Apartment Building Converted From Peace Corps HQ Opens Downtown
A pioneering project that turned a vacant office building in the heart of downtown D.C. into apartment units opened its doors Thursday.
Developed by Willco, Elle features 163 units in the former Peace Corps. headquarters at 1111 20th St. NW. D.C. officials on Thursday touted it as the first major office-to-residential conversion to deliver downtown and a model for what they hope D.C.’s increasingly vacant office district can become.
“We know that vibrant neighborhoods need people, and people all hours of the day — workers, residents and visitors,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday morning. “And that's what our team is very focused on.”
The 185K SF building on L Street was last used as offices in 2019 when the Peace Corps.’ lease ended and the organization relocated to NoMa.
Willco President Gary Cohen said that while his firm first looked to replace it with a new tenant, he eventually decided to pivot to residential.
All of the Elle's units have market-rate rents, ranging from $2,100 a month for a studio to $6,000 for a three-bedroom. Amenities include a fitness center, rooftop pool, outdoor fire pits and grilling stations, a dog park and pet spa, a community room, and coworking areas.
At the ribbon cutting, Cohen announced that the building just landed a lease for a ground-floor restaurant space: Canadian-born Moxies. The 8K SF eatery will be its first mid-Atlantic location.
The office-to-residential strategy has been a focus for the city as it tries to create a better mix of uses for the downtown area. At the event, Bowser and Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Nina Albert pointed to the fact that downtown D.C. is 90% commercial and 10% residential.
“What is it going to take for us to really pivot to what we know is a much healthier mix, whether it's 30%, residential, 40% residential?” Albert said.
Willco's project isn't part of D.C.’s new office-to-residential tax abatement program that requires affordable housing — either 10% of the units at 60% of the median family income or 18% at 80% MFI. It began construction in December 2022, before the program opened up for applications this spring.
There are 11 more office-to-residential conversions in the pipeline, but some have yet to begin construction due to financing challenges. Those projects are planned to deliver more than 2,300 units, helping the District tackle another of its top issues: the housing shortage.
DMPED data this month shows the city is 99% of the way to the goal Bowser set in 2019 of building 36,000 new housing units by 2025, UrbanTurf reported. Bowser has also set a goal of adding 15,000 residents to the downtown area.
But this year, city officials have set their sights more broadly when thinking about how to reposition the glut of downtown office buildings.
In this year’s budget, the council approved $8M for a new “office to anything” program, a 15-year tax freeze for owners that convert downtown office properties into a variety of uses, from hotels to restaurants to retail. Bowser announced the launch of the program at Thursday's ribbon-cutting event.
The program caps out at $5M for 2027, $6M for 2028 and $8M for 2029, with a 4% growth each year following. The mayor’s office says the initial funding is estimated to help reposition 4M to 6M SF of office space.
Cohen said he is confident his fellow developers will follow in the Elle building's wake, repositioning downtown offices as any number of uses. But he said the work will take a major, joint effort.
“The next phase of bringing people back to D.C. will require a heavy push from city leaders in the private and public sectors,” he said. “We must work together, think out of the box and do what's necessary for a city to survive and thrive.”
CORRECTION, JULY 11, 4 P.M. ET: A previous version of this story misstated the percentage of affordable housing required under the downtown conversion program. This story has been updated.
