A panoramic lobby, six levels of parking, retail, restaurants and public areas are just a few of the amenities available in the 24-story Waterview tower.
Across the Potomac River from the nation's capital, a pair of sleek new towers brightens the skyline of Rosslyn, Virginia. In one, top-of-market condominium homes offer extensive amenities and services provided by the sophisticated boutique hotel directly below. The other contains 625,000 square feet of trophy-class office space augmented by street-level shops and restaurants. Together they are known as Waterview. Developed by The JBG Companies, based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, Waterview is one of the mixed-use projects that are further enhancing Rosslyn's reputation as a prime business location that's also a dynamic urban neighborhood. It wasn't always that way.
Rosslyn Comes of Age
Rosslyn remained largely undeveloped until the 1960s, when defense contractors looking to locate close to the Pentagon, spurred construction that resulted in a patchwork of bland buildings. When the Washington area enjoyed a building boom in the 1980s, these buildings were not quite ready economically for redevelopment. So, new development leapfrogged over Rosslyn out to Ballston, creating the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor and setting the stage for further growth to cluster around the other MetroRail stations in Arlington.
The Corporate Executive Board pre-leased all 625,000 square feet of the Waterview tower in the Rosslyn, Virginia, submarket.
In the early 1990s, JBG realized that Rosslyn's immediate adjacency to Washington, DC's Central Business District, its riverside location and Metro-accessibility made it an ideal candidate for reinvention as an urban live-work-play community. The firm began to acquire properties for future redevelopment, including the purchase from the Resolution Trust Corporation of two deeds of trust notes on several of the properties that make up the Waterview site. Over the course of several years, JBG was able to parlay the acquisition of the notes into the acquisition of the three lots comprising Waterview, including the waterfront lot. In 1996, Arlington County created zoning incentives for developers to consolidate Rosslyn's many small buildings into larger lots and redevelop them with higher-quality office buildings. By 1999, with the addition of Trizec Properties (now Brookfield Properties) as a major equity partner, JBG had completed acquisition of the entire two-acre site.
The Esplanade Mandate
Waterview's twin towers are a new highlight of the Rosslyn skyline, gleaming over the Potomac River opposite Washington, D.C.
JBG chose to work with James Freed, a principal at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, for the Waterview project. Freed had designed Potomac Tower, a striking example of symmetrical modernism located adjacent to the Waterview site. His vision of a dramatic new Rosslyn skyline fit perfectly with JBG's ambitions for Waterview, and planning began in earnest.
The county had stipulated that the development provide a "view corridor," effectively bisecting the site diagonally and resulting in a design mandate for a pair of towers. The county also required some type of "esplanade" feature to ensure that Rosslyn residents retained waterfront access. This requirement suggested to JBG that, rather than twin office towers, the best solution for the Waterview site would be one office tower and a full-service hotel, with a public esplanade or terrace linking the two. Zoning for this proposed construction was approved in 2000, and JBG began looking for office tenants.
Overcoming the Impact of 9/11
After the terrible events of September 11, 2001, the hotel market fell apart and financing for new hotels disappeared. JBG considered eliminating Waterview's hotel component and pairing the office tower with an all-residential one. In the end, however, JBG felt that a hotel component, perhaps as a somewhat smaller proportion of the overall development, would be best for Rosslyn. By May 2002, the second tower had been redesigned and rezoned for a "boutique" hotel on the first 12 levels and condominium residences on the top 17 levels.
JBG attempted to build the project in phases, but the three levels of above grade parking and three levels of below grade parking proved difficult to phase. Commencement of the 625,0000-square-foot office tower was also difficult to finance as a speculative building. The partnership sought another equity partner to spread the risk, and in April 2004, Los Angeles-based CIM Group, a full-service private equity real estate investor, joined the partnership. Waterview was back on track to be built as a speculative development.
A Major Office Lease Adds Momentum
The very next month, the project received another big boost when a single commercial tenant requested a proposal for all 625,000 square feet of Waterview's office space. When the lease with Corporate Executive Board was signed in August 2004, it was not only the largest private lease in the entire Washington Metropolitan Area, but also one of the fastest transactions the area had seen.
With the office lease signed for a tenant occupancy date in February 2008, the completion of the design and start of construction was paramount. The production architect originally slated for the job was compelled to withdraw due to a corporate mandate against taking on additional condominium work. JBG chose HKS Architects from Dallas to complete the office construction documents.
The leasing of the office tower provided the project with enough financial strength to obtain a loan which would also allow the condominium/hotel tower to start at the same time. However, the drawings for the second tower were not as far advanced as the office tower. The six levels of parking were detailed and permitted with the office tower, so that construction could commence and allow time for the condo/hotel drawings to catch up. Although the hotel and condos would have separate interior designers, HKS Architects served as the common thread by providing construction documents for both towers.
When the hotel was reduced to 155 rooms, a boutique hotel operator was sought, and the project was fortunate to enter into an agreement with the Kimpton Group for the Hotel Palomar. The stylish and sophisticated Hotel Palomar brand is known for providing top-flight hotel services with a refreshing, artistic touch. Kimpton recommended Cheryl Rowley Designs of Hollywood California for hotel interiors and The Puccini Group to design the restaurant. Both proved to be excellent choices and designed sophisticated urbane interiors. Likewise, Phyliss Hartman of Hartman Design was chosen for the condominiums and although each group worked separately, their designs are complementary. All resulted in a well designed mixed-use project, but the mixed use nature of the project required significant coordination and management.
While the design continued, JBG sought financing for the entire project. The approximate one million square feet dictated that the lending be syndicated. After identifying Bank of America as the lead lender, a presentation was made to a group of lenders to round out the syndication. Ultimately, eight lenders were involved in the financing, which included a separate note for each tower, with cross collaterization. The hotel market was still in a state of recovery, and while the hotel might likely not have been financed on its own, under this plan, the hotel and condominium were viewed as one asset with one loan. The condominium proceeds are slated to substantially pay down the hotel loan prior to full sell out.
Excellence in Design
With the commercial side settled and construction underway by the Clark Construction Group, JBG turned its attention to marketing the 133 residences on floors 14-30 of the hotel/condo tower. Ranging from 600-square-foot studios to 4,450-square-foot penthouses, the Waterview residences were designed to be the pinnacle in the booming and highly competitive Washington-area condominium market. The exterior of both the office tower and the residential/hotel tower is clad with a full height glass curtain wall on the river side and full height glass interspersed with precast on the city side. Large glass expanses frame views of Georgetown, the Potomac River, the Kennedy Center and the monuments of central Washington. The project has been a beacon of success in a challenging housing market, having sold over 80 percent of the residences since sales commenced in February 2007.
The eventual realization of the county's "esplanade" mandate, a fourth-floor outdoor terrace 100 feet above the Potomac River offers an additional vantage point, both for Waterview residents, guests of the Hotel Palomar and the general public. The terrace is reached by a prominent exterior glass elevator, which also brings one to Domaso, Waterview and Kimpton's five-star restaurant which opened in November 2007.
Synergy and The City
In their 2001 book, Hotel Design, Planning, and Development, authors Walter A. Rutes, Richard H. Penner and Lawrence
Adams assert that the ultimate goal of mixed-use projects is "to produce a positive confluence where the entire development becomes far greater than the sum of its parts." While they go on to enumerate many of the practical efficiencies of mixed-use projects in the areas of land use, energy requirements and shared costs and facilities, it is this synergy of the various components of a mixed-use project that makes sense on an intuitive level.
Now, more and more mixed-use projects like Waterview are helping to put the pieces of the modern city back together. The strong performance of such projects in their respective marketplaces--residential, commercial, retail, and hotel--indicates a pent-up demand for this kind of holistic urban environment.
Rosslyn Forward
Accordingly, The JBG Companies is already building on the success of Waterview. A number of additional mixed-use projects are in development, including another twin-tower development called Central Place slated for delivery in late 2010 and the expansion and overhaul of the Rosslyn Gateway site at the head of the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor. All this mixed-use development is part of a larger effort that will not only enhance the Rosslyn skyline, but also further realize Rosslyn's full potential as a complete, walkable, livable urban neighborhood--what JBG sums up in the term "Rosslyn Forward."
