Buyer Of Northwest D.C. Property Plans Apartments Above Retail
District Properties, a D.C. developer that primarily builds single-family homes, is planning its largest multifamily property to date.
The company acquired a property at 22-24 Kennedy St. NW for $4.8M from The Menkiti Group in a deal posted Tuesday to the D.C. Recorder of Deeds. Marcus & Millichap's Cameron Webb, Jesse Mates and Lou Jacobe brokered the deal.
The property sits less than a mile from the Fort Totten Metro station in Northwest D.C.'s Manor Park neighborhood, just north of Petworth. It currently has a one-story building that is leased by a church and an adjacent surface parking lot.
The buyer plans to build apartments above retail on the site, District Properties CEO Mohammad Sikder told Bisnow. The plans are still in the early stages, but he said he could envision the retail space as an organic grocery store.
He said the company likely won't break ground on the development for three years, after the existing lease expires and it prepares its design for the project. He plans to build to the maximum allowable density under the site's existing zoning but does not plan to file a rezoning application.
With roughly 22K SF of land area and MU-4 zoning, the site could support about 70K SF of development, Webb said. That could translate to roughly 70 apartment units or slightly fewer if the buyer chooses to do ground-floor retail.
The Kennedy Street corridor is the only east-to-west street in that part of Northwest D.C. with mixed-use zoning that allows for ground-floor retail. One block west of the site, bar and restaurant Jackie Lee's reopened in November next to a CVS.
"It's almost like a retail bridge between Georgia Avenue and North Capitol Street," Mates said of Kennedy Street.
Webb and Mates' team has brokered four property sales on Kennedy Street in the last 16 months. The buyer of a property at 123 Kennedy St. NW, across from Jackie Lee's, plans to build 30 apartments with 6,500 SF of retail.
“Given all the activity that we’ve been able to stir up on Kennedy Street, that corridor is going to have a lot of development," Webb said. "You have a lot of slated development deals that are getting ready to go into the ground. They’re going to be delivering a lot of new buildings and properties along the corridor for a few years.”
