Stonebridge Lands Inova To Anchor Potomac Yard Project
The long-planned Oakville Triangle development in Alexandria is set to move forward next year after landing a healthcare provider as an anchor tenant.
Inova Health System, Stonebridge and Carras Partners announced Wednesday they reached an agreement to build a healthcare facility as the anchor tenant for the 13-acre development in Potomac Yard.
The Inova HealthPlex facility is planned to include an emergency room, multi-use outpatient center and medical offices. It is expected to break ground in 2021 and begin opening in 2023.
The partners have not detailed the exact size for the facility, but Stonebridge Principal Doug Firstenberg told Bisnow it will be a four-story building along Route 1. He said Stonebridge plans to move forward with two multifamily buildings with ground-floor retail and townhouses at the same time as the healthcare facility. The team plans to unveil more details at a March 26 community meeting, Firstenberg said.
"Inova has been looking in that corridor to expand their services, and we spent a lot of time with them getting comfortable that it was going to be complementary to the area and the type of development that we want to do," Firstenberg said. "Medical office has become very complementary to retail, and we thought their use would go really well with our mixed-use plan."
The facility will expand the healthcare provider's footprint in the city where it operates the Inova Alexandria Hospital. The health system is also moving forward with a major redevelopment of the former ExxonMobile campus in Merrifield.
"The new Inova HealthPlex in Oakville Triangle will help meet the growing healthcare needs in our community and complement our existing full-service acute care hospital in Alexandria," Inova Alexandria Hospital President Rina Bansal said in a release.
The deal comes after Virginia Tech backed out of an initial agreement to build its new Innovation Campus on the site. It announced Oakville Triangle as the location of the campus along with the Amazon HQ2 selection in November 2018, but in June it changed plans and selected a nearby JBG Smith site.
The Inova and Virginia Tech projects both sit near the future Potomac Yard Metro station, an infill stop that broke ground in December. Firstenberg said the development of the Virginia Tech campus will still benefit Stonebridge's property.
"It is a great piece of real estate, and it only became better, even though Virginia Tech went across the street," Firstenberg said. "The area is going to be dynamic and it's going to thrive."
