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May 9, 2005
Jemal's land sale signals NoMa is gaining ground
A Northeast D.C. neighborhood has arrived.
And Doug Jemal is hosting its coming-out party. Douglas Development is selling more
than 6 acres of undeveloped land in the North of Massachusetts Avenue (NoMa) area.
Though it seems that the property would offer a perfect opportunity for Douglas Development,
which prides itself on transforming fringe neighborhoods into destination points,
NoMa has turned the corner in the developer's view.
"NoMa isn't what it was when I got there with the Peoples Drug Store," Jemal says.
In 2000, Douglas Development (www.douglasdevelop ment.com) renovated a Peoples Drug
warehouse into a 350,000-square-foot office building at 64 New York Ave., which houses
a couple of D.C. government agencies and the U.S. Department of Transportation. That,
along with the landing of XM Satellite Radio in the neighborhood, kick-started commercial
developer interest in the area.
Jemal's parcel -- which is being marketed by Cassidy & Pinkard's Bill Collins
and Jayne Shister -- is zoned for commercial, retail or residential, essentially giving
the buyer a blank slate.
In fact, NoMa is ready for about 16 million square feet of new development, and much
of it is aligned in large swaths. So, several large property owners with rights to
build more than 1 million square feet on their plots are trying to decide how to fill
in those prospective blank slates.
D.C.-based Akridge (www.akridge.com) is mulling over its options for land at 100 M
St. NE that's zoned for 2 million square feet of development. Negotiations with apartment
developer Archstone-Smith recently fell through, leaving Akridge to determine how
to slice the land between office and residential uses.
J Street Development (www.jstreetdevelopment.com) is in a similar situation, though
on a smaller scale. The D.C. real estate company has development rights for 1.1 million
square feet at 60 L St. NE, where it plans to have a combination of office, retail
and residential on what is now a parking lot.
While some are deciding what to build, others are putting up new offices without a
lead tenant.
San Francisco-based Bristol Group made up its mind early to redevelop One NoMa Station
on spec. The $800 million project will have a 1.8 million-square-foot office campus.
The future location of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives headquarters
near First and H Streets NE has many believing NoMa will be a draw for city and federal
tenants rather than corporations or law firms. But forecasting the government's need
for space in two years is not an exact science. And other kinds of development continue
to shape the landscape.
"We've been surprised at the demand for residential," says Joe Doran, vice president
of D.C.-based Stephen A. Goldberg Co. "The opening of the Metro got a lot of attention."
A few months after the November opening of the New York Avenue Metro station, Goldberg
started developing Capitol Plaza, a 1.7 million-square-foot project at First and M
streets NE. It broke ground on Phase I, a 292,000- square-foot spec building being
marketed to the federal government.
"It is the only area in the city that has an opportunity right now where you don't
have missing teeth -- new buildings with ugly, old buildings in between," Doran says.
"The entire neighborhood is going up at once."
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