The southern side of the 600 block of H Street NE is one of the strip’s most blighted stretches: A set of boring brick office buildings mostly leased to District agencies, with little in the way of retail on the ground floor. Back in 2005, H Street Ventures LLC bought the whole property (roughly outlined in red above) for $42 million, and got a nine-story mixed-use building plan through the Board of Zoning Adjustment, with substantial community support. This May, the BZA rubber stamped a two-year extension on the zoning approval, satisfied that the owners just couldn’t get the financing to move forward.

This month brings a big sign of hope, however. On the 12th, “645 H ST NE OFFICE PJV LLC JAIR LYNCH DEVELOPMENT PARTNER” bought the whole shebang for a cool $51.5 million. U Street NW-headquartered Jair Lynch Development Partners prides itself on quality neighborhood development, and has access to the capital you need for these kinds of things. At the moment, they’re working on the Paul Laurence Dunbar apartments on U Street, as well as the McMillan Sand Filtration Site. This would be the developer’s first buy on H Street.

Things are still a bit up in the air, though. “We’re looking at a lot of different things,” says the company’s Chris Woods, declining to comment further.

It’s just one of a bunch of big moves on H Street lately, with a deal for Murry’s in the works, H Street Connection ready to go, and the Autozone site and 1350 Maryland spoken for.