Developer Pitches 500-Unit Office Conversion Near Judiciary Square
New plans have emerged to turn a 1980s-era brutalist office building two blocks from Capital One Arena into a 500-unit apartment building.
The Georgetown Co. filed the proposal with the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts to convert the building at 450 Fifth St. NW near Judiciary Square. The commission is scheduled to review the plans at its meeting Thursday.
The 477K SF building's sole tenant, the Department of Justice, signed a deal in 2022 to relocate the offices out of that building to nearby 555 Fourth St. NW. The General Services Administration told Bisnow at the time it planned to make the move in 2025.
Property records still list Clark Enterprises as the owner of the building, but its lender, Prudential Financial, sold the loan in December 2022 to an affiliate of Criterion Real Estate Capital, which appointed a substitute trustee at the property in 2023. Real Estate Alert reported in September 2022 that Prudential was marketing it as a conversion opportunity.
Deed records don't indicate that New York-based Georgetown Co. has acquired the property, but it is common for developers to seek approval for a project before closing on an acquisition. Georgetown Co. and Clark Enterprises didn't respond to Bisnow's request for comment.
Architecture firm Eric Colbert & Associates and landscape architect Lee & Associates Inc. are listed as partners on the plans.
The developer intends to “preserve as much of the existing building and facade as possible,” the application says.
The plan would keep the building’s brutalist-style exterior, though it would replace the windows with energy-efficient units that are more suited for residential use.
The project would remove chunks of the building to create shallower floor depths, providing light and air for the apartment units. It would add height and depth in some areas, further serving to break up the building, as well as a one-story glass entry.
It would also add a habitable rooftop with a pool, introduce residential terraces, garden walls and fences.
The plans represent the latest effort in D.C.'s push to reimagine downtown as a mixed-use environment, with the mayor seeking to bring in 15,000 new residents to the city's core by 2028.
The first two major office-to-residential conversions downtown delivered last summer, and at least 1,500 more units are moving forward with openings expected by 2028, according to a Bisnow analysis of data provided by Washington, D.C. Economic Partnership.
The city has a 20-year tax abatement program for office-to-residential conversions in a designated part of downtown. It awarded its first three abatements in September for projects that together are planned to bring 754 units downtown.
The Georgetown Co., a privately held firm founded in 1978, controls over $3B of assets. The company announced earlier this month it is under contract to acquire the former Hotel Harrington property in downtown D.C. and said it is considering several options for redeveloping it.
