Looser parking requirements could encourage more gyms and shops to fill Arlington’s commercial real estate vacancies, the county believes.
The Arlington County Board on Saturday unanimously voted to have staff research possible changes to the Arlington County Zoning Ordinance and advertise requests to amend it. In addition to slashing parking minimums for gyms, the county is considering whether to allow parking lots to designate more spaces for compact cars.
Public hearings about these requirements are scheduled to take place in April. The county argues some of the regulations — set decades ago — may be outdated and an aggravating factor for Arlington’s rising commercial vacancy rate.
For instance, Arlington fitness centers must offer five times more parking spaces per square foot of floor area than other retail or service businesses. This is more restrictive than requirements in Alexandria and Fairfax County and, according to a report, a holdover of transportation patterns from the 1960s.
“The minimum parking ratio for athletic and health clubs is a standard set decades ago and does not reflect current land use and development patterns, public transportation access or regulations in Arlington,” the report says.
County staff noted that many potential office tenants look for nearby fitness facilities when selecting a location. Fitness centers also tend to attract establishments such as spas and physical therapy centers.
“Minimum parking ratios… can derail an athletic or health club from filling high demand, ideally located vacant space,” the report says.
The document also argues that the county should reconsider a 2002 regulation that disallows compact car spaces in areas “that were assumed to have a high turnover.” This includes retail stores, grocery stores and medical and health care facilities, as well as anywhere “where there is likely to be a large number of elderly [people].”
“Staff believes this prohibition is worth reexamining,” the report says.
Finally, another county report argues that loosening off-street parking requirements could help some shopping centers and small commercial sites attract new tenants. It notes that current parking regulations, as well as insufficient shared parking within commercial and mixed-use districts, can create barriers for businesses.
“This is especially true when multiple businesses are required to use the available parking on-site with limited capacity,” the document says. “Expanded shared parking regulations can be an effective measure to help address similar on-site parking deficiencies.”
All of these initiatives are part of a larger effort to combat Arlington’s high commercial vacancy rate. In another bid to boost Arlington’s commercial resiliency, the Board authorized public hearings for April about whether to loosen restrictions on large media screens in outdoor areas.
Later this year, the Board is expected to discuss guidance on office-to-apartment conversions as well as potentially simplifying the major and minor site plan amendment process, which landowners must navigate when repurposing or renovating large development projects.
Within the next several months, Board members are also expected to consider plans to facilitate changes of use within existing buildings and adopt a more flexible ordinance around signage.
Other possible ordinance changes concern storage uses at office buildings as well as the process for repurposing underutilized parking spaces.
Arlington has landed the headquarters of another publicly traded company.
Arlington County and Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Tuesday evening that CoStar Group will be moving its corporate headquarters from D.C. to the Central Place building in Rosslyn. The Washington Business Journal previously reported that the company was nearing a deal to buy the office tower, describing the impending move as “another blow to downtown D.C.”
A total of 650 employees will work from the new HQ at 1201 Wilson Blvd, the county and the governor’s office said. That’s in addition to the more than 1,000 CoStar employees who work in a large “research and data analytics” office in Richmond.
“The decision to relocate the CoStar headquarters to Arlington County reinforces the positive environment state and local leaders have created for business,” state Sen. Barbara Favola said in a statement. “The well-educated workforce, world-class public schools, transit opportunities, and recreational spaces will be welcome assets for CoStar employees.”
CoStar made a splash over the weekend by airing several celebrity-studded commercials for its Homes.com brand during the Super Bowl.
As part of the move, CoStar will receive nearly $5 million in state economic incentives. The company will be paying Arlington County nearly $14 million, meanwhile, for exclusive use of what had previously been a public amenity under the building’s site plan agreement: the “View of D.C.” observation deck.
The space previously charged admission but in 2019 changed to being free to the public. The county says it plans to use the $14 million to accelerate proposed changes to nearby Rosslyn Gateway Park by a decade.
The CoStar Group announcement continues a winning streak for Arlington, which landed Nestle’s U.S. headquarters in 2017, Amazon’s HQ2 in 2018, and the corporate headquarters of Boeing and RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon) in 2022.
An Arlington County press release, below, notes that CoStar employees are expected to work from the office four days a week, “which will add to the vitality of Rosslyn’s ongoing transformation into a mixed-used neighborhood.”
Arlington Economic Development is pleased to announce CoStar Group will move its global headquarters to Rosslyn. CoStar Group, a leading global provider of online real estate marketplaces, information, and analytics in the property markets, has purchased 1201 Wilson Boulevard, a 560,000-square-foot office building known as Central Place Tower, and will move into the location in late 2024. CoStar Group will occupy 150,000 square feet of commercial office space and employ 650 workers in Arlington. Included in the S&P 500 Index and the NASDAQ 100, CoStar Group employs over 6,200 globally and is comprised of notable industry products and online marketplaces covering all aspects of real estate, including CoStar, LoopNet, Apartments.com, Homes.com and STR.
Earlier today, Governor Glenn Youngkin approved a $1.25 million grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to assist Arlington County with this project. The Governor also approved $3.5 million in funds from the Virginia Economic Development Incentive Grant.
“Virginia’s a great choice for a new corporate headquarters location, and we are excited that CoStar Group, a leading provider of online real estate marketplaces, information, and analytics in the property markets, sees the economic advantage in moving to the Commonwealth,” said Governor Glenn Youngkin. “As states compete for business and jobs, the Commonwealth’s diverse, world-class talent, exceptional quality of life and stable business climate continues to stand out. We are proud that CoStar has chosen Virginia as its home.”
“The financially strategic acquisition of this building will provide the perfect home for the more than 500 employees at our current headquarters. We’re incredibly thankful for our 14 years calling Washington, D.C. home, and we will continue to be a part of this community even as we move across the river to Arlington County,” said Andy Florance, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CoStar Group.
“CoStar Group’s move to Arlington is a huge win and a testament to our high quality of life, dynamic urban centers, unparalleled talent pool and business-friendly environment,” said Ryan Touhill, Director, Arlington Economic Development. “CoStar Group’s outright purchase of the building also signifies confidence in our commercial real estate market, which is key to our ongoing efforts to reduce office vacancies.”
Amid closures at The Crossing Clarendon, a few other retail shake-ups may be coming to the shopping center.
Florida-based Regency Centers recently ended leases for menswear clothier Jos. A Bank Clothiers and outdoor outfitter Orvis. Both are now closed and comprise some of the five storefronts listed as “available” or “available soon” on a leasing map.
One new addition will be Corobus Sports, moving into a below-grade spot on the same block as the Container Store and Colony Grill. The reported hockey training facility has a sparse internet presence, though its arrival is teased in a press release about the opening of a hot yoga studio, SoulFire Collective.
Corobus is taking the place of Jumpin’ Joeys, an indoor children’s bounce gym that “never got to take off as they opened soon after COVID restrictions went into place,” Regency Centers communications manager Eric Davidson said.
Meanwhile, two spaces listed as available currently have tenants — but Davidson says Regency is just keeping its options open.
One of the “available” stores is the 27,069-square-foot space home to Barnes & Noble. The bookseller tells ARLnow it has no plans to stop operating there and Regency Centers confirmed that nothing will change, for now.
“We’ve been working on short-term lease renewals with Barnes for a bit and are hoping to keep them in place — we love their new store prototype and are interested in continuing that discussion with them as things progress,” Davidson said.
The national bookseller recently started allowing local managers to make more decisions about store layout and products. Some have undergone renovations while a few new locations have debuted with a more “open” feel, creating places to gather for events and book signings, much like independent bookstores.
The bookseller did not say whether it had plans to experiment with alternative store formats in Clarendon.
After a 15-year slump prompted by the rise of Amazon, Barnes & Noble is making a comeback with a new CEO at the helm who helped turn around sales for the U.K.’s biggest bookseller, Waterstones.
While B&N closed more than 100 stores in the last 15 years, it notched a win in 2022 when it opened more new bookstores in a single year than it had from 2009-19, per a press release. Last year, the bookseller opened about as many stores as it closed, around 30, including one in Reston that was heralded as its largest store to open in the last decade.
The company plans to open more than 50 stores this year.
Another ‘Crossing’ listing teases “great retail coming soon” to a 2,000-square-foot space overlapping with an existing Ann Taylor store. Like the Barnes & Noble space, Davidson says Regency is doing “leasing diligence on a lease extension” — marketing it to prospective tenants just in case, essentially.
The parent company for Ann Taylor, which also owns LOFT, and the parent company of Jos. A Bank Clothiers filed for bankruptcy in 2020, resulting in a wave of closures. The LOFT at The Crossing Clarendon closed in 2022 and is now home to The Golden Fox Boutique, a purveyor of products from women-owned and D.C.-area businesses.
The general manager for The Crossing Clarendon previously told ARLnow that Regency Centers is working to “modernize” the business mix in the shopping center and bring in “new and exciting concepts.”
This shift might be reflected in changes in consumer habits, too.
Traditional workwear is going out of fashion and American consumers — while concerned about inflation and trying to prioritize essentials like baby supplies, gas and food — say they are more apt to splurge selectively, on things like going out to restaurants and bars, according to consumer insights from McKinsey and Company.
Several measures designed to combat Arlington’s persistently high office vacancy rate are slated for discussion next month.
On the table are expanded opportunities for shared and offsite parking, as well as more lenient parking requirements for fitness centers. Officials are also set to consider whether to allow large media screens for outdoor entertainment in some business districts.
The Arlington County Board is scheduled to vote next month on whether to advertise requests to amend Arlington’s zoning ordinance to make these changes. County Manager Mark Schwartz told the Board last week he hopes that these and other ordinance changes can make it easier for Arlington businesses to get started and grow.
“Very often you’ll have a business that, if it could take advantage of parking very near to it, would be able to move ahead,” he said on Tuesday.
Schwartz noted that fitness centers have particularly strict parking requirements.
Large media screens, meanwhile, could assist with “placemaking” in certain commercial business districts. Currently, it’s an exceptionally arduous process to get large outdoor displays approved.
The county also plans to pursue bigger-picture ordinance changes, Schwartz said. Later this year, the Board is expected to discuss guidance on office-to-apartment conversions as well as potentially simplifying the major and minor site plan amendment process, which landowners must navigate when repurposing or renovating large development projects.
Within the next six months, Board members are also expected to consider plans to facilitate change of use within existing buildings and adopt a more flexible ordinance around signage.
Other possible ordinance changes concern storage uses at office buildings as well as the process for converting underutilized parking spaces.
“We promised we’d be coming to you with sort of a regular rhythm of items, and starting next month we will do that,” Schwartz told officials.
Arlington’s office vacancy rate is currently just over 22%, the county manager said — up from 21.5% in October. Arlington Economic Development predicted in October that this number would continue to rise, as about a quarter of Arlington office space is at risk of sustained vacancies.
The county has scrambled to find uses for its office buildings since the pandemic, passing several zoning changes on a compressed community engagement timeline. Recent adjustments allow urban farms, breweries and podcast studios to move into older office buildings without seeking special permissions.
Despite these efforts, a shrinking commercial base has left Arlington residents shouldering a growing portion of the county’s budget. Historically, the commercial and residential tax base split the budget 50-50 but in recent years, this has shifted to a 55-45 split.
Board member Matt de Ferranti last week called office vacancies “a huge challenge” and praised ongoing efforts by county staff.
“I think it is important to reiterate strong support for the direction we are going in,” he said.
Photo via Google Maps
Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring Three Ballston Plaza.
One of Arlington’s only urban farms, Fresh Impact Farms, is continuing to enjoy success catering to the taste buds of high-end D.C. restaurants, from Seven Reasons to Oyster, Oyster.
Founded in 2017, the urban agriculture startup in a strip mall on Langston Blvd has experienced significant growth in the last year. With support from a state grant, it doubled the size of its indoor farm and began reaping the benefits of this expansion last year, says founder Ryan Pierce. As a result, its sales grew rapidly in 2023 — a pattern Pierce says he hopes to continue going into 2024.
“If 2024 goes as well as we hope it’s going to go, we’ll start looking for additional expansion space, with the goal of staying here in Arlington,” he said. “We have rather unique needs for real estate… [and Arlington] keeps us really close to our primary clientele.”
That has been and always will be D.C.’s pioneering chefs in the fine dining scene, who Pierce says are “the first movers in terms of new trends in food.”
This drives Fresh Impact Farms to keep trying out dozens of new and uncommon varieties of edible succulents and herbs as well as different color combinations of rare, edible flowers. Overall, the farm is home to well over 400 varieties of crops, he said.
“We’re always introducing new products,” Pierce said. “That’s something they expect. They’re always asking us, ‘What’s new? What can we get from you that we couldn’t get from you in the summer?’ Half of our job is finding out what we should be growing and then our team has to figure out how to grow it.”
Pushing the boundaries of edible plants requires highly skilled staff, he noted.
Fresh Impact Farms is taking a more modest, or cautious, approach to growth when it comes to adding clients — too many would strain his farm’s production levels — and incorporating new tech.
“There’s always the initial push to make everything as complicated as possible and get as much tech into the farm as possible,” Pierce said. “What we’ve found is that sometimes, the human approach works better. While we automate watering, lighting and climate control, we don’t automate harvest or seeding. For those, we’ve found, it’s better to have a human touch.”
Beyond Fresh Impact Farms, Arlington has one other urban farm, Area 2 Farms, located in a brick industrial building in Green Valley. While neither is in an office building, Arlington County has taken steps to make it easier for urban farmers to begin growing plants in vacant, underused and outdated office spaces by loosening its zoning restrictions.
Like the county, Pierce — who sits on Arlington’s Industrial Development Authority — says he is constantly thinking about how Arlington can fill its office space. Upfront building conversion costs, however, might make it difficult for more farms to take advantage of these looser zoning rules.
“How do you adjust the centralized HVAC to accommodate plants over people? While the temperature and humidity is about the same you’d want it in your house, the systems in which you do that are completely different. It’s a much different challenge than someone people realize,” he said.
The county has to attract new talent and to its credit, is doing so via its Innovation Fund, he said.
“As far as putting farms, that’s a real big challenge,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s one of those things where I want to look for solutions but it doesn’t mean my business is the solution for that particular problem.”
The value of residential properties is up in Arlington, but the torrid growth of past years has slowed.
Arlington County announced today that residential property assessments are up 3.2% for 2024. The overall property assessment growth was 2.5%, with commercial properties up 1.6%. New construction contributed significantly to the overall growth.
The announcement comes as the county starts to mail assessment notices to property owners today. Assessments will also be available online starting at 6 p.m.
Single-family home values rose more than $25,000, on average, according to the county.
“The average single-family property value increased from $798,500 to $824,700,” Arlington County said in a press release. “For 2024, approximately 70 percent of residential property owners saw their assessed value increase while the rest remained unchanged or declined.”
The 3.2% residential assessment growth this year is lower than the 4.5% reported last year, 5.8% in 2022, 5.6% in 2021 and 4.3% in 2020. Inflation last year, meanwhile, just clocked in at 3.4%.
The full press release is below.
Arlington’s office vacancy rate remains high but may be stabilizing after an initial, sharp increase due to Covid remote work policies.
As of the fourth quarter of 2023, the countywide office vacancy rate stands at 24.4%, according to a new report from commercial real estate company Colliers.
Since 2020, Arlington’s overall vacancy rate has risen 4.3% points, per the report, prompted by the pandemic-era shift to remote work and in defiance of return-to-office efforts. The county saw a 3-percentage-point jump between 2020 and 2021 followed by a more modest 1-percentage-point increase over the last year.
“The big story last year was the delivery of Amazon’s HQ2 which drove absorption earlier in the year,” Colliers Research Manager Miles Rodnan tells ARLnow. “Sublet space across the D.C. region has leveled off, which has helped slow down vacancy increases.”
“Additionally, as companies continue to settle into their return-to-office/hybrid policies, the decisions to offload space have been made in many instances,” he continued. “As leases continue to expire, there will be downsizes, but the rate should taper off.”
(Arlington County also tracks its vacancy rate and, notably, it reported a rate hovering around 21.5-22% this fall. This discrepancy may be because the county and Colliers have different numbers for total office buildings and rentable square footage. Graphs tracking rates over time, from the county and Colliers, have similar trend lines.)
At the end of 2023, the Colliers report says vacancy rate was slightly higher for the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, at nearly 25%, than for National Landing — Pentagon City, Crystal City and Potomac Yard — at 24%.
While the difference is marginal, the rate is trending down in National Landing dropping 0.7% point over 2023, while the rate increased 0.8% point on the R-B corridor, the report said.
Compared to National Landing, where all the new office construction was tied to Amazon, the R-B corridor saw more speculative office projects: 3901 Fairfax Drive in Virginia Square, slated for delivery next year, as well as George Mason University’s FUSE at Mason Square building, which will house university programs in addition to private office space.
Overall, however, these projects contribute less than a million square feet of leasable office space. Rodnan says this could be a saving grace, given predictions that vacancy rates will continue to rise.
“A breath of fresh air comes from the restrained construction pipeline, which will hopefully allow vacancy rates to stabilize in the region as negative absorption is still anticipated in the near future,” he said.
Generally, newer office buildings — which real estate analysts dub “Class A” — are attracting tenants who are willing to pay upwards of $2 more per square foot to get out of dated office stock, or so-called “Class B/C” buildings.
This is a trend playing out across the region, Rodnan said, not attributing the submarket-level upticks to any tenants in particular.
Amid the well-established “flight to quality,” Arlington County is working on several initiatives to make it easier to reposition these obsolete buildings from which people are moving.
“The work is cut out for us: zoning needs to become reasonably more flexible and less burdensome,” Arlington County Board Vice-Chair Takis Karantonis said during his New Year remarks this week. “We need to be innovative and courageous in repositioning and reusing obsolete buildings.”
County Board member Matt de Ferranti spelled out what this office vacancy rate means for the county budget.
“We depend on our office vacancy rate, which leads to a lower tax rate than our surrounding localities in northern Northern Virginia,” he said, noting that commercial real estate comprises a greater percentage of Arlington’s budget than that of neighbors.
Either this month or next, Arlington County will learn the extent of the impact of decreased office property values on the expected budget deficit, which is preliminarily projected around $20-$40 million.
“That will be sobering news, or perhaps hopeful news,” de Ferranti said.
Through April, the 2024-25 budget process will address the ongoing challenge of high office vacancies.
“Why is this budget more difficult than our last? Haven’t we known about the work-from-home paradigm shift for two years?” said de Ferranti. “Well, we have, but the office assessment process and that market is based on 5-, 10- and 15-year leases. So this year, we’re seeing the reality come home to us.”
(Updated at 12 p.m. on 10/19/23) County leaders say Arlington is facing a grim future due to its rising office vacancy rate, which now stands at 21.5%.
Arlington is leading the region with its vacancy rate, which works out to 9 million square feet of empty space, according to Arlington Economic Development Director Ryan Touhill. He predicts the vacancy rate will continue climbing, as AED has determined about one-quarter of office buildings are at risk of sustained vacancies.
Compounding the vacancy issues, many leased buildings have space available for sublease and significantly lower rates of people going into the office, according to Arlington Economic Development Commission.
These conditions are set to have serious impacts on Arlington County’s future budgets, with County Board members and County Manager Mark Schwartz already predicting belt-tightening this budget cycle.
Last week, staff told the Arlington County Board about new strategies and policies they are considering to further combat this issue as part of the ongoing Commercial Market Resiliency Initiative. Yesterday (Tuesday), the county’s Economic Development Commission discussed its own recommendations for dealing with these vacancy rates.
That follows several zoning changes made in the last 12 months — on a compressed community engagement timeline — to get emerging businesses into older office buildings by allowing them to operate without seeking special permissions. This includes micro-fulfillment centers, urban farms, breweries, dog boarding facilities, pickleball courts and podcast studios.
Board Chair Christian Dorsey said Arlington is facing a different challenge than it has before.
“This is a little bit different than some of the elevated rates of vacancy that we’ve experienced in the past,” Dorsey said last week.
During the Base Realignment and Closure process, for instance, the office vacancy rate peaked at 20.1% in 2015 after major Department of Defense offices decamped from the county, per the Economic Development Commission.
Arlington managed to bounce back by landing deals with Nestle, Boeing and RTX — formerly Raytheon — Amazon and Microsoft, Dorsey said.
“But this is a little bit different because this is in the midst of a paradigm shift in the commercial market,” he said, pointing to the impacts of remote work. “And then, of course, there’s a market which is in turmoil, with incredibly low valuations and commercial space, which impacts lending and trading.”
With a potentially protracted dip in tax revenue from commercial properties in Arlington, residents will have to pay more for essential services, Touhill said.
“Historically, we’ve had that 50-50 split between our commercial and residential tax base,” he said. “But in recent years, we’ve seen that increase to more of a 55-45 split. And this means that our residents are carrying more of the burden to fund our essential services.”
To weather this storm, the economic development commission, AED and the Dept. of Community Planning, Housing and Development (CPHD) intend to streamline onerous county processes and tackle restrictive ordinances.
One under scrutiny will be the major and minor site plan amendment process, which developers and property owners go through to repurpose or renovate large, existing development projects.
“The site plan process’s length and variability are amongst the biggest impediments to redevelopment,” says the commission, which calls for an expedited process for these types of projects. “As these buildings already exist, all that will change is the building’s use.”
JBG Smith is asking Arlington County to relieve it of restrictions that it says present serious obstacles to putting up new rooftop signs.
The real estate company is specifically asking the county to remove language restricting the number and size of signs allowed on two office buildings in the Crystal Park development it owns in Crystal City. The proposal is set to go before the County Board this Saturday.
Not everyone is comfortable with the language change, however. Two area civic associations told the county that the restrictions should stay, fearing this would pave the way for more signs going forward.
Currently, Crystal Park offices are governed by a document that “ties certain approved signs to specific tenants, some of which no longer occupy the premises, limits installation of rooftop signs to a single, prescribed rooftop sign and contains outdated requirements for approved signs,” land-use attorney Kedrick Whitmore wrote in an application to the county.
This hamstrings JBG Smith, he continues.
“Collectively, these restrictions complicate the ability to re-design existing signage for new tenants and present obstacles to achieving new rooftop signage,” Whitmore wrote.
JBG Smith is requesting the county remove restrictions for Crystal Park 1 and 3 office buildings, located at 2011 Crystal Drive and 2231 Crystal Drive. Instead, it asks the county evaluate new signage only in accordance to the Arlington County Zoning Ordinance.
In 2012, the zoning code was updated, providing new clarifying parameters for signs and only requiring staff review. This change did not apply to a smattering of older developments throughout Arlington governed by more restrictive agreements.
County staff say this change would make it easier for JBG Smith to compete for tenants.
“As commercial buildings mature and market themselves for new tenants, it is imperative that building owners be able to avail themselves of sign permissions available to other similar buildings so as to not place themselves at a competitive disadvantage,” the report said.
The county notes that other building owners have made similar requests and had the support of staff, as this “allow[s] for fair administration of building signage.”
The report says Crystal City and Aurora Highlands civic associations told the county they do not support JBG Smith’s request because it could allow for more signs.
The other reason, leaders told the county, is that the current provisions were decided through negotiated community benefits during the site plan review process.
“The community accepted less in the way of other benefits to limit the number and size of signs, so they believe that changes to allow more signs would not be fair,” the report says.
The county says it found no evidence that the more restrictive language was related to community benefit packages.
“Rather these were common site plan conditions approved in the absence of comprehensive sign provisions of the [zoning ordinance], which are now in place,” the report said.
Eric Cassel, the president of the Crystal City Civic Association, told ARLnow this morning that, as of now, the issue is “relatively minor.”
“JBGS downgraded the proposal significantly and we are not spending resources to oppose it,” he said.
Arlington County expects to accept a handful of major development applications this month, teeing them up for public engagement down the road.
The four pending projects span Pentagon City and Crystal City to the south and Rosslyn and Courthouse to the north.
Apartment buildings figure into all the proposals, though two developers are mulling a mix of office or hotel uses, too. Of those in the queue, two are straightforward, single-phase apartment projects while two are far-afield, multi-phase redevelopments with details still to iron out.
First up, between Rosslyn and Courthouse, sits the future home of an apartment building by D.C.-based developer the Fortis Cos.
Fortis proposes demolishing the existing National Science Teachers Association headquarters at 1840 Wilson Blvd, and surrounding restaurants, to construct an apartment building with 188 units and about 12,000 square feet of retail space. It purchased the properties at the start of this year for $14 million and filed its application, complete with new renderings, this summer.
Next up, in Crystal City, JBG Smith proposes to build a 7-story tower with 370 apartments and about 3,300 square feet of retail or equivalent space on land dubbed Block W, located at 2451 Crystal Drive.
The site is bounded by Crystal Drive, a National Airport access road, and railroad tracks, and is currently home to a gravel parking lot, an off-ramp from the access road and a small, JBG-owned workout park.
The off-ramp would be removed for construction, as envisioned in the Crystal City Sector Plan, but JBG Smith will be keeping adjacent sand volleyball courts.
Heading to Pentagon City, two developers are taking steps forward on long-standing redevelopment plans.
The first, plans from Brookfield Properties to redevelop the old TSA headquarters at 601 and 701 12th Street S., marks progress after a years-long pause. Brookfield held off on advancing these plans while Arlington County was developing the Pentagon City Sector Plan, approved last year.
Now, Brookfield proposes carving up the land, dubbed 12th Street Landing, into three bays. It is mulling either apartments, condos and an office building, or a apartments and a hotel, per filings with Arlington County.
To keep its options open, it asks Arlington County to approve the overall “density and intensity consistent with the maximum allowed by the [Pentagon City] Sector Plan,” the materials say.
More concrete details would be approved with a later site plan application, the letter to the county said.
The Air & Space Forces Association will be moving out an office building north of Rosslyn to something closer to the Pentagon.
The association, which supports members the Air and Space Forces, was looking for a more modern space for its national headquarters after spending about 40 years in an office building from the 1980s. It sold its digs on Langston Blvd earlier this year before agreeing to move into the Westpost development, formerly Pentagon Row, in Pentagon City.
Federal Realty Investment Trust, which owns Westpost, announced the deal yesterday (Tuesday). The association, also known as the AFA, will be taking over some 31,000 square feet of space previously occupied by thermal imaging camera company FLIR Systems in 2024.
“The Air & Space Forces Association is excited to relocate our headquarters closer to our Pentagon customers and to continue our strong partnership with stakeholders in the Arlington County area,” said now-retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Bruce A. Wright, the association’s president and CEO. “We look forward to creating a more modern and flexible facility that will enhance AFA’s operational capability and open new doors to growth in the future.”
This summer, the Washington Business Journal reported that the AFA sold the building on June 1 for $16.25 million — after buying the land on which the office building stands in 1982 for just under $1 million.
It noted that Arlington County’s online property database said, and still says, the sale price was $19.1 million. At the time of the sale, the building was 79% leased and had 10 tenants outside the AFA.
The property was sold to an affiliate of Arlington-based Taicoon Property Partners, a recently-formed “privately owned investor and developer.”
Posts on LinkedIn by those involved in the transaction foreshadowed forthcoming development plans for the site.
In its announcement, Federal Realty Investment Trust said the AFA’s new offices are a “convenient” distance from the Pentagon and Reagan National Airport, as well as the Virginia Railway Express station and Metro. It noted, as many such press releases do, that Amazon’s second headquarters complex is nearby.
“We are delighted to welcome the Air & Space Forces Association to Westpost at National Landing,” FRIT Senior Vice President Deirdre Johnson said in a statement.
“Westpost continues to evolve alongside Amazon’s HQ2 as an exciting office destination for Arlington County, and the greater Washington, D.C.-metro region,” Johnson continued. “We are eager to see the Association thrive in its new location and utilize the highly amenitized environment of retail, restaurants and services that Westpost has to offer.”
Per a leasing map, Westpost now has just five ground-floor retail spaces available.
Photos (2-3) via Google Maps