LaSalle Investments’ 2020 K Street in Washington, D.C., is an 11-story multitenant structure built in 1974 with a fitness center, parking garage, and rooftop terrace. Since acquisition in 2010, LaSalle has been continually upgrading the building to achieve a holistic retrofit as part of its investment strategy. Initiatives include the following: variable frequency drives (VFDs) […]
One of the first parks built as part of the District of Columbia’s Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, Canal Park presents a model of sustainability, attaining both Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certifications. The public-private partnership that was established in order to design, fund, and develop the project allowed for neighborhood-scale impact. The park has quickly established itself as a social gathering place and an economic trigger for the surrounding neighborhood.
For nearly 60 years, the RAND Corporation had occupied about one-third of Santa Monica’s 45-acre (18 ha) civic center district, a prominent site adjacent to the city’s business and government centers, served by a variety of regional transportation options, and on the land side of the coastal highway. Its headquarters building at 1700 Main Street had grown over the years to include two primary buildings as well as several modular ad hoc structures. But by the mid-1980s, RAND’s need for more space and the city’s vision of a revitalized civic district incorporating affordable and market-rate housing, neighborhood retail, and new public parks had begun to converge.
In 1989, the two parties began to explore innovative ways to meet their convergent needs. Following a process that included extensive interaction with the public and a citywide vote, it was agreed that RAND would retain a 3.7-acre (1.5 ha) parcel for a new headquarters building and sell the bulk of its property to the Santa Monica Redevelopment Agency. In late 1999, RAND sold 11.7 acres (4.7 ha) to the agency for $53 million, with the proviso that it could occupy its old building for up to six more years. In October 2000, following a yearlong entitlement process, a development agreement for RAND’s new headquarters was approved. Construction began in July 2002, occupancy commenced in October 2004, and the old headquarters building was demolished—and the land turned over to the municipal agency—in 2007.
Encore is a mixed-use, mixed-income redevelopment of what had been public housing just north of downtown Tampa, Florida, developed by a partnership between a housing authority and a bank-owned community development corporation. Encore currently comprises four apartment buildings with a total of 662 units of housing, 559 of which are affordable to seniors and family households with low incomes. At full buildout, the LEED for Neighborhood Development Gold–rated community will have up to 1,513 housing units, plus 180,000 square feet of office space, 200 hotel keys, and a 36,000-square-foot grocery on its 12 city blocks. Over eight years, the $425 million investment will create 5,000 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs on a site that previously supported only 18 jobs. Encore uses innovative and efficient districtwide approaches for stormwater management and cooling.
Located at the intersection of Center and south highland avenues in Pittsburgh’s east Liberty neighborhood, phases I and II of EastSide comprise a 5.1-acre (2.0-ha) development that includes retail, restaurant, and office uses, with surface and deck parking. They include 4,724 square feet (439 m²) of office, 112,835 square feet (10,483 m²) of retail, and 472 parking spaces.
Eastside transforms a patchwork of 14.3 acres (5.8 ha) of distressed properties in the heart of Pittsburgh’s east end. The project borrows economic strength from the more affluent adjacent neighborhoods of Shadyside, Friendship, and Highland Park to fuel the redevelopment of East Liberty, a commercial center plagued by decades of decline. Eastside phases I and II are complete, tenanted, and operating. Eastside V opened in July 2011 as a two-level Target store. Eastside III and IV are in planning.
Armstrong Place creates an environment for multigenerational interaction in affordable housing by combining 116 affordable senior apartments with 124 below-market-rate townhouses and 7,600 square feet (706 m2) of ground-floor retail space on 3.1 acres (1.25 ha) in the Third Street corridor in San Francisco, California. The senior apartments are targeted towards very-low-income seniors with 23 reserved for formerly homeless seniors. The townhouses are geared to first-time homebuyers whose annual income is between 60%–120% of the area median income. The development covers a full city block, allowing for denser housing to be built around central communal green spaces.
The new Accident Fund Holdings Headquarters involved the redevelopment of an out-of-commission power station in downtown Lansing, Michigan, turning a relic of 1930s infrastructure into Class A office space. The Ottawa Street Power Station, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was a 227,000 square-foot (21,098 m2) structure on a 7-acre (2.83 ha) lot built in 1939 in downtown Lansing that had been decommissioned. This project restores the historic building on the Grand Riverfront while increasing its capacity by 105,000 (9,755 m2) square feet with a modern addition.
Bethel Commercial Center is a mixed-use transit-oriented commercial center adjacent to a Green Line “L” station in a low-income neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. The 22,000-square-foot (2,044-m2) center includes ground-floor retail space, employment and job-training offices, a bank—the only full-service one in the neighborhood—and a daycare center, allowing residents to drop off and pick up children and to get to and from work, all without the use of a car. The building, which uses approximately 50 percent less energy than conventional construction, achieved a LEED-Gold rating in 2008.
Situated in downtown Philadelphia, Comcast Center is a glass-encased, 58-story office tower that occupies a long-underused parcel—formerly an enclosed surface parking lot—in the heart of the central business district. The high-performance office building contains 1.25 million square feet (116,500 m2) of Class A office space and 35,507 square feet (3,299 m2) of retail space. It features a dramatic eight-story winter garden with one of the largest LED video walls in the world; a half-acre (0.2-ha) public plaza with a seasonal café; and an upgraded extension of the underground connection to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s Suburban Station, the city’s busiest commuter transit stop. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold building, the tallest point of the Philadelphia skyline, is 99 percent leased and home to the corporate headquarters of the Comcast Corporation.
Certified green—the first high-rise office building in the world to be precertified by LEED-CS (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design–Core and Shell Development program) at the Silver level and, upon completion, the second to be certified by LEED at the Gold level—1180 Peachtree is a striking icon that has redefined the epicenter of Atlanta’s urban renaissance and enhanced the city skyline. Located at the center of Midtown—a four-square-mile (10 sq km2) neighborhood between downtown to the south and Buckhead to the north—the 41-story tower at the corner of Peachtree and 14th Streets anticipates the Santiago Calatrava–designed future home of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO). An extraordinarily narrow site challenged the development team to accommodate office and retail space as well as parking; the extremely efficient floor plan provides more than 630,000 square feet (58,529 m2) of office space and more than 32,000 square feet (2,973 m2) of retail space plus a 1,200-space parking deck. When ASO’s Symphony Center is completed, it will face 1180 Peachtree across a large public plaza to be shared with the Woodruff Arts Campus to the north.. A landscaped plaza and retail and lobby frontage define 1180 Peachtree’s street-level presence, and passers-by are unaware of the parking, which is situated below the main office tower.