Joint Venture to Kick Start Florida Rock on the Anacostia

Florida-based Patriot Transportation Holding Inc. and DC-based Midatlantic Realty Partners LLC (MRP) today revealed that a joint venture between the two will help develop the Florida Rock property near the Nationals Stadium. The combination will bring the necessary capital - $4.5 million from MRP - to the stalled RiverFront on the Anacostia mixed-use project envisioned as 1.1 million s.f. along Potomac Avenue in Southeast, a project that has been planned but idle for years, nominally run by Patriot's wholly-owned subsidiary Florida Rock Properties Inc. (FRP). A spokesperson for Patriot confirmed that there will be an immediate, transformed approach to the four-phase riverfront development project due to "market changes." The first phase will no longer be office space, as was approved by the District as part of the development's Master Plan, but will instead be apartments. The joint venture will again undergo rezoning before beginning construction on phase 1, projected to commence in the spring of 2013, with lease up from fall of 2014 through summer of 2015. Rezoning was previously requested for the industrial area that has for many years contained an active concrete plant on site. In 2008, FRP asserted that it was hoping to break ground on the river front project in May of this year, but was delayed, also due to unforeseen "market changes."Patriot confirmed that FRP will have a 70-percent stake in phase one of the project; phase two through four remain undetermined. More information will be disclosed after Patriot's third-quarter-earnings meeting, the first week of August. 

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