A few weeks after Four Points development announced liftoff on a residential project on W Street SE, developer Stan Voudrie is planning another contribution to the neighborhood: A wholesale renovation of a forbidding warehouse on Shannon Place into a 75,000 square foot office building that will add momentum to the slow-moving downtown Anacostia business district.
The current tenant, the Metropolitan Police Department’s Evidence Control Division, is terminating its lease in October. After that, Voudrie plans to re-skin the building with glass, which the area hasn’t seen much of yet. He’s building on spec for now, but thinks he has a good chance of landing either a District government agency or a Department of Homeland Security training facility. If not, though, the prospect of DHS moving into the neighborhood makes the task of leasing an office building much less daunting: Ancillary groups like contractors and consultants will be looking for smaller spaces nearby.
That’s federal government-driven economic development in action.