IN THE PRESS
Silver Spring's Newest
Article Published in Real Estate BisNow - June 25, 2013 [view]
Real Estate BisNow - June 25, 2013
Silver Spring's vibrant urban core has developers hungry to get in on the action. And two have just come together on one of the neighborhood's most sought-after sites. And the union has divine inspiration.
DC-based LaKritz-Adler Real Estate Investments and Grosvenor Americas just formed a JV to acquire and redevelop the First Baptist Church site at Fenton Street and Wayne Avenue. It'll go from house of worship to just house. That is, a 259-unit apartment complex with almost 20k SF of retail. MAC Realty Advisors' Andrew McAllister (snapped this morning flanked by colleagues Ben Lazarus and Nick Rubenstein) helped arranged the deal, and tells us the star of the deal might just be the site's location directly across from a Whole Foods: "Being across from a grocery store is good, but being across from a Whole Foods is great." Andrew, Ben, and colleague Bruce Levin were involved in the deal.
Here's the site as it stands today—LaKritz-Adler and Grosvenor will build First Baptist Church a new facility directly behind the old site, Andrew says. Grosvenor was the best partner for the almost $80M deal, Ben tells us, since the firm already has serious retail expertise combined with an active focus on multifamily in DC. MAC eventually matched the two after a period of "tremendous attention," he says. (Notice the "he" is lowercase. It can get confusing when writing about church.)
