If you are wandering by the southeast corner of South Capitol and M Streets next week and are wondering about seeing a bunch of well-dressed VIPs wielding shovels, it's not a new job training program--it'll be a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new headquarters for the National Association of Broadcasters at
One M Street SE, being developed by Monument Realty.
The real work of construction, I'm told, is slated to start later this summer, but the NAB bigwigs were apparently going to be gathering in DC for a board meeting this month and so will take the opportunity to mark the occasion.
(And of course there is no statutory requirement that ceremonial groundbreakings take place x number of days before or after the start of actual digging.)
This headquarters will be a 120,000-square-foot offering with about 4,800 square feet of ground floor retail, and is expected to open in 2018. NAB and Monument
announced the deal in April of 2015, calling it the "culmination of a rigorous search for a location with easier access to Capitol Hill that will allow NAB to improve its advocacy efforts."
And the big news that I'm burying all the way down here is that Monument tells me that the decision has been made that 10 Van will be condos, with a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units as well as multi-level two-bedroom townhouses facing both Van and South Capitol.
Once it gets started, the NAB HQ would be the second office project under construction, joining Skanska's on-spec
99 M a couple of blocks to the east. The 10 Van project will become part of the long list of
residential projects currently being built, and will be the second in this block of South Capitol Street, along with JBG's 290-unit rental building at
1244 South Capitol that is expected to be completed in 2017. These will also be the first projects to get underway in 2016, unless the
Yards Parcel O condo and rental buildings get started first.
I guess we'll know for sure that NAB/10 Van construction is truly at hand when the surface parking lot there stops accepting Nats gameday parking....
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