Friday, April 27, 2012

Work Begins on Founders Square Residential Building


Excavation has begun for the 17-story, mixed-use residential and retail building at Founders Square called The Place.

Crews are digging at 4000 Wilson Blvd. in Ballston to prepare the lot for construction, said Kevin Shooshan, leasing and marketing director at the Shooshan Company. Preparation work for the proposed LEED Silver building includes cleansing the soil at the former brownfield site.

Construction of The Place (left) is underway. An office building (right) also is planned for the site.
KBR Building Group received the construction contract last month and began work soon after, a spokeswoman for the company said. She said construction would be completed by early 2014, but Shooshan said the building would be finished at the end of next year.

The Place has nearly 9,000 s.f. of retail space below the residential units. Shooshan said he is not yet leasing space, but a roughly 5,000 s.f. area targets a restaurant/bar, with the rest well-suited for smaller restaurants and cafes that cater to the businesses and residents in the area.  On average, apartments are just under 800 s.f.   Residents -- especially those on the upper floors -- will have views of the District to the east, Shooshan said. There will be 280 parking spaces on four below-grade levels.

Shooshan closed in February on a $71.1 million loan from SunTrust to build The Place, one of four buildings slated for the company's mixed-use development designed by RTKL that includes residential, office and hotel space with about 25,000 s.f. of retail spread throughout.

A few months ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) moved into a 13-story, 350,000-square-foot, LEED Gold office building completed in the first phase of development.

The Donohoe Companies is working on an 11-story, 182-room, LEED Silver Residence Inn by Marriott just to the south, crews have already built up to the sixth floor.

The fourth building, just east of The Place at 4040 Wilson Blvd., is planned as a 20-story, 400,000 s.f., LEED Gold office building. Work has not started on the last building.

Arlington, Va., real estate development news

3 comments:

Benjamin Ross on Apr 30, 2012, 12:35:00 PM said...

This is not just any brownfield - it is a historic place. It was the site of the first scientific investigation of a leaking underground gasoline tank, conducted by the US Geological Survey in 1947.

The investigation concluded that the gasoline found floating on the water table did not come from the Wilson Esso or Al's Motors, both located on the south side of Wison Boulevard between N. Randolph and N. Pollard Streets. Rather, it came from the Arnold Bus Company (now the WMATA garage) farther south.

Anonymous said...

Based on this rendering (buyer beware!), "The Place" looks like a decent evolution of the "Ballston Bland" style into something that, if not exactly thrilling, is at least modestly interesting. Not so much the companion office building. But then, the county seizes such a big percentage of the potential profits (via "conditions" set during the lengthy and highly political "site plan review" process) that we must be grateful and impressed whenever ANY architecture emerges in Arlington. Or perhaps, post-recession, the county's greed has dropped back a notch?

Anonymous said...

Wait for a the new renderings this building will be way sexier than anything that Ballston has seen....

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