Washington-Area Office Asset Commands $153M

One Liberty Center. Image via Google Street View

USAA Real Estate has acquired a 319,327-square-foot office property in Arlington, Va., from seller Carr Properties for $153 million, Yardi Matrix data shows. The Class A office building, One Liberty Center, is a highly secured property that is 99 percent leased by the U.S. Government.

The buyer also secured financing for the purchase through a 10-year, fixed-rate acquisition loan with Northwestern Mutual. A JLL team of Jim Meisel, Andrew Weir, Matthew Nicholson, David Baker and Stephen Conley represented the seller, while a JLL team of Cary Abod and Rob Carey represented the buyer.

Located at 875 Randolph St., the 13-story property sits in the heart of the Ballston submarket and within the Liberty Square mixed-use development. One Liberty Center is about 7 miles from downtown Washington, D.C.,  and a 15-minute drive from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Built in 2004, the mid-rise office building includes first-floor retail and an underground parking garage with 560 spaces.

The property features ISC Level IV security, including direct dark fiber to the Pentagon, 100 percent connectivity throughout the property and SCIF spaces that are authorized to hold the highest levels of government meetings, according to JLL.

New deliveries

In May, Carr Properties broke ground on Signal House, a $135 million creative office property in the Union Market neighborhood. Designed by Gensler, the building is expected to come online in the first quarter of 2021.

In the second quarter of 2019, the vacancy rate for the Washington, D.C. office market hit nearly 14 percent, after more than 1 million square feet of office space was added to the market, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report. The deliveries aren’t over yet—the report also noted that another 1.9 million square feet of space is set to be delivered across the D.C. area, with only 50 percent having been preleased by the close of the second quarter.