[Great--big news at 5 pm on Friday. Hope somebody actually reads this] On Sept. 21, a notice of foreclosure sale was filed for 100 M Street SE, the 220,000-square-foot office building built by Opus East and completed in late 2008. A few months later, Opus became the biggest Near Southeast casualty of the recession, filing for Chapter 7 liquidation and leaving their 440,000-square-foot office project at 1015 Half St. unfinished. While 1015 Half was soon picked up by the Douglas Wilson Companies and is now being completed, 100 M has remained at sea, despite a rumor a year ago (quickly shot down) that Mayfield Gentry was buying it for $80 million.

A release went out on the wires today announcing that Corporate Office Properties Trust has spent $119 million, including the assumption of a $70.1 million mortgage, to buy Maritime Plaza, the 12-acre site at 12th and M, SE.

This is the third time the site has changed hands since construction on the second office building was completed in 2003, with Bernstein Cos. selling it for $92 million in 2004, and then Brickman Associates reportedly paying $115 million in October of 2005. The site, which has two completed office buildings with 100 percent occupancy, has included plans for two additional 175,000-square-foot office buildings and a 250-room hotel; leasing is handled by Lincoln Property Company. The land beneath the buildings and plans, however, continues to be owned by Washington Gas, as it has been since pretty much the dawn of time.

[The rumors of this sale were reported back in early August, and I'm exhausted from three days of dealing with computer issues after my one-year-old machine up and croaked, forcing me to buy a new box, so apologies for basically just pasting-and-editing my previous entry. I figure no one read it anyway. :-) ]

The "Miles Glass" site on the southwest corner of 8th and Virginia has been vacant and for sale for a number of years now, but in late August it was purchased for $3.5 million, by the National Community Church, the group behind the rehabbed Ebenezers Coffeehouse near Union Station in Northeast. According to their web site, NCC is "one church with [six] locations," broadcasting their Sunday services at multiple locations in addition to Ebenezers, such as the old Tivoli Theater in Columbia Heights and movie theaters in Georgetown, Ballston, Kingstowne, and Potomac Yard.

While wandering around the web site for the city's Department of Real Estate Services, I found out that the deadline has been extended until noon tomorrow for the request for offers to lease data center space at the revamped 225 Virginia Avenue (aka the old Star/Post Plant). They've also posted a Q&A about the RFO that may or may not hold any nuggets of interest.

Multiple anonymous sources are allowing CityBiz Real Estate to report: "Corporate Office Properties Trust is awaiting lender approval on a $120 million acquisition of Maritime Plaza, a 12-acre site located at the East End of the Washington, D.C. Naval Yard, multiple sources tell citybiz real estate." This follows a story earlier today saying that COPT was close to purchasing an unnamed site, described only as being a fully leased location occupied primarily by defense contractors.

WBJ updates its story from a few months ago to basically say, yes, DDOT is still planning to move to 55 M Street, Monument Realty's building on top of the west entrance of the Navy Yard station. The city council has until close of business today (Wednesday) to decide if it wants to hold up the plans, and apparently the council's budget office is taking a close look at the lease, since it will cost DDOT about $6.9 million per year over 10 years to consolidate all of its workers in Near Southeast, compared to the $3.1 million it's paying now to lease space in multiple buildings.

The city's Department of Real Estate Services (formerly OPM) has put out a solicitation to sublease 50,750 square feet of below-grade space at 225 Virginia Avenue as a data center. While that may be terribly interesting to some people, probably the item of greater interest is the rendering on the first page, which is the first glimpse of the "reskinned" building, showing the current gray windowless monolith rebuilt into a more open structure that actually resembles an office building. The rendering is from the building's southwest corner, so the SE Freeway (not shown) would run "behind" the building. You can just barely see Capitol Quarter townhouses at far right, making that Third Street.

Oh, I've wanted to post this rumor for so long (and have hinted at it on Twitter) but never could bring myself to pull the trigger when I couldn't get anything out of Monument or DDOT or any first-level source. But, here's WBJ going where I wouldn't (subscribers only): "[The District Department of Transportation] has signed a letter of intent and is close to a deal on a 10-year lease for 150,000 square feet in Monument Realty's Half Street building at 55 M St. SE, according to sources." Neither Monument nor DDOT would confirm to WBJ either, with DDOT spokesman John LIsle quoted as saying, "We are hoping to move this year. It may be ambitious, but that is our goal."

Thanks to one of the National Capital Planning Commission's fabulous documents, we're starting to get first hints of plans by the Cohen Companies for what they are describing as a three-building, 815,000-square-foot office, hotel, retail project on the very eastern end of M Street, nestled between Boathouse Row and the CSX tracks east of Maritime Plaza. It's so early in the process that it's not even on Cohen's New Projects page, but City Paper's Housing Complex blog has learned that the company will be putting together a planned unit development application to the Zoning Commission "over the next six to nine months." (No financing is lined up, though, so don't look for digging to start anytime soon.) See the NCPC document for some early drawings and some basic information on how they envision the offerings of the three buildings.

We went through this back in early March, when sharp-eyed JDLand readers passed along indications of work re-starting at the stalled 1015 Half Street office building project, with a Skanska sign going up at the skeleton. But it disappeared soon afterward, along with the workers that had briefly materialized. But last Tuesday, faithful Tweeters again reported signs of life at the work site, and now WBJ is reporting that Skanska USA Building is indeed about to re-start construction, expecting to finish the 440,000-sq-ft office and retail project by the end of the year.