MidAtlantic Realty Partners LLC, better known as MRP, today announced a joint venture with real estate investment management firm Rockpoint Group LLC to build a new Class A "trophy" office building at the southwest corner of 9th and G Streets in Penn Quarter, the former location of the National Capital Area YWCA.
The 112,000 s.f., nine-story building will be designed by San Francisco-based Gensler. Like many of its Washington contemporaries it will include a glass-wrapped exterior with nine-foot ceilings for levels two through seven and two penthouse levels with ten-foot ceilings that have views of the Capitol and the Washington Monument. The company says it will be LEED-Gold certified and will also include a "green" roof with storm water treatment. MRP says the building will use 12 percent less energy and 40 percent less water than typical office spaces.
"We will develop a dramatic building that visually captures the corner while creating an active and memorable street-level retail experience," said Bob Murphy, managing partner of MRP Realty in a statement.
The corner is already home to the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed
Martin Luther King Jr. library, and will sit astride the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the National Portrait Gallery and Gallery Place Metro, connecting to the Red, Green and Yellow lines. Skanska Commercial Development recently completed an $85 million "trophy" space at 10th and G Street.
The National Capital YWCA, which occupied the lower floors of the 9th Street building, moved to a new 15,000 square-foot location at 14th and Florida in December.
Washington D.C. real estate development news
Washington D.C. real estate development news
24 comments:
"We will develop a dramatic building"
Oh, so you're going to develop a building that doesn't resemble the building in the rendering above? Because there is asbolutely nothing dramatic about that. It's a glass cube. In a city full of glass cubes. Nothing about it stands out.
Developer descriptions about their buildings are completely meaningless--every building is "dramatic" "breathtaking" or "unique," and every detail is "striking".
To be fair, what can you do? Its a small lot, boxed in on the sides, with a height limit. I'm sure it won't be admired and studied 50 years from now, but I think that era of architecture is long gone.
I agree with both of you. Ben, there is nothing remarkable about this building, but as JJ said, because of the height restrictions, there isn't much room to do anything truly unique. Soon DC will look like an ice tray because of all the glass cubes! haha
Wow, they use the word trophy enough, don't they. Sounds like autoerotic descriptive writing to me.
And they're going to tear down what's there? Sorry, MRP, you can spin this will doublespeak all you want, but the greenest building is one that's already there. LEED purple/cornflower/fuchsia certification doesn't really mean much if you're expending that much energy to destroy something that's already built.
Spare us the greenwashing and the false attempts at proselytizing. You're building a box for attorneys and other lobbyists. Embrace the truth, it'll set you free. Right now, you look like clowns.
Height restrictions don't inhibit good architecture.
And in keeping with 1960s architechture, I certainly hope there's zero groundfloor retail so as not to attract the "wrong element" (i.e., people wanting to spend money).
It's amazing how much people can tell from looking at a single thumbnail-sized rendering of a building in an area they never go to.
I hope they are going to build something better than this one or not. Lets hope that there something good to come up in future in that place. The information in this blog is quite interesting and I am quite curious to know what they are going to build. Please keep updating on this topic in future.
There's a height restriction in Paris, and it didn't stop them from building one of the most besutiful cities in the world.
It's amazing how people would dare judge a building from a rendering ment to show the building!?!
Yeah, how the heck is any architect going to do a great building that's only eight stories tall and on a corner site!
Wow, another glass box...I suppose this is "real" architecture. At least it's not a beautiful masonry building with a historicist facade, becasue 1920's Bauhaus modernism is so now, and everybody knows that glass curtain walls never age!
Once it's done, you all will forget it ever existed. Just like building presently on the site. :D
by that logic, the more glass boxes we get the more our memory of DC gets erased. poetic tragedy.
The current building on the site is our "memory" of DC? That's pretty sad...
what's sad is you seem to think that building forgettable buildings is ok.
-monster
"..stormwater management." Oh, so floodgates like the ones that were so professionally managed at Washington Harbor last year?
No penthouse setback on the top floor or balcony space? How about a gratuitous curve or a whimsical notch? Appealing as a stack of roach hotels. I guess it's all about squeezing every square inch out of the leased space. Definately a meek trophy building, just not the grand prize.
There are cool glass boxes and there are dull glass boxes. I'm afraid this looks more like the latter. I guess it's reasonably elegant, but can't we have something more interesting?? There could be some projections or folds in the facade. Some more intricate patterns maybe. SOMETHING. . .
Complete agreement with most of the commenters, especially the last one. There are elegant, fantastic glass boxes and clunky glass boxes, even strange ones (think: 1099 N.Y. Ave's "shingles" of glass). At this point, nothing is at all groundbreaking about it, and "trophy" speaks almost entirely to location and rental rate, not architecture. This one might be reasonably elegant, depending on the detailing. But the twilight rendering deliberately obscures detail, leading one to suspicion...
Rafael Vinoly designed a gorgeous looking glass building at NIH. You can see it from Old Georgetown Road across from Suburban Hospital. It is possible to design beautiful glass boxes.
9th and G is not penn quarter ughhhhh
"9th and G is not penn quarter ughhhhh"
Oh, yes it is in Penn Quarter!
BTW, DC neighborhood boundaries and names are not officially defined by DC government. ANC's are. Historic districts are. The intersection of 9th and G St NW is generally accepted as a part of Penn Quarter by media, residents in this part of town, and travel guides and publications, and so it is.
Here's a map for your viewing convenience:
http://wikitravel.org/upload/shared//6/68/East_End_map.png
And, here's another great map of DC neighborhoods (unofficially defined of course AND subject to change over time):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/DC_neighborhoods_map.png
astride does not mean nearby or next to, it means on top of.
As a current tenant of the building who needs to move out because of the re-development... I'm excited. The current building is an out of date eye sore. Next... we can take care of the other eye-sore across the street (library... I'm looking at you)
Any updates on the timeline of this demolition and construction?
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