'The office buildings are going to get built,' he said. It's not anymore whether it's going to happen,' said John Asadoorian, a retail real estate broker active in the neighborhood. 'I will tell you with the conviction of 13 years' experience that it's happening. Seafood restaurants and steakhouses are jockeying for space in the lobbies of hotels and office buildings under construction.

In the past few weeks, two movie theater chains have agreed to rent space for 30 new movie screens - Landmark Theatres with an eight-screen art theater in an office building under construction at 555 11th St., and AMC with 22 screens at a planned entertainment complex on Seventh. They're real buildings financed by real money. These aren't the drawing-board dreams of city planners. There will also be stores, restaurants, movie theaters and apartments. Most will be office buildings, providing enough space for thousands of white-collar workers. Within four to five years, it's a good bet that new and renovated buildings will line the neighborhood's main corridors - Seventh, Ninth and F streets. is under construction developer Douglas Jemal is poised to begin renovating the decrepit town houses on the 800 block into apartments, offices and retail and there are serious discussions about redeveloping the Catholic Church-owned storefronts across the street from Bernstein's site on the 900 block.Ĭonstruction has heated up mostly because of a resurgence in demand for office space, but also because of the success of the MCI Center and surrounding restaurants.īecause this spate of construction will fill almost all of the available land downtown, what happens in coming months will likely shape the area for decades to come. Some examples: The Marriott Courtyard hotel at 900 F St. On F Street, for instance, almost every site is in some stage of development. Nearly a dozen major private construction projects are under way in the area roughly bordered by Sixth and 15th streets and New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania avenues NW, a neighborhood anchored by the White House to the west and MCI Center to the east.Īnd more are on the way. It's going to have a great feel, a great environment.' 'It will be a total transformation in five years, all the way up F from Eighth to 13th. real estate development company has plans to renovate a cluster of abandoned historic buildings on F Street NW into an office complex. 'This is the area where it's happening, where it's all going to fill in,' said Adam Bernstein, whose D.C. They are unmistakable signs that, after a long hiatus, development has started up again downtown. From the corner of Ninth and F streets in downtown Washington, where even the porn shops and pawnbrokers have been boarded up for years, look north, south or west and you can see construction cranes.

Ellen white estate movie theater