JBG SMITH Eyes Arlington Office-to-Residential Conversion
The company is aiming to repurpose upward of 550,000 square feet
JBG SMITH has filed plans to convert two vacant office buildings totaling north of 550,000 square feet in Arlington, Va., to residential and hospitality use. If approved, the adaptive reuse process would transform the duo into a roughly 200-unit multifamily community and a 330-key hotel.
The plans mark the first conversion project to be filed under Arlington County’s Adaptive Reuse Amendment process, which was approved in November. The program aims to streamline and expedite the transformation of obsolete office buildings.
The office building slated for multifamily conversion rises 11 stories at 2200 Crystal Drive and debuted in 1968 featuring 315,000 square feet of office space. Last renovated in 2006, the property encompasses 24,200 square feet floorplates.
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CommercialEdge’s Conversion Feasibility Index—a new Yardi-powered tool that ranks the potential adaptive reuse of office properties on a scale from 1 to 100 based on certain criteria, such as building characteristics, location and architectural features—places 2200 Crystal Drive’s score at 88.
The office facility is within the National Landing neighborhood, a business improvement district established in 2006. Downtown Washington, D.C., is about 5 miles northeast while the Ronald Reagan National Airport is less than 2 miles away.
Greater D.C.’s office-to-residential transformation efforts
Out of Arlington’s 326 office buildings, more than 70 were at risk of market distress as of November, according to the County of Arlington. That accounted for roughly 40 percent of the total office square footage.
The city’s efforts to support office-to-residential adaptive reuse projects landed on the heels of D.C.’s Housing in Downtown Program, which aimed to create 15,000 new units in downtown D.C. by 2028 through conversion incentives such as tax abatements.
Greater D.C.’s residential conversion pipeline—including all commercial-to-residential adaptive reuse projects, not just office—clocked in at more than 4,400 units across various stages of development in December, according to Yardi Matrix data.
American Real Estate Partners and Silverpeak Real Estate Partners spearheaded another office-to-residential project that kicked off this year in the D.C. area. The duo began construction work on CityHouse Old Town, an adaptive reuse project slated to turn a 200,000-square-foot office building into a luxury multifamily community of about 200 units in Alexandria, Va.
