Douglas Development Continues to Transform Downtown

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If you’ve recently visited a store, restaurant or office building in Downtown DC, chances are it was located in a building owned by Douglas Development Corporation (702 H Street), a major Downtown property owner and one of the city’s most active private developers. Think J. Crew (950 F Street), Forever 21 (1020 G Street), Guess (1155 F Street), Anthropologie (950 F Street), Legal Sea Foods (704 7th Street), Pret A Manger (1155 F Street), Crumbs Bake Shop (604 11th Street); offices occupied by LivingSocial, Target, Intel, Home Depot, and Facebook; and many of the Capital Fringe Festival performance spaces. You get the picture.

Douglas Development is now involved in the following two exciting Downtown projects:

  • 655 New York Avenue. Get ready for a dynamic, new 400,000-square-foot (SF) office and retail building, which will incorporate not one, but 13 historic buildings into the redeveloped site.
  • 801 7th Street. This major restoration project on the bustling northeast corner of 7th and H streets will incorporate a flagship Walgreens spread over three levels with a bakery, an extended beauty section that includes a nail salon, and a walk-in clinic, if regulatory approval is given.

Groundbreaking for the massive 655 New York Avenue commercial project located in the Mount Vernon Square Historic District is scheduled for next spring, with a delivery date in 2015. Douglas Development proposes to construct an 11-story, glass and metal commercial building, relocate two historic buildings on the site and renovate 11 contributing structures. Thus, all or portions of the historic buildings along New York Avenue and L and 7th streets, will be retained and renovated, while the new building’s height—reaching a maximum of about 130 feet—will vary to respect the historic structures.

Talk about adding visual elegance to the landscape, the new building, to be centered in the development site with the main entrance along New York Avenue, will feature terra cotta “fins.” The parking and loading area would be along L Street. All told, the project will have between 60,000 SF to 80,000 SF of retail space and 320,000 SF to 340,000 SF of office space. 

Meanwhile, just a few blocks south, all eyes are on the northeast corner of 7th and H streets in the heart of Chinatown. This project entails adding a one-story addition to an existing building which will be redeveloped and transformed into a state-of-the-art, mixed-use development that includes about 22,000 SF of office space and 33,000 SF of retail. In addition to Walgreens pharmacy, Yo! Sushi, a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant, and Panera Bread, the bakery-café people, are coming to the site, formerly occupied many years ago by CVS. An unidentified association will relocate from the K Street area into upstairs office space, leaving about 3,000 SF of office space available.

If you look closely, you can spot smaller Douglas Development projects now underway in Downtown. There’s the OBA bank building, where Fuel Pizza (600 F Street) recently opened and upstairs office space is currently being renovated; a basement restaurant is expected to open in six months. And a building that will house Daikaya, the ramen noodle shop opening this winter at 705 6th Street, is now under construction.

Douglas Development was founded in 1985 by Douglas Jemal, who invested in Downtown real estate and retail when no one believed the city could support it. Douglas Development’s many projects have made Downtown more vibrant and welcoming. You need look no further than 7th Street, across from Gallery Place, to see all the historic properties that he restored and leased to national restaurant chains.

For its efforts, Douglas Development has received several DowntownDC BID Momentum Awards over the years. In 2010, Jemal received an award in the Downtown Citizen category for his many contributions that have led to transforming Downtown into a remarkable urban experience.