Crystal City's up-and-coming retail mix is helping drive interest in office space, says Cushman & Wakefield's Tom Walsh (middle, snapped last year with Cassidy Turley's Shaun Collins, Tishman's Brian Cotter, and Cassidy's Anthony Chang and Scott Goldberg.) Tom, who's just been tapped to lease the office space at Lowe Enterprises' Century Center with teammates Matt Bundy, Josh Masi, Kay Chewning, and Jon Mahaffey, says the presence of big-name chefs (Jose Andres, Spike Mendelsohn), and an increased variety of food options is luring firms. The burgeoning tech scene is also creating a place young companies want to be, Tom says, instead of "just a place where someone shows up for work and goes home."

Century Center totals 560k SF, and Lowe is gearing up to renovate the two-property complex—there's also 60k SF of retail on the ground floor. Tom says office rents in the buildings are hovering in the mid-to-high $30s/SF. And with 1.6M total SF in Crystal City, Tom says Lowe is signaling its aggressiveness to get deals done.