Monument Realty to add penthouse to downtown building
The National Restaurant Association has found a new home downtown on L Street Northwest, where it will lease penthouse office space in a renovated building by District-based developer Monument Realty and New York-based Angelo Gordon & Co.
The association leased about 60,000 square feet at 2055 L St. NW last week, allowing the group to remain near its current headquarters on 17th Street Northwest, said James Balda, the group's chief marketing and communications officer.
The move may require Monument to employ a little-used tactic: adding a single story to an existing building.
Monument and Angelo Gordon, a private equity fund, bought the top half of the office space and the retail space in the L Street building in February for $12.75 million.
At the time, the 237,000-square-foot building, built in 1965, was considered Class B — or second-rate space. But after the purchase, Monument began renovating the building and marketing the project as "a new face on the D.C. market."
Darby said he plans to wrap newly built space around an existing seventh floor and add an eighth-floor penthouse with ceilings as high as 14 feet to accommodate the restaurant group. Verizon operates telecommunications equipment in the lower half of the building and continues to own the portion it occupies.
He said the expansion will cost $8 million and could include a display kitchen and reception space.
"They were looking at our top floor and the floor below that, but then saw that we could add a floor above that," Darby said. "So we worked out a deal."
Balda said the space would "ultimately create an environment that reflects the industry that we represent," but that the organization was deciding what they are going to do with the space.
The association has long owned its own building at 1200 17th St. NW, but opted to sell it after a major tenant, the U.S Institute of Peace, departed. The restaurant association found a buyer for the building two weeks ago, when it sold it to Akridge and First Potomac Realty Trust for $39.6 million.
Akridge and First Potomac plan to raze the building and build a 170,000-square-foot office building that could open in 2014.