Friday, October 17, 2008

Nothing But Blue Skies Ahead for Brightwood Apartment


Yesterday, the District of Columbia announced its selection of Blue Skye Development and the Educational Organization for United Latin Americans to redevelop the Tewkesbury, a long-abandoned Brightwood apartment building.

A piece of real estate DC Mayor Adrian Fenty called "a disgrace" and "a blight on the Brightwood community for more than 20 years," the 26-unit apartment building at 6425 14th St., NW, dates from the mid '50's and has been vacant (officially) since 1985. The District had cited Vincent Abell, the former owner, with over 100 housing code violations, and initiated a suit against him and several other landlords in April for repeated code violations. Not a bad deal for Abell then, who received $3,000,000 for the property from the District, or $115,300 per blighted, disgraceful unit.

Deputy Mayor Neil Alpert's office moved quickly through the selection process, issuing the RFP just this May, selecting the winning bid from the four received by the August deadline. In addition to the Blue Skye team, the District had received bids for the 30,000 s.f. building from Mi Casa, Inc., PML Real Estate, LLC, and 14th Street Partners - a group including UrbanMatters Development Partners LLC, Northern Real Estate Urban Ventures, and Emory Beacon of Light, Inc. A plus factor that appeared to cinch the deal for Blue Skye was its inclusion of a 54 unit building at 1330 Missouri Avenue, a property the developer now controls and will turn into a senior living center.

Mayor Fenty announced that the building will be converted into 13 market-rate condos and 13 "affordable" units, without specifying that nature of those units. The Deputy Mayor's Office for Planning and Economic Development predicts that construction "could begin" by summer of next year.

Washington, DC real estate and development news

1 comments:

Brightwood Neighbor said...

What's going on with 1330 Missouri Avenue now. It's a vacant lot and the sidewalk isn't plowed? So what's good about Blue Skye?

Post a Comment

Commercial ads will be deleted, so don't even think about it.

 

DCmud - The Urban Real Estate Digest of Washington DC Copyright © 2008 Black Brown Pop Template by Ipiet's Blogger Template