This Week's D.C. Deal Sheet: Virginia Tech's Potomac Yard Campus Opens
More than six years after it was announced, the first building is open at Virginia Tech’s $1B Potomac Yard Innovation Campus.
The 300K SF Academic Building One, the first of three planned buildings, opened for the first day of classes Tuesday.
The overall project was announced in 2018 as part of Northern Virginia’s winning bid for Amazon HQ2. Construction began on the first building in September 2021, but the opening date was pushed from its original target of last fall, due to construction supply chain issues.
The campus is near the Potomac Yard Metro station, which opened in 2023. It is also next to the site where JBG Smith and Monumental Sports & Entertainment were planning a $2B sports and entertainment district, plans that were foiled last spring when the owner of the teams decided to keep them in D.C. JBG Smith still owns the site but has not moved forward with plans.
SALES
The Line DC hotel in Adams Morgan sold to its lender in a foreclosure auction Thursday. Acore Capital, which took control of the 220-room property in May, brought it up for auction. It was the sole bidder and won with a $1M credit bid — a bid which also includes the value of the $86M loan it holds. The hotel, a redevelopment of a 110-year-old church, opened in 2017.
MILESTONES
A new dual-branded hotel with 267 rooms is open at Reston Station, D.C.-based Donohoe Development announced this week. The property features The Residence Inn Reston, which has 120 rooms with fully equipped kitchens, and the AC Hotel Reston with 147 rooms. The property at 1975 Opportunity Way has 34K SF of ground-floor retail and 11,300 SF of meeting event space. The property’s full-service restaurant Seven is open, and on the 16th floor, SYN Rooftop Bar & Lounge is scheduled to open in the coming weeks.
PERSONNEL
Colliers has hired Melissa Parrish as an associate vice president for the Maryland region, the brokerage announced. Parrish, comes from BECO Management, where she was a regional director of leasing. She has closed more than 500 deals and leased over 1.5M SF of office and flex space, according to Colliers. Parrish was an honoree at Bisnow’s 2023 Women Leading Real Estate awards in the Deal Maker of the Year category. At Colliers, she will work closely with Thomas Gentner, Brian Siegel, Brian Watts and Jason Sullivan.
***
The Trump administration tapped two key officials to oversee its real estate portfolio. President Donald Trump picked tech entrepreneur Stephen Ehikian, who was most recently vice president of AI products at Salesforce, as the Acting Administrator of the GSA. Investment banking veteran Michael Peters, who served as vice president of Honeywell International, is coming on as Public Buildings Service commissioner.
LEASES
A plant store that was featured on Love is Blind’s latest season in D.C. is coming to National Landing. PLNTR is taking 1,659 SF at JBG Smith’s The Grace, one of a pair of 300-foot-tall buildings with 808 units and 40K SF of ground-floor retail that opened near the Crystal City Metro station last March. PLNTR’s first location is in Dupont Circle. The National Landing store is expected to open this spring.
