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February 7, 2005
Another Million s.f. Slated for Nascent NoMa Area
Like the recently opened New York Avenue Metro station wasn't popular enough.
A joint venture between J Street Development and Fidelity Investments is ready to
break ground on a 1.1 million-squarefoot development at 60 L St. NE.
The J Street venture bought the property, now a parking lot, for more than $34 million
from a partnership led by the Viennabased Penrose Group (www.penrosegroup.com).
A final plan for the site is not in place, but J Street Principal Peter Farrell says
the mix likely will include office, retail and residential components.
The project will fit right in with several developments already under way in the awakening
Northeast neighborhood. As the city's traditional business locations have become crowded,
developers have eyed the North of Massachusetts Avenue area, or NoMa, for more room.
"Bruce [Baschuk] and I had been looking at NoMa since we created the partnership,"
says Farrell, who started J Street with Baschuk in December. "Development will head
north before it heads south."
District-based J Street (www.jstreetdevelopment.com) will start work on the site before
April, he says. The company has been working with an architecture firm on the site
plan but has yet to hire a firm for the design work. A general contractor still has
to be selected as well.
But all that should happen soon; J Street is eager to get to work.
"For us, we believe that the timing of the maturation of that neighborhood is more
imminent" than other burgeoning sections of D.C., Farrell says. "We saw the development
of the city taking place, and we thought this was a project we could get to quickly."
Several local real estate developers -- including Akridge, Greenebaum and Rose Associates,
and Cohen Cos. -- have been vocally bullish on NoMa as the logical place for development
as business spills out of the East End.
"It's the next wave, and it's very obvious now," says Ed Gilpin, vice president of
real estate brokerage Lincoln Property.
The neighborhood got a boost in 2001 when then-new XM Satellite Radio decided to put
its headquarters in the neighborhood. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives now is coming in 2006.
"Basically," Gilpin says, "life is being brought to that market."
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