Doug Donatelli's New Firm Makes $100M Downtown D.C. Buy
The real estate firm former First Potomac executives Doug Donatelli and Nicholas Smith founded last summer has just made a major D.C. acquisition.
DSC Partners, in a JV with Wafra Inc., bought the office building at 1250 Eye St. NW for $100M from RREEF.
The sale of the 178K SF building penciled out to roughly $562/SF. Newmark Knight Frank's James Cassidy and Jud Ryan represented the seller, while NKF's Joe Donato arranged financing for the buyer.
The property, built in 1982, was last sold in 2006 for $74M to RREEF, which launched a renovation in 2007. The building is 70% leased to 16 tenants, including eBay, PayPal, HKS Architects and the American Hotel & Lodging Association. Its retail space includes Blick Art Materials and multiple vacant storefronts.
DSC Partners now plans a $5M renovation that will include a new fitness center, a conference center, modernized common areas and amenities, facade improvements and mechanical upgrades. The landlord retained Nemark Knight's Brendan Owen and Morgan Monroe to lease the office component, and Dochter & Alexander Retail Advisors will lease the retail.
The 12-story building sits just south of Franklin Square, about one block from the McPherson Square Metro station. It is two blocks away from CityCenterDC, where the Conrad Hotel will deliver next year, and it shares a block with 1201 New York Ave. NW, another office building undergoing a major renovation, courtesy of Pembroke Real Estate.
Donatelli, First Potomac's former CEO, and Smith, the REIT's former chief investment officer, launched DSC Partners in July. They then hired another First Potomac veteran, Patrick Kelly, in November. The firm's first acquisition was a 232K SF Rockville office building, which it bought from The JBG Cos. for $19.5M.
