Suburban DC Office Tower Lands 78 KSF in Leases
Three companies will relocate to this LEED Platinum-certified building.
Beacon Capital Partners has inked three new leases totaling more than 78,000 square feet at Avocet Tower, a 22-story, 370,000-square-foot office building in Bethesda, Md. Transwestern represented the owner, while CBRE negotiated on behalf of the tenants in all deals.
Insurance company Ullico, headquartered in Washington, D.C., leased 30,333 square feet to relocate its Maryland regional office from Silver Spring. Arlington Capital Partners, an investment firm, committed to the same amount of space to move its headquarters from The Wilson at 7272 Wisconsin Ave.
And DiamondRock Hospitality Co., a publicly traded lodging REIT, upped its office footprint with an 18,198-square-foot lease at Avocet Tower. The company is relocating from 2 Bethesda Metro Center.
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Completed in 2022, the tower at 7373 Wisconsin Ave. is LEED Platinum and WELL Health and Safety certified. The building includes such technologies as touchless entry, View Smart Windows and a DOAS HVAC system, which conditions and supplies outdoor fresh air to indoor space, allowing for a high degree of workplace well-being.
Amenities feature a 7,500-square-foot rooftop terrace, a 5,000-square-foot fitness center, a 100-seat conference center and secure bicycle storage. There are also 2,500 square feet of landscaped outdoor areas that are open to the public.
The property counts as transit-oriented, since it is less than a quarter mile to the nearest Metro station. Downtown Washington, D.C., is 7 miles away.
Transwestern’s Agency Leasing team, led by Phil McCarthy, Keith Foery, Mark Boyce and Karla Rivera, represented Beacon in the deals. CBRE represented the tenants.
Beacon’s bumpy office ride
Beacon owns and operates office and life science properties nationwide, with a portfolio of 38 million square feet in 14 markets. The state of those markets have made for a bumpy ride for the company lately.
On the positive side, besides the leases at Avocet Tower, Beacon secured a $149.2 million loan from Morgan Stanley Bank in October for 27 Drydock Ave. in Boston, which has a high concentration of life science tenants. The financing pays off a $150 million note issued in 2020.
By contrast, according to published reports citing public records, Blackstone Mortgage Trust took over 1800 Larimer St. in Denver this week from Beacon, which had bought the property in 2022 for $291 million. The firm had taken out a $196 million mortgage from Blackstone, maturing next year. Recently Beacon lost the building’s anchor tenant, XCel Energy.
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