Showing posts with label KTGY Group. Show all posts
Showing posts with label KTGY Group. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The Crimson on Glebe Set to Break Ground

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Crimson Partners, Arlington Virginia retail for lease, apartment building
Having gained unanimous approval from the Arlington County Board back in May, The Crimson on Glebe, Crimson Partners' six-story 165-unit apartment building at 650 N. Glebe Road, across from Ballston Commons Mall, faces a clear runway toward construction.

Arlington Virginia commercial real estate news"We were approved for 165 apartments, so now we're working through the last of the permitting, " says Christian Chambers, Managing Partner at Crimson.  "We're going to break ground in January of next year."

The Crimson will also feature approximately 2,200 s.f. of ground floor retail space along Glebe Road; however, no decisions have been made yet as to a potential tenant.  "With this amount of retail space, we'll probably wait until closer to delivery before we sign someone in there," says Chambers.

Crimson on Glebe, Ballston commercial real estate

The site, formerly a Goodyear tire store, is located on one of the area's longest blocks, and developers, as part of an agreement with the County, have agreed to build a 220-foot extension of North Tazewell Street at the rear of the property to ease resident access without disrupting traffic on Glebe.  Developers also secured increased density for the building (which was originally five stories) by agreeing to build to LEED Silver standards, and by contributing a half million dollars to the county's Affordable Housing Investment fund, $75,000 to the public art fund, and $42,000 to the utility fund.

KTGY Group, Arlington Virginia commercial property designFor all those concessions, developers get to build a mixed-use building along one of the busiest stretches of Glebe Road, just a third of a mile from the metro, in the heart of commercial Arlington, at a time when the area is just starting to transition from an auto-centric area of strip malls, surface parking lots, and office buildings (a previously approved site plan, dating from 1989, was for a four-story office building) to a more pedestrian-friendly vision of shops, restaurants, and apartments.  This Janus-faced transitional moment is perhaps best summed up by developers' agreement to, on one hand, "encourage residents and retail tenants to live and work car-free," while on the other still providing 164 below-grade parking spaces.  The plan also calls for additional street trees along both frontages, as well as dramatically widened sidewalks.


The L-shaped, KTGY Group-designed building will feature a small internal courtyard for residents, and a varied facade of neutral-toned brick, laminate cladding, metal panels, and manufactured stone and glass, with a residential entrance and lobby along North Carlin Springs Road.  The average unit size will be just over 700 s.f.

Crimson Partners and Washington Real Estate Investment (WRIT) acquired the site for $11.8 million in June 2011; construction is expected to cost approximately $43.5 million.  Crimson is also working on the 65-acre Dulles Station project along the toll road.

Arlington, VA real estate development news

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

AvalonBay's "Hipster" Apartment Building Aims for December Move-In

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AvalonBay apartment building in Washington DC, an update on commercial real estate news
Avalon Bay real estate development in Washington DC is the latest commercial property on the H Street corridor
AvalonBay's latest real estate development, the "AVA H Street" apartment building (which is not technically on H Street - it's at 318 I Street, NE) is set to go vertical any day now, a critical milestone for one of the more unique projects in the booming H Street corridor.

"All the dirt's out of the hole, and they're pouring slabs," said Jeff Wood, development manager at AvalonBay. "We're on schedule for first occupancy in December of this year." The building will be entirely residential, with no ground floor retail.
KTGY designs AvalonBay's upcoming apartment building in Washington DC

AVA H Street will offer 140 rental units of "pretty sick apartments," according to the project's Facebook page. Jonathan B. Cox, Senior Vice President of Development at AvalonBay, previously told DCMud the building would be "more contemporary and a more unique architectural style than what's now on the market." Though he was coy at the time about the architect behind the building, it's since emerged that KTGY Group is spearheading the design, and the latest renderings, with their colorful facades and prominent branding, do indeed look more unique that most of what's on the market right now. Blake Dickson represented Avalon in the purchase.

AvalonBay acquired 318 I Street through a lender sale, after original owner Broadway Development lost the property (as well as the adjacent Senate Square) through foreclosure in 2009. AvalonBay, a Ballston-based real estate investment trust (REIT), has posted huge profits in recent quarters by taking advantage of depressed property values to accumulate parcels, and by catering to a rental market that remains strong due to the flagging economy. A recent Wall Street Journal story described AvalonBay's strategy as "hipsters and suburbia" - and if the H Street NE address wasn't a giveaway, AVA's Facebook postings ("so rad!" "awesome!" "sick!") make it eminently clear that this building targets the former group.

Washington DC retail and real estate construction news, featuring retail for lease
AvalonBay had planned to build two more apartment buildings near the future Tysons West metro station, but that project ground to a halt after county officials' request for transportation improvement funds were deemed too high by AvalonBay management. (They did proceed with another Tysons project, the 354-unit Avalon Park Crest.)

AVA H Street broke ground back in November, and is just one of a dizzying number of projects in the immediate area, the biggest of which is the Steuart Investments mixed-use behemoth. It's hard to believe, when you see the flurry of construction on H Street today, that just a handful of years ago over twenty percent of H Street storefronts were vacant - a rate that has been reduced nearly to zero in less than a decade. And when the long-discussed streetcar is up and running, the boom will kick into another, even higher, gear.

Washington D.C. real estate development news
 

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