Downtown Trophy Site Begins Construction

Clark Construction has begun work on one of Washington DC's most visible corners - 1000 Connecticut Avenue, at the corner of K Street and Connecticut. Property owner 1000 Connecticut Ave Associates, LLC consolidated several adjoining office buildings to form the massive lot now under construction. Initial site work and excavation are under way to dig the hole for below-grade parking for the building designed by the late Jim Freed of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, who also designed the neighboring building at 1700 K St NW. Owners expect the office building to deliver by late 2012.

Owners Michael Gewirz, Steven Gewirz, Edward Kaplan and Albert Small formed the LLC when the owners of three older office buildings decided to combine their lots and construct one massive building under joint ownership. The former buildings were demolished in 2007. Project Manager Michael Tyler of MJ Tyler and Associates estimated that the total hard construction costs will come in around $70 million, with total project costs around $180 million. Interior design firm WDG Architecture worked with Pei to design a building that should garner LEED Gold approval, assuming everything goes according to plan.

Though demolition began in 2007 and construction was initially to begin in 2008, the group sat on the property, leaving some chafing at the vacancy of the highly visible site. Negotiations with major law firms to secure a tenant lead first to Mayer, Brown, Rowe and Maw, but fell through, and there were even rumors of the owners' application to the city for a permit to use the site for parking in the interim. Eventually, the group secured law firm Arent Fox to fill the role. Tyler said the group waited "because of the market and because of the timing with the lead tenant."

Arent Fox, having signed on in May 2008, will be the lead tenant, occupying 74% of the space with 8 floors and over 238,000 s.f. of office space. According to Arent Fox's Steven Harras, the firm expects to open its new doors in early 2013, which will coincide nicely with the 2012 expiration of the firm's current lease just down the street at 1050 Connecticut Avenue.

According to Audrey Cramer, Vice Chairman at Cushman and Wakefield, the top floors of the building are available for lease and include up to 120,000 s.f. of space, which she estimates will go for around $60/s.f. triple net. According to Tyler there is also approximately 14,000 s.f. of ground floor retail space available. At this point, Cramer said the brokers are "flexible" on how tenants choose to lease space in "the best building in Washington, with the best location."

Construction image courtesy of DC Kaleidoscope.