Pattern Shop Lofts Underway

Construction is now underway on the Pattern Shop Lofts, the redevelopment of an historic Navy Yard warehouse. A piece of Forest City Washington's larger The Yards project, the former pattern store was part of the old Navy Yard Annex, but will be converted into a 170-unit "loft" apartment building with 10,000 s.f. of ground floor retail space. The six-story building is being redesigned by Bethesda-based SK&I Architectural Design Group , including 33 two-level penthouse units with private terraces and views of the Anacostia River.

The mixed-use retail and residential Pattern Shop Lofts will be completed and begin leasing units in fall of 2009, according to the developer. The overall project, surrounded by the Anacostia River, U.S. Department of Transportation Headquarters, the Washington Navy Yard, and the new Nationals Park, will deliver 2,800 residential units, 300,000 s.f. of retail space and 1.8 million s.f. of office space by 2013.

The retail space will likely host a restaurant, though Vanessa Lopez-Isa, marketing manager at Forest City said the developer is currently focusing on leasing the Boilermaker Shop across the street, a retail building which will also deliver next fall as part of Phase One. "There has been a lot of interest in restaurants and some really neat tenants that I can't disclose yet," she said of both buildings.


Lopez-Isa said the developer acquired the property through a federal grant and that the development is consistent with Forest City's portfolio of historic adaptive reuses. "We obtained control of the 42 acres directly adjacent to the ballpark after we went in for a proposal with the federal government in 2002 and were awarded site through that proposal process. Pattern Shop Lofts was originally Pattern and Joiner Shop in 1918 and it was part of the Navy Yard Annex...the area we are redeveloping. It was a large-scale wood and pattern house and it is one of five historic buildings on our site." Forest City has experience in other adaptive re-use projects, as at Tobacco Row, its historic project in Richmond.