JBG Eyes More Twinbrook Opportunities

JBG is investing a lot of time and energy in the future of the Twinbrook area - courting a Federal tenant and planning Twinbrook Station or "2.2 million square feet on the redline," as the developer calls it. Following the recent rezoning within the new Twinbrook Sector Plan, which encourages mixed-use development in an area once restricted to office space, JBG is now eying two parking lots that currently serve Parklawn, the Health and Human Services/Food and Drug Administration building. Anticipating the departure of FDA in July 2010 for White Oak, JBG hopes to secure HHS for a longer contract and take advantage of the reduced parking demands to build dense residential and retail in place of parking lots.

JBG submitted a bid to keep HHS in their current building; the design included a totally renovated Parklawn. HHS uses about 2/3 of the space, according to Greg Trimmer, a Senior VP at JBG. With the FDA out of the other 1/3, JBG would renovate the building in thirds, moving the current tenants within the building during construction. The HHS building is 18 stories and has 1.3 million s.f. of office space. Under the new sector plan, a building of this size would be a no-go, but JBG's Parklawn was grandfathered.

The firm does not currently have any defined designs for the use of the 5 and 10 acre parking lots on site. But in the next year or two, the developers will begin to develop a clearer plan and begin the zoning process for a development that will certainly fall in line with the sector plan and likely follow many recommendations from the Twinbrook design guidelines.

Rockville real estate development news

Twinbrook Developers, I Give You: Guidelines for a Walkable City

The Montgomery County Planning Commission just released its 2009 Urban Design Guidelines for the Twinbrook section of Rockville with a set of advisory rules 8 years in the making to guide developers in producing a more walkable, livable neighborhood that will "build a community."

In 2001, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission joined with the Montgomery County Council and County Executive, residents, business owners, planners and architects to devise a plan for the Twinbrook neighborhood along Viers Mill Road to combat sprawl by improving pedestrian access and encouraging transit use and mixed-use development. What follows is the brainchild of eight years of meetings.

  

The guidelines seek to break Twinbrook into three zones of Metro Core, Light Industrial, and Technology Employment, and lay out a system that will be more ped-friendly, sustainable, and attractive. To save you from having to read 50 pages of municipal urbanspeak, we've taken the liberty of summarizing the recommendations below. You're welcome.

The first rule of developing in Twinbrook: Mind your P's & Q's. It's all about pedestrian-quality development, people.

Twinbrook needs crosswalks and street lights. And if you're thinking of building in the neighborhood any time soon, don't be chintzy with the streetscaping—pile on the street furniture and keep sidewalks tree-lined but with closely-spaced, single-file trees that are easier to navigate. Oh, and each street has its own specially designated tree species, because what's the use in lining up all those trees if they're not going to match?

Get ready to spend some extra money on community art and open spaces with public street access. And, lest you think you've filled your tree quota for this design, remember to include a 50% tree canopy in all open spaces. If you're looking for the right kind of inspiration, check out what the developers at JBG have planned for the Twinbrook Station Green with their "gold neighborhood" - one of the three designated open spaces included in the guidelines and part of JBG's much larger plan for the neighborhood.

The streets are going to be overhauled so that the blocks are shorter for on-foot commuters. Business district streets like Fishers Lane, Washington Street, and Wilkins Avenue need permanent on-street parking. The same goes for those four to six-lane streets like Twinbrook Parkway and Parklawn Drive.

If you're building near residential neighborhoods, especially near the Rockville boundary, try to keep your structures 60 feet or shorter. The "Light Industrial Area" is located along Wilkins Avenue and Parklawn Drive and features buildings designated for service industrial uses with smaller lots and shorter heights to match - 42 feet's the limit. The "Technology Area" has been set aside to "meet the needs of the advanced technology and biotechnology industries" as well as to provide some extra space for retail, offices, and some residential. 

The planners would like you to consider glass entry-ways if you're thinking of developing over there.

Buildings near the "Metro Core Area" must provide a minimum of 25% residential space and can reach a maximum height of 143 feet, just like its urban neighbor 10 miles to the south, thank you very much. Retail goes on the ground floor and if you could make your structures entirely out of non-tinted glass, that would be ideal.

A LEED Gold rating is preferable for new Twinbrook developments, but a LEED Silver rating is now mandatory. Additionally, "adaptive reuse of buildings is encouraged." Throw in some solar panels or integrate some green roof technology if you really want to suck up. Reduce paving in open spaces and have some ideas in mind for stormwater management. And there you have it: 50 pages of Urban Design Guidelines in one easy-to-swallow capsule. 

Rockville Maryland commercial real estate news.

JBG Adds More Office to Mega Rockville Development

If the JBG Companies keeps at this pace, they may want to consider renaming it "JBGville." The prolific DC area developer received approval from the Montgomery County Planning Board last week to pursue a second phase of development at their Fishers Place at Twinbrook Metro - an office park that has already delivered four office buildings to Rockville’s Twinbrook area - but that is merely prologue to the Disney-sized, mixed-use complex going up across the street: Twinbrook Station, or "2.2 million square feet on the redline," as the developer calls it.

The first approved addition for Fishers Place, at 12709 Twinbrook Parkway, will be a four-story, 72,330 square foot, run-of-the-mill office building built in two phases designed around a central courtyard with underground parking. The second and final office addition, at 5615 Fishers Lane, will include 111,000 square feet of office and a micro-retail space, intended for federal tenants, as it "designed to conform to the GSA Force Protection guidelines.”

"The existing buildings in Fishers Place are occupied primarily by government tenants (NIH/FDA), as well as with biosciences-related private sector companies. Potential tenants have expressed interest in the two newly approved buildings, but we’re not in a position to comment further at this time," said Matt Blocher, a Senior Vice President at JBG. "[But the] two buildings most recently approved will complete that campus."

At a community hearing held concerning the dual buildings last July, the County failed to receive a single complaint from neighboring residents. That normally would be considered neighborly relations by the developer (or dumb luck), but for the fact that there aren’t that many neighbors to complain.

That’s because, once completed by 2017, Fishers Place will join the sprawl of JBG’s greater Twinbrook Station across the parkway – a redevelopment project in partnership with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) that will see 26 acres of Twinbrook Metro parking lots transformed into 325,000 square feet of office space, 220,000 square feet of retail and 1,595 apartments and condominiums, 15% of which will be affordable housing. After breaking ground in November of 2007, the project last year earned a LEED gold certification by the US Green Building Council’s Neighborhood Development program. Last time we heard of this much development going up around a subway line, it was called Tokyo.

"The first phase, which is currently under construction, will have 279 apartments and approximately 15,500 square feet of retail ready to open by early to mid-2010," said Blocher.

Among the laundry list of contributors to the JBG/WMATA “smart growth” co-development are the architects Torti Gallas and Partners, DNC, David M. Schwarz, Grimm + Parker, The Preston Partnership, EDAW, Johnson Bernat Associates, Wells + Associates, and MV+A with construction by Harkins Builders. If Rockville Pike is unofficially known as “the world’s longest strip mall,” it looks like Twinbrook Parkway might soon claim the moniker of “world’s largest lump sum community.” Leisure World better watch its back.

FDA Office Gets Residential Revamp in Rockville

Developers AvalonBay Communities are nearing the end of two years plus of planning for the redevelopment of the US Food and Drug Administration offices at 12720 Twinbrook Parkway in Rockville. The 32-year-old, 50, 235 square foot "office/flex industrial building" currently on site will soon be razed to make way for the Avalon at Twinbrook Station – a new, SK&I-designed residential complex that will add 240 units to the rental market.

"We've been presenting this plan to the neighborhood for the past two years and, essentially, now we’re [entering] the formal approval process. The City of Rockville was going through an entire…master plan recreation for Twinbrook neighborhood,” said John Cox, a Senior Vice President at AvalonBay, of the project’s origins. “When they created the new Twinbrook neighborhood plan, [the City] endorsed our use on the site.”

With the backing of both the local community and city planners, the development team will deliver more than two hundred apartments – ranging in size from 450 square foot studios to 1200 square foot two-bedroom "lofts" – with 12.5% set aside for affordable housing. The bulk of Twinbrook Station will top out at four-stories, but also include a portion that steps down to a three-story “townhome façade along the majority of Halpine Road.” It’s a design scheme that has allowed the developers to conceal the project’s parking garage by surrounding it with residential units on three sides – with the exception being a portion abutting the future site of 7-story office building currently in development by Uniwest Commercial Realty.

AvalonBay will soon be submitting their final site plan to the Rockville City Council for approval and is planning for construction to get underway late next summer. “I don’t believe there is a scheduled hearing date yet, but, obviously, we’ve had numerous meetings with [City Council] staff and public committees,” said Cox. “We’re thinking [we’ll start in] probably the third quarter of 2010.”