Industry Insight: Sami Kirkdil and Meral Iskir of SK&I Architectural Design Group

Since its' inception in 1999, the SK&I Architectural Design Group has been one of the go-to names for striking, sophisticated architecture in the DC area. With mixed-use projects like Wisconsin Place in Friendship Heights, Union Row in Columbia Heights and an upcoming slate that includes Lot 31 in Bethesda, and the Washington Gateway and Constitution Square in NoMa, their designs will soon be more prominent than ever. Sami Kirkdil, President of SK&I, and Meral Iskir, Executive Vice President, took the time to sit down with DCMud and talk about their approach to architecture, the current effects of the housing market on an architectural firm, and what the District might look like a few years down the line.

How did you get your start in architecture? 

MI: I originally studied back in Turkey and then studied again here at Catholic University. I’ve continued to work steadily since I initially came here 40+ years ago. I spent some years with CHK, then Sami and I started this firm. We’ve been doing all kinds of architectural projects and just working, working and working. 

SK: I think my introduction to architecture was through my father’s friend – an architect friend. When I was a kid, he used to do sketches of buildings and give them to me, and that kind of intrigued me. I was basically good at math, science and art, so I thought, “Hey, this might be the thing for me” in high school. I knew what I wanted to do, so I went to college and have been practicing for the past 25 years. I think that you are the most happy when you’re working hard and designing. Obviously, there’s a lot of red tape and a lot of things that you have to do, but designing and doing a project is the fun part of it. I think that’s what drives us towards the future. Somewhere along the line our specialty became mixed-use, residential design. In the last 8 or 9 years, we’ve done a lot of big residential projects. It was just the right time and the right place. There weren’t that many firms focusing on residential and we’ve had a head start on that game. We’ve grown from a two person firm to a 50+ person firm. We’ve kept that steady, but didn’t want to grow out of control and maybe lose the quality of our work. 

What kinds of projects appeal to you personally and, by extension, your firm? 

SK: Generally, our cup of tea is more complex projects that play in the urban realm, fit into the neighborhood and create a nice home for the people who live in it. There are always new ways to put together interpretive designs with the way buildings go together, basically. 

How would you typify the developer /architect relationship? Are some harder to please than others?  

SK: We might be a little different than a lot of other firms. I think our expertise is that we understand the development process as well the developers. Basically, what works and what doesn’t work. We can reason with them when it comes to what design ideas might propel them in a specific area. They don’t necessarily have to educate us; sometimes we try to guide them. We want to become their partners. We want to understand their theme and their dilemma. We want to give them an edge. 

MI: Of course, our position allows us to work with different developers. This is kind of an advantageous position in the sense of understanding and thinking about a project through our own experience. It kind of enriches our understanding of what goes on in the market and allows us to show leadership through our designs. We’re not doing the architecture for ourselves, but for our clients. At the same time, we can control the quality and accomplish the best we can within the given conditions. 

If you change one thing about the DC development process, what would it be? 

MI: Getting to a better place where there is an appreciation for the architect’s efforts. That is lacking in general, as far as I’m concerned. 

SK: Well, there are good things and bad things about building height. I think that’s one thing that would be good to look at. There are some instances where it creates a very walkable city. On the other hand, architecture becomes challenging when everything’s 13 or 14 stories. It couldn’t be a bad idea to have more height in some locations. I think, given that our resources are now more limited, we have to densify our cities. To me, densifying

the city, outer suburbs, or Metro locations with higher height and higher density is probably something that would be good for Washington. 

On that note, you built Union Row above a Metro station. What kind of challenges did that pose? 

SK: Lots, actually. Part of the problem with that site was that it was an assemblage – a bunch of little pieces. But our real plight was the Metro tunnel running from 14th Street and curving down towards 13th Street. That part of the site we couldn’t actually build on. What we did was have the building’s shape follow the route and then we put our girders and columns right along it. We could only put two levels of parking there, while the rest was three levels. It was a long, lengthy process of getting approval from Metro and testing and excavation. 

MI: In addition to that, we also had to provide access to the existing warehouses that were there – in addition to upgrading and renovating them. We tried to create a kind of plaza-like structure there. I think we were successful in the view from the main street and were able to manipulate the design in such a way that it gets your attention. 

You have also been contracted for one of the largest projects in NoMa (Constitution Square). Can you give us a bit of insight into how NoMa might look in, say, 5 years? 

SK: Well, instead of 5 years, let’s say 10 years. I think, potentially, people are wishing for the same thing that happened to Chinatown. We were there 9 years ago with Massachusetts Court at 4th and Mass and couple of other projects that did not go through. Today, if you look at Chinatown, they have all the nicest restaurants in the city. In a way, it’s surpassed DuPont, northwest Connecticut Avenue, in terms of pizazz. NoMa wishes that they’ll be seeing the same quality and caliber of that development. Obviously, the Verizon Center and all that retail is a big advantage and we want to see similar kinds of things in NoMa. The project we’re doing is mixed-use – an office building, a hotel, a Harris Teeter grocery store and apartments. The hope is to create a critical base of retail, residential and office space, so that you’re not building up an area that shuts down at five o’clock. Since 2000, if you look at the city and our projects, we are trying to create a 24-hour living space that has a life cycle with offices and retail. You’re not necessarily commuting; you’re living, shopping and working in the same place. You’d hope that NoMa becomes that. 

MI: I think the fundamental approach is understanding how neighborhoods and areas stay alive, rather than just a being a place to go to in the daytime and empty in the nighttime. I think they want a good foundation for a better future this time. 

How much work do you do outside the metro area? SK: We have done international work over the years and, if you look at our career, we’ve done all that stuff. If you look at the past 9 years, we were really busy and did not want to grow. We used to turn down almost 20% of the work that came in the door. We were cherry-picking the projects that we’d do. Obviously, circumstances have changed, so we’ll probably be looking at doing projects outside the area. We’ve done projects up and down the East Coast from Miami to Boston.

MI: We were involved with many projects outside the area, for example, Harbor East in Baltimore. We did an 18-story project there that was mixed-use – again, with retail. 

How does the current economic situation affect an architecture firm? 

SK: I’m sure the whole development world is living on fumes. Obviously, with the current financial market, there’s very little money available. There are two things going on. There are great projects that have secured financing to do private work; and there is some entitlement work that will go forward. People are hoping that the market will turn around and it’s that optimism that’s the driving force. I’m sure there will be a great opportunity to have any kind of product out there in a year or two. Once the economy turns back, the first people out of the gate will make out the best. Once the market steams up, you jump in to catch a piece of it. We have some clients that are in a cycle where they’ll be delivering in 2011, 2012, 2013 and they’re hopeful that their financing is intact. Other clients think the market is going to shrink. And it is shrinking because the capital behind what you can finance is zero. We are hearing it every day, it’s tough out there. We’re going to see a lot more competitive pricing. For the first time since we’ve opened our doors, we’re actually out there chasing RFPs. 

MI: Generally, lots of architecture firms are actually shrinking. At the time, some of the other ones are looking abroad to the Middle East and so on. But everyone’s affected. 

What was the most challenging project you’ve ever worked on? 

SK: I think every project’s a challenge. Our specialty is – even though we’re a mid-size firm – we tackle really complex projects. One of our projects that’s under construction, Wisconsin Place, had basically three or four different teams. The garage was done by different architect and structural engineer and parts of the building were done by another architect and structural engineer, so there was a lot of interface coordination and collaboration between all these different teams. A “who does what?” type of deal, so Meral championed that effort and it took us a while. We had to wait for other firms to finish their work. The other project we’re currently working on is going to be very complex - Lot 31 in Bethesda, which is now two parking lots across from Barnes & Noble. There was a very complicated entitlement process and we’re now full throttle in the design process. It’ll take a while to get it built because what we’re doing is, basically, taking Woodmont Avenue away [laughs]. We’ll be digging into the rock for five levels and building a column-free garage. Then, we’re doing a 9-story building on one side and a 5-story building on the other. 

MI: Thinking about it while Sami was talking, I think every project has its’ own challenges. You have to try to design it in such a way that the building will look unique, but still serve the neighborhood and be able to get through the approval processes. You have to work with the contractors and combine with the developer’s needs to make the project as successful as it could be. I don’t want to sound conceited, but I think our experience is such that we are good listeners and can point any issues before they become a problem. It forces us to make every project a 360 degree success. Every project has its’ own unique expectations and character. They’re like your children. Every one of them has a different personality and the challenge is having happy and successful children, in a certain sense. 

If you could work on any project, what would it be? A dream project... 

MI: Is there such a thing as a dream project? Human beings always change and what you liked yesterday could change tomorrow. When I look back at some of the projects I’ve done, I liked them then, but not necessarily today. At the time you might think of it as a dream project, but tomorrow you could always say, “Was it really?” 

SK: It’s tough, but the kind of project that allows me to be wild and think freely is a dream project. That said I can’t design a house for myself because I’m my own worst critic. When it comes to designing your own thing, it’s not easy. I’m very deliberate and straightforward in designing projects for others. For myself, I’m terrible because I want to accomplish much more than I can handle – the program, the aesthetics, the budget. If you design something today and look back at it in a few months, you might say, “No, maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do.” Your tastes change. It’s a process that keeps your brain sharpened.

Washington DC commercial real estate news

Insider Interview: Scott Pannick of Metropolis Development

Scott Pannick, the founder and CEO of the Metropolis Development Company, is preparing to launch his fifth and largest condo project on the 14th Street corridor - the Metropole - and find out what he thinks of his latest project, how having a Harvard MBA helps give perspective on market fluctuations, and what would happen if he had to do it all over again.

How did you break into the development game?

I was a commercial broker for almost 20 years. The last 10 of which I spent acting as a representative for large institutional and corporate users in the development of corporate headquarters. Though I was a broker - I was in fact representing people in their real estate transactions and not the principle - nevertheless, I was actually acting in the role of a developer.

Was that here in the District or out of state?

I did projects here in Washington and elsewhere. I built the headquarters for the Educational Testing Service in Princeton and the headquarters for Bristol-Meyers Squibb in Princeton. I built the headquarters for Core State Bank of Delaware, close to Princeton in Lawrence. I also did the American Red Cross Headquarters here. The last project was to represent the federal government in the development of the headquarters of the Department of Transportation – although in that case I didn’t act as a developer, I acted as a representative for the government and, at the end of the day, hailed the competition to name the developer.

You started with Langston Lofts on 14^th and then built three more on the same street. Was there an initial vision to stay on that corridor from the beginning, or was it just serendipity?

The two first buildings were almost simultaneous. One was Langston Lofts on the corner of 14^th and V Streets and the other was Lofts 14 on the corner of 14^th and Church. If you look at District zoning from Georgetown across, for the most part, you see fairly low density zoning and 3 and 4-story maximum buildings. The first time that you see zoning that pops up higher than that is 14^th Street. That was also incidentally just where the development line was, where the renovated versus the un-renovated was. So, 14^th Street was a very logical place to look to pursue development.

If you knew now what you knew 8 years ago, what would you do differently when developing a project in the District?

In all honesty, if I knew then what I know now, I never would have done this. From my perspective, the biggest obstacle has been construction. Construction is an enormously difficult business in its simplest times. It has turned out – and everyone has experienced this – that condominiums are, frankly, more complex than virtually anything. I had a construction manager who worked for me for a while who had built BWI Airport and made the comment that condominiums were more complicated that airports. It’s a building that has enormous density in it – in other words, there are kitchens, baths, independent mechanical units and every unit has its own plumbing system and its own selection of finishes. So you’re building a building with 80 or 90 individual units, all of them different, all them having complexity.

If contractors can do one thing and do it repetitively, it’s great. But because of the fact that this is urban in-fill development, it’s very very space constrained. And because of those space constraints – and lot lines limitations and Historic Preservation Review Board input - you end up building with 90 units using 35 different floor plans. If you’re out in the suburbs and you’ve got no lot line restrictions, you can work it out so all the units are the same. But when you are building in the city, literally every side of the building is constrained by height and lot lines, so you are trying to fill that box with usable space. It becomes impossible to just take something and repeat it.

Is your newest building, the Metropole living up to your initial vision?

I think it’s actually better than I had anticipated. I think it’s a beautiful building, it sits magnificently on the site and I think – I’m a developer so I have prejudices – if you’re going to live downtown, where better would you want to live? It’s kind of where the action is. There are two premier axes – one would be 14^th and P and U Street being the second because it’s another street that goes all the way across town.

What sets the Metropole apart?

I think a number of things. One of my criteria working with the architects [RTKL] is that I want all of the units to have some kind of ‘wow factor.’ There are lots of units with 18 foot ceilings or floor to ceiling glass – lots of very exciting space. We were fortunate to be able to negotiate a contract with Vida for a major fitness facility in the building, which obviously in today’s world is something that people are interested in. We put 70 extra parking spaces into the building that will be available to the public, but will also be available to residents if there mother-in-law comes for a stay.

Lastly, I’d say that the architecture of the building is more dramatic than most others. If you look down the north side of P Street, there are 4 new buildings. We built the 2 buildings on the west and the east end of the block and if you look at the architecture, I think it’s more exciting. Higher end finishes and higher end materials.

What is your take on the current crunch that the housing market is undergoing?

I think it has two ways in which it affects us. One is that across the board for buyers of everything – whether it’s housing or corporate financing or whatever – money is more difficult to obtain. Therefore, lending criteria are more difficult and it strains some buyers. Many buyers have equity from previous homes and have no problem with it, but clearly, the credit crunch is a factor certainly for first time home buyers and people with poorer credit.

Secondly, the overall real estate and general economic news just makes everybody nervous and causes them to pause. The fact of the matter is that if you look at the DC condominium market, there are no more than 2 or 3 projects at most that we would consider to be comparable to our own without really looking at significant compromises on location or finishes. There’s really a very, very limited supply. It’s not like New York where there’s 25 buildings or even 50 that you could look at. In Washington, if you’re planning on living in a really high quality building, there’s really only 2 or 3 buildings that you can look at.

But the problem we have is that you turn on the nightly news and you hear the generalized problems in the housing market. Housing prices may be continuing to fall in Des Moines, but they did not ever fall in downtown DC. We didn’t lower our prices and I don’t of any high quality product that has either. Yet at the same time, the condominium inventory over the last 18 months has diminished dramatically - both because there continued to be sales and because projects have converted from condominium to rental.

I’ve been through this for 25 years and there is an absolute pattern that occurs every single time. The market gets soft – whether it’s by over-supply or credit crunch or poor economy – and everybody stops building. The market tightens and prices go up. Now whether that occurs in 6 months or 18 months is always hard to predict, but the fact of the matter is that I would bet that 3 years from now – and it could be 6 months from now – that prices go up and they’re going to go up fast. All of the sudden, people are going to say, ‘Whoops, there’s no more supply’ and grab for the last units. Then we’ll go into a 3 year period where there will be no product. Nothing. And people will say, ‘When are you going to build another building?’ And that’s the way the cycle goes.

Do you ever see yourself tackling a Metropolis project outside of the District?

You know, I’ve been asked that question many many times and I always say no. I did a lot of commercial projects in other jurisdictions, but real estate is a very local business –in terms of knowing the markets, knowing the players and knowing products. I’m not a guy who is interested in developing a big company with a big staff, so that we can do this on kind of a formulaic basis. I’d be more inclined to do projects that feel comfortable to me because of my own knowledge base.

I also am – for reasons of global warming and urban sprawl – ultimately an urbanite. I believe that cities are healthier for our planet. I could go to other cities and know nothing about them. I could go to the suburbs and feel like I was contributing to the decline of the planet.

What would consider your proudest accomplishment?

Probably the Metropole and I say that seriously. The earlier buildings I think came out beautifully, but they were, to some degree, learning experiences. Many of things that I saw in the earlier buildings that I was not as comfortable with we’ve now overcome as obstacles. Now I look at the Metropole and it’s a beautiful building. I’m very excited about its delivery in the next couple of weeks.

What is your dream project?

I’m going to contradict everything I just said. I think it would be really exciting to build a skyscraper. What happens when you build a really big building like that is – because of the magnitude and scale of it – you can put all sorts of amenities in it. A thousand unit complex can afford to support many more amenities. I’ve always been much more excited by big projects.

But that is going to be impossible to do on 14^th Street. I do have some future projects, but they’re going to be on the same scale as we’ve worked on so far.

Industry Insight: Architect Phil Esocoff

Responsible for the design of Capitol Hill's Senate Square, the ballpark area's Onyx, the Whitman, and the Historic Greyhound Station at 1100 New York Avenue, NW, Phil Esocoff, Principal of Esocoff and Associates, is as creative in person as his buildings are in presentation. With an office full of architects quietly scheming and tracing the next building, about which everyone will have something to say, Phil Esocoff agreed to talk about urban design, bricks, and which buildings he would invite to dinner. 

When did you become interested in architecture? 

Esocoff: When I was in 5th grade there was a photograph of the Guggenheim in my weekly reader and I made my parents take me to see the building, that’s when I decided I wanted to be an architect. 

What do you think urban architecture should achieve? 

Esocoff: I think the term would be genus loci, the idea of it being rooted in the place and time and the culture of the place. It’s what makes the world interesting. If you’re traveling to a place, you don’t want to find the place you left, you want to find something new. And it’s great to have architecture grow out of that. It could be climate, craft, and traditions. Certainly in history architecture has been based on the materials that have been available, whether its wood and you have wooden architecture or stone and stone architecture. So when you go back and think of history you find that brick came from local clay and depending on what materials you have for fuel, that changes the color or outcome of the brick. So unbeknownst to a lot of people today, our regional architecture has always been very much affected by what was available at the time. Whether it’s a sod house on the plains or log cabin somewhere. It’s like we don’t realize milk doesn’t come from a bottle, it comes from a cow. 

So how would you describe your style? 

Esocoff: It’s not a style, it’s probably more like an aesthetic that comes from looking for some discovery of what the purpose of the building is, what’s the technology used to build, and what’s going to make it last a long time. I like buildings that will get better over time like good wines. There is a quote that says, “Finishing ends construction, then weathering constructs the finishes.” And so it's that softening that limestone or brick gets as it collects residue. 

Are there buildings in DC that come to mind when you think of structures getting better over time? Esocoff: Federal Triangle looks better now than it probably did when it was brand new. That concept is also something I have in mind for my Canterbury project.

What’s been your favorite project that you’ve designed?

Esocoff: I would say that my longtime favorite is the one I did at 2401 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW before I started this firm. There are flags on top and little brackets that hold the canopies that are donkeys and elephants. You couldn't do that anywhere else. It is so perfect for where it is. 

What is your favorite building in DC? 

Esocoff: (Laughs) thats a hard question. For interior, it's hard to beat the Library of Congress. My favorite building is 518 C Street, NE. It's a small office building that Amy (Weinstein, also his wife) did in Stanton Park. 

What are some of the projects that you have coming up? 

Esocoff: We have several and they are all exciting, really the ones nearing completion are the Dumont at 4th and Mass, that’s 401 and 425 Mass Avenue and there is also the Onyx by the ballpark. Still being designed is Marina View in Southwest. That’s exciting because we are renovating I.M. Pei buildings from 1962, and in some cases following original design drawings that were somewhat badly engineered, so we are trying to bring it a little closer to what the original design intent was, but also use double glazing for energy reasons. The exciting part is we've hired the original landscape architecture firm to come back and redo the garden between the two buildings and update it in light of contemporary understandings of good urban designs. There is an author – Oscar Newman who wrote Defensible Space. And he said there should be a clear definition of ownership and responsibility for space. Public space especially, helps give some quality to the urban realm, so people aren’t in this kind of ambiguous relationship with it. So in this case, we're opening up a place that will be open to the public during the day with established east-west routes through the site that are clearly inviting to the public. They will be able to go east-west through this superblock that was established so they can get through to the Metro. We are trying to re-establish the pedestrian circulation that used to flow through here. So while the street isn’t being re-opened, people can traverse the site on attractive circulation paths. 

Do you tend to prefer historical projects like that one, or ground-up design? 

Esocoff: Almost all of my projects are ground up, we haven’t done too many actual renovations. We did one at the Chilean Embassy on Mass Ave, where we put things back in order that had been changed. You wouldn’t call it a real restoration but we mitigated some renovations of the past so that if in the future they want to do a full blown renovation, they can. We tried to do a respectful renovation The Pei buildings are really going to set a standard for contemporary design and how you renovate a building from the 1960s, that's not even 50 years old. That project went through an informal process with the HPRB to almost set a standard for how buildings in that area of the city are renovated - what would be the philosophical approach to dealing with the buildings and the spaces there in a way that kept the baby but threw out the bath water. One of the things with the 60's is they threw out baby and bath water, so if you want to learn from history, you have to take a more circumspect view of what our

predecessors did and not just throw it out wholesale which is what they did in a way. They erased the street grid as though the street grid that had worked for 200 years was somehow a mistake. There was no mistake in the layout of the street grid. There was no need to have done that. It was a misguided idea of super block planning and wholesale destruction of historic fabric that we wouldn’t do today. In a way, if we went in there and started tearing down old buildings, we wouldn’t have learned anything from what they did, because some of these buildings have character – they are historic artifacts for good or ill and if somehow they can be retained and adaptively reused in a respectful way for what qualities they do have, that’s actually better than just doing the same thing they did.

What is your view of the architect's role in the PUD process? 

Esocoff: Well we look at the zoning and look at the description of the site. We look at what the surrounding context is, in other words - what would be the best front door for the project - is it on a boulevard, what should the address be. Whats the best way to present the building? It's funny that we've slipped into this idea that planning is a restriction on peoples' rights to plan economically. Somehow people have forgotten that planning can add value to land by setting up rules that people can use then to plan accordingly. It is the opposite of Tyson's Corner where everyone could do what they wanted, but the net value there is probably less than if you took the same square footage starting in the center of Farragut Square and worked your way out. If you applied DC's plan to Tyson's Corner, you might have more real estate value. So what do we do? We look at the context and we look at very basic things like where the front door is, where the parking entrance should be and where the loading dock will be. Those things have to be dealt with very early on. That stuff sounds very prosaic but its really the foundation of it. It no more prosaic than saying, "Here are the boundaries of the site, plan within them". So you look at that and then I guess what we developed was kind of a philosophical attitude about what good urban architecture is in the context of the District's plan. The District is interesting as a plan because it has very wide streets and its streets are so wide that in other cities you could almost put a park in the middle of the street. So it is really incumbent upon the people building here to build to the property line for a good portion of the facade and define public space by project initiative. In some ways its very much a description of the underlying premise for our political system or our political culture – people are free to do what they want, but if they live up to certain civic responsibilities, we are all the better for it. You will then get a sense of an urban space that is a linear park that runs for miles. If you think about some of the streets in the city, they are about 150 to 160 feet wide. Essentially, you have space that is wider than a football field that runs for miles and it’s ironic that citizens or lots of people in district will sometime object to buildings because they say they will use up too much space. 

We have a lot of undefined, two dimensional areas. I would say that one of our problems is that if you really look at all of our spaces, they aren't developed nearly as well and don't have the texture and usability as any number of spaces in Paris, for example. It is also unfortunate that not everyone thinks you should have to take care of your part of the public realm just as a voluntary exercise. In the BIDs, it's different, but you'll see sometimes the area between the curb and sidewalk that is barren or full of broken glass and dirt and no one feels that they have to take care of that. The BIDs have done a lot though. I would also say that it's unfortunate that more thought isn't given to the facades of buildings. Each developer should think of how their project affects the view from the building across the street. Not just in a brochure, but in terms of selling office space and looking across at non-public elevation. I can't help but think that a lot of real estate value is incinerated. If you're stuck with an office on an alley looking at bland facades and boring window patterns, and that space could be courts from the center of the block that are quiet and attractive and secondary exposures, and not just the back of a building. (Laughs) It's almost like each developer should pay the developer on the other side. You don’t get to see your own, you see the one across the street and you don’t get money for that office space.

How do height restrictions affect your work? 

Esocoff: I like to think of heights in the District as a schedule of heights and based on what I said about defining public space, they have to do with what the original planners thought the right height would be for the width of the streets to create a boulevard. The analogy I think of is the big room upstairs in the Renwick Gallery where pictures are hung three or four pictures high. And out streets are small galleries and you look up into windows and see different slices of lights. The windows are like picture frames. Its like you are in this public room and the walls are the facades, and if everyone builds a certain amount, it will be a nice picture gallery. I think the restrictions are a good thing. It means you’ve got this kind of nice coherence. because unlike other cities, in DC its a little bit like you took a waffle iron and poured in a batter called "highest and best use" and slammed the lid down and it squeezed out. Washington from the air seems to have this grid and diagonal boulevard system that looks like a waffle pattern. It's very satisfying that now, 200 years later, you cant stand on Dupont Circle and look down clearly defined streets. The Constitution allows people to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but in buildings, you don’t see a lot of that. To fully express the underlying value of society, each building should be self expressive. You've been given this freedom to go up to a certain elevation and the fact that some buildings sit there mutely is kind of disappointing. People do a lot of excruciatingly boring things and say if that if they could have gone higher, it would have been more exciting and I don't believe that. I like buildings like Gaudi's buidings – no one looks at them and says, "too bad they aren’t sky scrapers." But people go down streets in DC and think its a problem that there is a height limit. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "the problem, dear Brutus, is not in our height limit, but in ourselves." What I like is that you can take time to lovingly design each inch of the façade. Its not like there are six stories out of view; people get to see it all. People get to see what your doing. People see every square inch and that’s fun to work on. If a city is an expression of our culture, you have to be able to say what you think about that. 

What are some of the other architecture firms that you admire? 

Esocoff: My favorite architect from the District is Amy Weinstein, although I guess the disclaimer is, she's my wife (laughs). She is now starting up again as the Weinstein Studio within Esocoff and Associates, and she has a project on Capitol Hill, the Eastern Market Metro Plaza, its an urban design scheme that she is going to make sing. We are also collaborating in a way on the Wardman West for JBG in Woodley Park, just west of Wardman Park Tower. I think it will set a new standard for DC buildings. Some of the architects I like are Mark McInturff, Bob Kearney, and certainly Shalom's (Shalom Baranes) work is consistently excellent as is Bonstra Haresign's. They do tight brickwork that I really like. I could go on and on about brick, but what I like about their work, is the nice sculptural clarity. I don’t think our predecessors wanted us to keep doing the same thing. Just being different for the sake of being different and not building on the past is not much of an accomplishment. 

Who are some past architects that have inspired you? 

Esocoff: There are a lot – I think Louis Kahn, he used a lot of brick too, he taught at Penn when I was there. There was always this underlying meaning in what he was doing. 

It seems like you have a thing for brick.

Esocoff: Well its Kahn and it's something you can work with – what else can you make buildings out of? There is stone like we did for 1100 New York Ave (NW). But I guess it's because a lot of projects I have worked on have been in neighborhoods and in budget levels where brick seemed like the right material. There is a lot of expressive value in it. I think you have a role in the world, you're not alone and its nice there there is material that you can use to provide some meaningful work for other people. I think we have some great craftsman in the world and if we also have great drawings, I believe that they will always rise to the task and build a new design. That is based on my experience in my last thirty years in DC. We believe they will do a great job, and they always do. All these people have a heart and soul and want to do something meaningful. 

How would you change the development process for the better? 

Esocoff: I think there needs to be more of a sense of self respect. I think a lot of people don’t take this seriously. I think every site I work on is the most important in the world, and each developer should think that too, because the communities that developments are in think that. There needs to be better public discussion among community groups and government. That has taken a dramatic turn thanks to Mayor Williams. Since his administration there has been a renaissance in the Office of Planning, but I think there still needs to be more public discussion about what makes DC special. There isn’t a lot of discussion of what architecture goes with that plan. When I look at buildings I think about having a party and each building coming to it. You look at the building and think, "would you want that building to come to dinner?" If it looks uptight, you say, "no", or if it looks like it chews with its mouth open, that's probably my building (laughs), but if it looks like it has a story to tell, then you want to learn more about it.

Washington DC commercial real estate news

Industry Insight: Neil Albert on DC Development

He may not get microphone time at every press conference or a pair of scissors at every ribbon cutting, but Neil Albert, Washington DC's Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, keeps busy as the man behind the curtain for development in DC. Despite a schedule kept full by the 10,000 new affordable housing units he has been charged with creating in his first four years, Albert made time to sit with DCMud to discuss the latest RFPs, affordable housing, and why he thinks DC can shed its monumental, federal skin and become an full-fledged international city. 

You went from working with the previous Mayor as Deputy Mayor for Children and Families to the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. How did you get into development? 

Albert: I started in finance and headed a nonprofit in New York. I was interested in parlaying that expertise into development on a small scale. I had the opportunity to really get into development when I was Parks director; a large part of what I did was real estate development. We built a number of recreational facilities in the city, including the first LEED-certified facility in DC. I then became Deputy Mayor of Children Youth and Families because that portfolio was one of the ones that needed a little shaking up and focus and energy. The former mayor asked me to do it and I did it for a year. Then I went into the private sector and started a nonprofit working with DC schools in professional development and bricks and mortar actually building new schools. I’ve always had a real estate finance focus throughout my career. When the mayor-elect asked me to join his administration in this role, I thought it was a great opportunity to put what I’ve been doing together. What I do is not just about financial real estate development, but there is a human component to what we do. A major part is the New Communities portfolio, the human capital – HOPE VI-type developments. We’ll be removing a lot of traditional government subsidized housing to create more mixed income housing. Part of that is changing psyche, the mindsets; preparing them to be able to write a red check, go to work every day like everybody else.

Speaking of subsidized housing, the bar for the amount of subsidized housing private developers must provide is being raised from 20-30 percent. On what basis was that decision made? 

Albert: That decision was made before us. When the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation was dissolved, the Council adopted legislation that required the affordable housing component - that’s the majority of what my office works on. By default, it has become standard here. 

How does that play into some of the other new developments the city has issued RFPs for - in which the city asked for 30 percent but is not doing the workforce housing? It’s like the city is focusing on lower income development. 

Albert: The mayor made a real commitment to affordable housing when he was elected and we are committed to building over 10,000 units in the first four years at different AMI levels, so all RFPs have the 30 percent requirement and our language is pretty general because we want to make sure that we achieve affordable housing levels without paying unnecessarily for it. And so what drives affordable housing in mixed-income developments is having market-rate housing that can actually subsidize lower income housing without having to come to the District government for subsidies. We want true diversity in housing. Whether it’s Hill East, Poplar Point, 5th and I, including the affordable component is necessary to have the correct mix. 

These are perhaps not the best times for condo builders. How does that play into the marketability of a project during difficult times? Albert: I don’t know if it makes it more difficult. From our experience, in the last few years, the development community has embraced not necessarily the 30-30-30 mix, but at least the 30 percent affordable component. City Vista is an example, and I think that’s kind of what’s driving that project being sold. It came on line at a time when the condo markets were going in the wrong direction, so having twenty percent of the units as affordable provided some stability. The market on the affordable level was much greater than the market than on market-rate level. The results and feedback from the development community have been positive. Yes, people like to make as much profit as possible, but we have to balance their need for the highest return with the broader city policy and goals for providing affordable housing. 

You referenced City Vista and other projects that have an affordable housing element. Some developers have told us that they are having some difficulty finding qualified people and actually bringing them to the table, that this makes their job more difficult. Have you ever studied that?

Albert: I would say they need to try a little harder. We can do a better job as a government, having a central repository database, which we are working on. I know the city Council actually passed legislation that will require a sort of central registry for those interested in taking advantage of affordable housing projects. In some cases it’s about us doing a better job preparing applicants; it’s a huge education process that needs to go into preparing people for home ownership. You can’t just get up one day and decide to be a home owner. When you buy a condo, pay the fees, have to abide by the rules of the condo board or association - you have to have a down payment, some sort of reserve in case the AC breaks and it’s not the condo association’s responsibility - we can do a better job of preparing those in that income category to take advantage of these opportunities. In that case, yes, people have gone to the table and not closed. 

Where did the 10,000 unit figure come from? 

Albert: The 10,000 number came out of a housing task force in the Williams administration, and then-Councilmember Fenty introduced legislation that set up this Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force and they made a recommendation that the city needed to build 55,000 new units of housing over the next ten years to deal with the population increase, special needs housing, etc. And then they broke down some sub categories – 19,000 affordable, and for those affordable units, there were some smaller ranges that included special needs 2,500 units, etc. We wanted to make sure that we could achieve that in a ten year period, so we set a goal of 10,000 in first four years, so with about 2,500 a year we are well on our way to at least funding those projects. We’re not only calling for them, we are providing funding for them through the housing production trust fund and some of the other housing sources available. I am confident that we’re going to make that. 

In terms of your position, you have a huge hand in what happens in terms of development, and development seems very high on Fenty’s list given his appearances at development press conferences. How do you want DC to be perceived from a national standpoint, what are your development goals? 

Albert: We want to truly make a diverse city here, but my opinion is that we have the great opportunity of positioning this city as a great international city on par with Paris and London and Amsterdam. People talk about great cities and I see DC as one of those. We are not on the cusp of that yet, we have a little ways to go, but I think we’ve got the major elements coming together. We have a vibrant downtown, people want to be here, and every vacant office building is being gobbled up by big lobbying firms or law firms or national organizations that need to be near the seat of power. We’ve started to pay attention to our retail. We can now shop in DC, when I came here eight or nine years ago, you couldn’t do that. Now there are good restaurant choices, you have really great options springing up and also good entertainment options. The Washington Post did an article about how DC is no longer a daytime town, it’s becoming a nighttime destination, so you don’t just leave the office canyons and go home to the suburbs, you go to night clubs and restaurants in the central business district. 

What I think will put us on par with some of the mature cities that make a statement both locally and internationally is having kind of the right balance between cultural amenities, which we have a lot of in our museums, but also local cultural amenities like the Spy Museum and Madam Tussaud’s; cultural amenities not just downtown, but also in other neighborhoods. We have lots of theaters and shopping destinations, so that when tourists come, they are not just sleeping in hotels and visiting the Mall, but also getting into the neighborhoods and discovering them. So what I would like us to be known for is raising the bar to be a city on par with a lot of the other international cities. And right now, we kind of lay in the shadow of great U.S. cities, but we are still holding our own. 

How do you see your specific role and interaction with the private development community and with residents of the city - how do you mix the two? 

Albert: I see myself as convener of private sector and the natural community residents who sometimes have needs that complement each other and sometimes oppose each other. In many cases, my role is just to be the arbitrator. Getting the services from the private sector that the residents need, whether it is incentives or bringing offices to neighborhoods so people don’t have to jump into a car to get to work, but can hop one metro stop to another. I really see my role as a convener or facilitator of those communities. I am really concerned about the amount of new jobs we create in the District, I’m happy to say that even while the rest of country is going through a downturn, we are still seeing job growth in DC. Traditionally, you look at the government as the creator of jobs. In the District they still are, but the service industry is also creating new jobs in entertainment, restaurants, retail and the federal government is doing its role by positioning government agencies in the District – the DOT by the ballpark or the ATF building at New York Avenue. They put us in partnership with each other to keep the economy going. Our job is bringing the balance between the haves and the have-nots in DC, so we have the big law and lobby firms and the non-profits and the associations who are squeezed by real estate taxes right now, but that add to the flavor of DC. Instead of them having to relocate to suburbia, we step in and try to provide incentives to keep them here. We are trying to keep a vibrant balance of community within the city. The city has issued a number of development RFPs. When will we see some selections? Albert: 5th and I will be announced soon, and Minnesota- Benning, we are so excited about that project, but we won’t make a selection until August. The developers up for that are City Interest who owns the East River Shopping Center and Parkside, Donatelli Development, and Marshall Heights Community Development Organization which is partnering with Rick Walker who did the Home Depot and Brentwood Shopping Center by the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station. They are all competing for the 600,000 s.f. of developable space. 

And Tenleytown? 

Albert: Tenley is still outstanding; we’ll hopefully have a decision soon. 

Can we ask about MIZ (Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning, requiring most developers to build subsidized units)? Councilmember Graham has been vocal about moving it forward… 

Albert: Yes, the mayor is committed to MIZ, but he wants to do it in a way that doesn’t slow or stop the development of mixed-income housing. My job is to do it right. We are getting comments from a wide cross section of the city including the private sector, affordable housing providers, and advocates. We issued administrative regulations two months ago for comments. We are going to take those comments and reissue a draft of the regulations and put it out for final vetting and hopefully make a decision in the next sixty to ninety days. I also believe that the housing development community will embrace it because I think we’ll do it in a responsible way that’s non-punitive. Then, we’ve been looking across the country to see how this has worked. It’s a mixed bag but it’s going to happen. 

 Finally, developers have told us that they struggle with the amount of information that has to be provided with a PUD and with the amount of time it takes to get approval for projects in DC. What is your response to that? 

Albert: I totally agree. We are working on it; the Office of Planning will be sending suggestions about how to streamline the process in the entire District. The PUD shouldn’t take 18 months anywhere in the world, not to mention the DC area.

Industry Insight: Michael Stevens on the Capitol Riverfront

Two years ago, it occurred to Michael Stevens that the Southeast Riverfront could use a Business Improvement District of its own, rather than being lumped together with that of Capitol Hill. A consultant at the time, Stevens approached property owners, already considering joining the Capitol Hill BID, in what is now the Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District and told them that the area surrounding the incoming Nationals Park had unique development needs.

With the stadium, Department of Transportation, and residential projects popping up around his 1100 New Jersey Avenue office, Stevens, the Capitol Riverfront BID Executive Director, agreed to sit down with DCMud to talk about what's new in Southeast. Stevens discussed how to bring development to a portion of DC formerly associated with housing projects and strip clubs, a river two tires and a soda can past picturesque, and why the Green Line is the new Red Line.

So what, exactly, do BIDs do?

It’s hard to say. They are management organizations that address issues of cleanliness, safety and cleanliness, development, advocacy, community building, infrastructure and transit access. Property owners vote taxes on themselves to get these extra services.

You seem to be in a unique position, as you had a hand in developing the BID. How did you get involved?

I was a consultant and I approached the property owners; they had been approached by the Capitol Hill BID, but the context of the mature Capitol Hill neighborhood was totally different. That is a mature townhouse neighborhood with commercial corridors. This is a twelve-story, high-density, mix of uses that’s going to have access to transportation, infrastructure, parking, and the new ballpark. I approached the property owners and said, “You need a BID here to deal with your very specific issues. You can’t bring the Clean and Safe from Capitol Hill and say, ‘here you’ve done it.’” I told them that this is literally going to be a twelve-story neighborhood versus the two and three stories of Capitol Hill. The freeway is also a very clear divider both physically and perceptively.

They agreed to that idea and hired me as a consultant over two years ago this month to start pulling together the nuts and bolts of a BID, to meet with property owners to understand the issues and the development dynamic, and that’s when we started understanding how special this place could be. You have a development dynamic that will lead to the creation of a new mixed-use downtown essentially, that many mid-sized cities in America would kill for.

I worked in Memphis for four years, they have 6.5 million s.f. of office space, we will have 15 million, San Antonio is the seventh largest city in America, they have 5.5 million s.f. of office space. We’ll have 9,000 housing units, 800,000-900,000 s.f. of retail space, and 1,200 hotel rooms with four new parks and the Riverwalk Trail. So on 500 acres in this city, we’ll build almost ten percent of the existing office market. I had to start making points of comparison to understand how much stuff will be happening down here and how close it is.

That 15 million s.f. of office space means 95,000 daytime employees. 9,000 housing units means 15-16,000 residents. 900,000 s.f. of retail space is like a mid-sized regional mall, but it will be diffused through the neighborhood and in two mixed-use projects rather than in one building. The 1,200 hotel rooms are in six, 200-room hotels. We have the Marriott of 200 rooms which is already exceeding all of their sales expectations. In our efforts, we try to brand this as an office and business center, as an urban neighborhood, as a retail hotspot, as a tourism destination, and then as a great waterfront and parks environment. This will be a regional destination that embraces the river. We call it our front porch, rather than our back door so we have opportunity to engage and embrace and use river like it’s never been done before.

What is your view for the BID five years from now?

I think you’ll see a lot of the amenities that people are looking for start rolling off. Two parks will have opened, maybe a third, which starts to provide that open spaces system that builds community. You will see a number of restaurants which office tenants want, but that also serve residents. You will also see retail from the Forest City Project. You will see a lot of buildings that are coming out of the ground now, finish and start leasing up, which will add another layer of activity, and then people will start to understand that this is a new neighborhood emerging on the river that it’s not this far away place. In five years you will see a grocery store if not two, and very nice ones on the market, not Safeway or Giant – Whole Foods and Harris Teeter are looking at the area.

You seem to have a lot of green space and green buildings, has that become a branding thing for Southeast?

Oh yes, we have the largest green roof building system on the East Coast in the DOT building. The ballpark is the first LEED certified stadium in the country, we have special standards for tree wells, and they will catch storm water runoff and naturally filter it before going into the Anacostia River. Then Canal Park will be a model of environmental sustainability, it will catch storm water runoff from surrounding blocks, capture, filter, recycle, and reuse the water on sight. We are hoping to capture it on the rooftops of other buildings as well. A lot of that was planned before ballpark. I think the city should be very proud because they were very prescient about area. This is ten years of economic development positioning.

It started in 1998 when NAVSEA (Naval Sea Systems Command) consolidated all the regional operations to the Navy Yard campus and brought 14,000 employees and improvement to the Navy Yard, and that spurred five new buildings in the area to house contractors who worked as part of the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) process. The federal government should be proud. Then you have Mayor Williams who was a visionary guy, then you have the federal government which said, “we want the DOT down here,” and that sent a certain signal and then GSA worked with Norton in the SE federal center and Forest City was awarded development rights to the area, so that was a huge perceptual change. People said, “if Forest City wants to be down here…” Then the Hope VI grant at the Capper Carrollsburg, then the ball park – we even say the ballpark, while catalytic, is just gasoline on the fire. The other major factor in all this, is downtown will be built in four years – Mount Vernon Triangle, NoMa, and us are in competition with each other to capture that growth.

Where Golden Triangle and NoMa have a lot of commercial tenants coming in, it seems that there are a lot of residential projects coming here, how does that affect the BID?

I want to clear that up. We’ve had a lot of tenants come here. We have the 2 million s.f. Department of Transportation with 6,000 employees. That is bigger than ATF. There are 14,000 employees in the Navy Yard campus and 12,000 contractors associated with the navy yard campus. Plus we have the William C. Smith Headquarters, Parsons Engineering is coming… So we have around 27,000 employees, I don’t think there are that many in NoMa. So we’ve done pretty well from an office tenant standpoint, and were much farther along in the development cycle for residential. It’s the proximity to the river, to Capitol Hill, to the ball park, and what’s in the pipeline here for new parks that will support a lot of community development. We definitely consider ourselves a mixed-use neighborhood. And Golden Triangle, downtown, Capitol Hill are mature districts compared to NoMa, Mount Vernon Triangle, and us. The younger BIDS confront similar challenges.

What kind of input do the current residents and all those future residents and companies have in the BID and what is their role?

There aren’t a lot of residents yet, there are about 1,000 in the BID’s area, with 2,000 units under construction. Some will roll off this summer. Over the period of a year, we met with the Capitol Hill Co-op, the DCHA that’s building on the old Capper Carrollsburg site, and we met with all property owners individually and collectively. We have quarterly meetings with owners to say, “Here are the issues, lets prioritize, and go over the BID tax leading up to filing.” We have had enormous public input and since then, we have created a Board of Directors of twenty-one voting members, of property owners, and five at-large non tax-paying community stake holders. We have an extensive committee structure that supports the actions of that board.

You mentioned the Capper Carrollsburg project. What are your expectations for that?

It will be an instant neighborhood over the next five years. It was such a transformation of this area when they tore down the really bad public housing. It was a perceptual and physical change that was instantaneous, our crime rates went way down, the bad housing was eliminated, and people started to see what could happen with rebuilding. We will double the number of housing units to 1,550. What’s also good is that it introduces, instead of just having a consolidation of affordable or low income families in one complex, this will be a blended income strategy that introduces different economic levels, home ownership versus leasing, and the 350 townhouses will be fantastic. We are creating higher density units.

Do you think there will be a time when, after a baseball game, you will say, “Hey kids, want to go hang out by the Anacostia waterfront”?

Absolutely – next season, next spring. The bike trail has come to the 11th Street Bridge. We will bring it under the bridge to tie it into the already built Navy Yard section. Next year the Riverfront Park will be done. In fall 2009, Yards Park opens, and that will be five acres, then Diamond Teague Park will open that spring.

How do you think that infrastructure will continue to evolve? It seems that now the Capital Waterfront area is a place to which you take the metro to the ballpark for a few hours and then leave, but that kind of transit puts a strain on infrastructure in terms of driving and the Metro.

I’d say sixty-five percent of ballpark patrons are Metro-riders. I think it has worked fairly well, I know that people have said they have waited for two and three trains, but I think Metro is learning and that they add more cars and increase frequency. The parking lots have only been half and a quarter full – that’s fantastic!

How do the BIDs work together, what is the communication between them?

We have a BID council that meets every six weeks, there are eight bids, we are newest. We’ve been up and running for almost a year. NoMa preceded us by about 3 months and Liz (Price) has done a great job. We all collaborate because we have issues of commonality, infrastructure, and transit accessibility. We think there might be maybe one central employment pool for all of the BID Clean and Safe teams, that we will purchase goods together, but for now, we advocate together, do strategic planning together, and look at how we can do things better. We share what we are doing. It’s very good company.

How does the budget work?

Our budget is about $1.4 million and it’s all through BID tax, although we do accept contributions or sponsorships. We have a several-layer BID tax. There is a formula all the way down, first we tax unimproved land, or buildings under 15,000 s.f. It’s twelve cents per $100 dollars of value, ... Then we realized that there were land uses that didn’t put as much demand on service – public storage, industrial uses, so that is also taxed differently.

Can you explain the Clean and Safe idea you have been mentioning?

BIDs were started forty years ago when downtowns across America were experiencing declines and were dirty and dangerous and experiencing an exodus of retail and office to the suburbs. BIDs were created as management organizations to provide additional services to what municipalities were willing to do in the financially strained time. Property owners essentially voted taxes upon themselves, beyond what the city does. They taxed to get a pool of money to improve geographic area.

One of the first things to come out of that was Clean and Safe teams. They are men and women in uniform with pans and broom, power washers, and street sweeps who work to make the areas as clean as possible. It is streetscape improvement. The safe part consists of Hospitality Safety Ambassadors, men and women in uniform on patrol at street corners, by Metro stations, handing out information, and answering questions, so visitors have someone to talk to. They can also intercede in aggressive panhandling and notify the appropriate service.

We’ll expand to weekend service, now they work from about 7:30 am to 4:30 in the afternoon. We want the most impactful services on employment days. As we add more residential units, we will add weekend services. One-third of our budget goes to the clean and safe teams.

You’ve had a big year with the Nationals Park opening, how has it been working with the Lerners and the sports industry?

The ballpark has run very smoothly, each game is an opportunity for 20,000 -40,000 fans to come and see a new neighborhood being built on the river, the Lerners have been good partners with us. They are on our board of directors, the Sports Commission is on board as an at-large member (not voting). They run a thirty second video on our BID before every home game. That clip really starts to position in peoples’ minds that this is the Capitol Riverfront and that it’s a new neighborhood being built around the new ball park. People are astounded when they come down here – its fifty years of overlooking an area of the city that has now caught fire and is, we think, farther along in its development cycle than Penn Quarter was when the MCI Arena opened. We think the ballpark will have a similar catalytic effect.

With all of these deliveries approaching and all of the development going on, what has been your greatest accomplishment?

I would say getting a BID started with a board of directors and staff and the Clean and Safe Team, also, one of the first big accomplishments as a BID was getting a special assessment district created in concert with the Deputy Mayor. We realized that this development could not be supported by the current infrastructure and so we had to rebuild it all in concert with the DOT five-street reconstruction.

How would you change the overall development process of DC?

I think I’d streamline the development review process to make it more predictable and less time consuming. I don’t think its predictable, I think it takes much longer than developers anticipate, so they incur enormous interim financing costs. What would take three years in another city could take nine here. The city also needs to fix infrastructure – across the board in the United States, we are facing massive infrastructure issues – we have realized how woefully underfunded our infrastructure is in cities across the country. We need to improve mass transit, water, and sewer. Those are the huge pieces. Here we are trying to create mass transit options beyond what we have. We are thinking about streetcars and light rails, we were predicted to have street car across the 11th Street Bridge that would tie into M Street and connect Southeast and Southwest and then head up 7th Street to downtown.

Is there a timeline or is it just an idea?

I think it is conceptual because there isn’t funding for it yet. All of this is driven by funding. We could see the light rail, best case scenario, in five to seven years, worst case, ten to fifteen years. Its more than just funding though, its engineering, acquisitions, relocating utilities, then building.

What is the timeline on Florida Rock?

It was just in the paper last week that they their PUD has been approved and they are waiting on architectural approvals, but now they are talking about whether they want to build or just sell the land.







How does their decision and development affect the BID?

If they build, the quicker they do, the quicker revenue goes up for us, it is a key piece of waterfront linkage but also the front yard to the ballpark. A lot of people don’t like it, it doesn’t bother me, it’s the industrial heritage of the area.

How are some of the other developments in the area coming along like Half Street and JPI’s three buildings?

For Half Street, Monument and Akridge are going to negotiate before court, so someone will be made whole and we hope that happens over the summer. JPI’s 70 I Street opens this month, 100 I Street will open in July, 909 New Jersey will open in summer 2009. Those are said to be the fastest selling projects in DC. Then, Velocity Condos open in spring 2009, Faison’s 265 units open this summer as well, in August. 100 M, which is adjacent to Faison, will finish in September, Parsons Engineering in January, and 1015 Half Street is their second building and I hope the Department of Agriculture will choose that as their new site.

William C. Smith has two tracts here and we pitched to NPR to come too, but they chose NoMa because it’s on the Red Line. We said, “you have 175,000 cars on a daily basis, unimpeded views of the Capitol, and you’re in the Riverfront district!” There is such urban walkability here.

How many people do you have on staff?

In terms of staff, there are three of us with a fourth coming later this month. We are fairly small, but growing.

How do you guys go about getting your message out?

We’ve had numerous articles in the press over the past year: NY Times, Washington Times, Washington Post, On Site Magazine for The Washington Business Journal, Landscape Architecture Magazine, Luxury Condo, DC Modern Luxury, Washingtonian.

We like to say, “NoMa’s had a good month of publicity; we’ve had ten years of publicity.” We use our website; we’ve done forty to fifty presentations on the BID to the public. You’re going to have ups and downs of media coverage. Our property’s owners aren’t as aggressive in shouting that they have a Harris Teeter coming as other places. It’s about tours to the brokerage, public presentations, media coverage, website, publications, and community events. We were part of a boat tour with 430 Brokers, we went by riverfront sites and each of us got a chance to talk about our sites. We are on the Real Tour on the 19th.