Clarion Nabs Big-Lease Tenant in DC

1111 19th St., NW Washington, D.C.

By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor

Blackboard Inc. has signed a 13-year lease for 70,482 square feet of space at 1111 19th St., NW Washington, D.C., with building owner, Clarion Partners.

“I think there were a handful of things that really appealed to them: Number one, the location. When you look at it, it’s really center-city CBD, so it’s a great location for employees travelling from North of Washington, South, East and West, so it accommodates convenient commuting patterns,” James Dean, Clarions Partners’ senior vice president & asset manager, told Commercial Property Executive. “It’s also within a couple of blocks from a couple of different Metro stations.”

The 12-story, 268,461-square-foot office building is located in D.C.’s Central Business District and features on-site parking and 24-hour security. It’s also ENERGY Star and LEED Gold Certified.

“Nineteenth Street is a corridor that offers a lot of amenities; there’s a number of quick-service restaurants and other fast-casual type eating establishments, as well as white tablecloth restaurants,” Dean said. “You have a number of hotels within a couple of blocks of the property and DuPont Circle is just a couple of blocks to the North.”

The building was recently renovated to include a new and expanded lobby, new and expanded retail storefronts, full-height glass along the center bay of the façade, a completely renovated state-of-the-art tenant-only fitness center, new restrooms, multi-tenant common areas, renovated elevators and garage.

“For us, this deal is a huge validation of the quality of the building reposition that we executed,” Dean added. “If you rewind a couple of years ago, we expected to be faced with tenants who were more likely to move out, and once we realized that was a risk, we made the proactive decision to undertake a renovation of the building … and we expected it would appeal to technology users like Blackboard, and their commitment reinforces the fact that we delivered a quality renovation that has a lot of utility for a number of users.”
Over the past nine months, the building has seen 161,000 square feet of new leases and is now 83 percent leased.

The DTZ team of Vice Chairman Phillip Thomas, Managing Director Kerri Mulligan Salih, Vice President Matthew Venos, and Associate Callie Clemons represented Clarion in the lease agreement.