FIRM HISTORY
United States Treasury alumni Robb M. LaKritz and Joshua A. Adler founded LaKritz Adler in 2002 with just $10,000 and a drive to enhance Washington, D.C. Since 2002, LaKritz Adler has grown into a leading D.C.-area real estate investment, development and management company, acquiring and improving dozens properties in and around Washington, D.C., with an aggregate value of over $100 million.
Starting in the historic Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C., LaKritz Adler acquired a 3,000 square-foot collapsed plumbing supply shop in tax foreclosure. With a vision for restoring the historic building, once the home and business of D.C. civic leader Watha T. Daniels, LaKritz Adler settled numerous tax liens, enlisted the help of community leaders, reconstructed and leased the building, and succeeded in laying a cornerstone for the revitalization of Shaw’s commercial main street.
After several other successful historic rehabilitations in the D.C. neighborhoods of Shaw, Logan Circle, Columbia Heights, Mt. Pleasant, DuPont Circle and Petworth, LaKritz Adler undertook the revitalization of Georgia Avenue, Washington’s longest commercial corridor. Responding to community demand for a sit-down restaurant amidst blocks of vacant storefronts, the firm bought a vacant former barbershop and began construction on the Temperance Hall Building, where it invested in and opened the first sit-down restaurant on Georgia Avenue in more than forty years. They also recruited Yoga House into a 3,000 square-foot yoga and dance studio on the upper floors of the building, drawing widespread acclaim for the Temperance Hall project as an example of community-centered urban revitalization.
Not long thereafter, LaKritz Adler acquired a long-vacant former gas station site at Georgia Avenue’s most prominent intersection, negotiated case closure with regulatory authorities, and signed a lease to bring the first pharmacy to the Petworth neighborhood in decades. The Petworth CVS opened in July 2010 in a ribbon-cutting ceremony led by D.C.’s mayor, city councilmembers and community leaders. On the other end of the same block, LaKritz Adler assembled the land for the gleaming new 45,000 square-foot E.L. Haynes Public Charter School.
On U Street, the historic cultural epicenter of Washington, LaKritz Adler assembled several vacant lots by the U Street Metro and built Moderno, a 30,000 square-foot ultramodern mixed-use building, hailed in multiple press accounts as the best-selling and most successful condominium project delivered in Washington in 2009.
Other accomplishments include the Veritas Building in DuPont Circle, where LaKritz Adler purchased and transformed a striking near-vacant neoclassical building at the corner of Florida and Connecticut Avenues, signing the nationally-acclaimed Veritas Wine Bar, a regional law firm and a local dry cleaner to achieve full occupancy in a matter of months.
In late 2009, LaKritz Adler unveiled plans for 8415 Fenton at the corner of Wayne Avenue and Fenton Street, in the heart of downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, at what may be the best residential development location in Montgomery County. The plan includes a 230-unit apartment building with 30,000 square feet of retail, and a new, state-of-the-art, 45,000 square foot church and community center on site. The project is a joint venture with the First Baptist Church of Silver Spring, and sits directly across the street from the Silver Spring Whole Foods, the new flagship public library, and the future Purple Line Metro Station.
In early 2010, LaKritz Adler acquired from Starbucks Corporation the prominent corner of Connecticut Avenue and Dupont Circle in downtown Washington, a 12,000 square foot set of historic commercial buildings that include the first Starbucks opened in the eastern United States as well as the Beadazzled store. Since then, LaKritz Adler has rehabbed and fully leased the buildings, which had been underutilized and neglected for decades.
