NW
7 Bedrooms, 6.5 Baths
$3,990,000

Washington D.C. real estate news

Atlantic Plumbing Site Breeds Grittiness, Controversy

The Atlantic Plumbing site, which is being redeveloped by JBG and New York architect Morris Adjmi, currently stands as a fairly dilapidated set of abandoned buildings surrounded by residential pockets and, of course, the 9:30 Club. But the developers expect to begin demolition and have prepared concept-designs later this summer and to have finished the development completely by early 2015, according to the project manager, JBG's James Nozar.

The area is split into three parcels, not-so-confusingly denoted as A, B and C. Parcel C is north of Florida, include a “burned out shell of a church, a warehouse and a parking lot,” but this site is on hold at the moment.

Parcel A is next to the 9:30 Club, on the northwest corner of 8th and V streets. It’s abandoned save for the small bit the 9:30 Club uses as storage. The inconspicuous collection of buildings will be replaced by a 10-story building, and will be the first to start construction.

Parcel B is to the south and is essentially a 13,000 s.f. square (redundant as a square foot square is). A 6-story building - shorter because it falls within the arts overlay while Parcel A does not - is slated to pop up here.

The site was originally subject to a PUD obtained by Broadway Development in a joint venture with Walton Street Capital. JBG bought the property at auction, though Walton Street Capital remains a joint venture partner.  The PUD has since expired. Nozar expects the new development to span 350,000 s.f. and include 350 units over a floor or two of 5,000 to 15,000 s.f. of retail and for Parcels A and B to be under construction by next spring or summer.

“Our plan is to go in under the current zoning and move forward with that without asking for any zoning release,” Nozar said. He hopes the new retail will feed off the existing retail, especially the large crowds drawn almost nightly by the 9:30 Club’s concerts.

“We really want to engage existing retail that’s there,” Nozar said. “We want to take advantage of the activity that’s there on the street. The 9:30 Club is always going to be there. There’s always going to be people on the street.”

With the purpose of having the site retain a “grittier, more arts and cultural oriented” feel, JBG hired New Orleans native Morris Adjmi as its architect based on designs the development team had seen in Brooklyn (see photos above). With Adjmi, JBG felt it could create contemporary design while being true to the neighborhood.

“We thought the area has a grittier, edgier feel. It kind of has a Brooklyn kind of vibe, at least as far D.C. has that,” Nozar said. “We want the building to feel like its always been part of the neighborhood."  Adjmi said he wants to draw on the “context of what is there now: a mix of industrial forms and … vines and plants overtaking some of the buildings.”

“I like this idea of mixing in the industrial landscape and combining that with some really natural green elements,” Adjmi said. “I think those together will fit into the site and be really interesting architecturally.”

Adjmi has an interest not just in making the buildings seem like they’ve always belonged, but in making them seem like they’ve always been there.

 “I grew up in New Orleans, and I was always fascinated by two things: the incredible architecture but the fact that that architecture almost looks better in its arrested and decaying state,” he said. “It’s possible to build architecture that relates to both history and the context of the place but transcends the simple mimicking of forms.”

Presumably referring to a Washington City Paper article, Nozar said JBG has “gotten some flak from reporters from bringing in architects who aren’t in D.C., but we did that on purpose.” Lydia Depillis of the City Paper, in an update on that post, calls the headline “a mildly sarcastic indignation over a New York architect coming to Washington,” but many of the commenters seem earnestly peeved about the out-of-towner. 

Adjmi said he has no intentions of making the building look like a "New York Building." “I don’t want this building to look like it flew in from New York. I want it to look like it belongs there,” he said. “Nobody’s going to know where I’m from when they see the buildings.” 

Washington D.C. real estate development news