Stepping into the lobby of the newest luxury office building in Washington, D.C., one's eyes are immediately drawn upward to a hanging art installation that contains hundreds of emerald-green and indigo-blue glass gemstones that glitter in the sunlight.
While the close-up view is eye-catching, from across the street, the crystals form an outline of the nation's capital. It's one of several ornate features — from an opulent fireplace to a floor-to-ceiling garden wall — that make up the roughly 22-foot-high atrium in the property at 600 Fifth St. NW.
The newly refreshed office building near the city's Chinatown neighborhood appears in stark contrast to the brutalist-style building that once stood at the site and housed the longtime headquarters of the metropolitan area's local transit agency. It also stands out from many of the other redevelopments rising in Washington these days, which are more likely to involve apartment complexes crafted out of underutilized office buildings.
Turning 600 Fifth St. into top-tier office space is a bet that there remains a potent market for corporations looking to depart aging buildings for newer, more modern accommodations.
Developer Stonebridge and its partner Rockefeller Group are knocking off the last few punch-list items on the roughly 400,000-square-foot glass building that is set to welcome law firm Crowell & Moring as its anchor tenant later this year. The building, which is roughly 50% leased, received its certificate of occupancy in October.
"We are in a market where office buildings are not getting leased, but where we are at also is that this is the only trophy building that is in the market 2026 through 2027, so we're in a great position," Ranjeet Mohandas, a vice president of design and construction for Rockefeller, told CoStar News during a recent tour of the building.
Success in tough office market
The remaking of 600 Fifth St. began in 2023, when the development team set about popping off the top of the 1970s-era, fortress-like structure to add four new floors, turning an eight-story building into a 12-story one.
The building now features a penthouse tenant lounge, offering largely uninterrupted views of the District, from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. And there is room for 13,000 square feet of street-level retail space, including for a prospective restaurant, Mohandas said.
Outside, the building is no longer characterized by block-like concrete forms. The exterior is more varied.
"We call it the proscenium — that bump-out over there," Mohandas said, pointing toward a wall and describing how, similar to a theater's stage that arches outward toward an auditorium, the expansion of space adds a dramatic character to the property's structure.
The Stonebridge-Rockefeller partnership gained control of the property by acquiring the leasehold interest from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or WMATA, in 2023, for about $125.55 million, CoStar data shows. WMATA had vacated the structure, then known as the Jackson Graham Building, for its current headquarters at L'Enfant Plaza.
The partnership liked the timing, noting that inventory was tightening for luxury space. But the redevelopment did not come without hurdles.
"Capitalizing this thing was a bear," said Douglas Firstenberg, a principal at Bethesda, Maryland-based Stonebridge. "Rockefeller's heft made a big difference."
New York-based Rockefeller is no stranger to the region. Its other office properties include 1901 L St. NW, where its city offices are located, and Boro Tower in Northern Virginia.
The latest addition to the company's line-up is "a bull's-eye," said Hilary Allard Goldfarb, a senior managing director and Rockefeller's head of development in the mid-Atlantic region.
She emphasized that everything tenants would touch is new.
"From what it takes to lease and to attract the highest caliber of tenants in the trophy market today, nobody would really know that this was a redevelopment versus new construction," she said in an interview.
With limited supply coming on line over the next few years, finding new, high-quality space in and around the nation's capital could become increasingly difficult for tenants, according to CoStar's latest market report.
"Demand for high-quality, 5 Star trophy space is still strong in the D.C. area, as evidenced by the lower vacancy rate in this category compared to the region overall," said Melina Duggal, CoStar's senior director of market analytics for the Washington area. "The category is also benefiting from a lack of supply, which has further tightened the market. Tenants are drawn to this type of space due to the quality of the space, the cache it gives their firm, and the access to amenities it provides workers."
Following a similar investment thesis to Stonebridge-Rockefeller partnership's, Boston-based BXP, a real estate investment trust that says it's the largest publicly traded developer in the United States, has plans for two new luxury office projects in the District.
One is set to arrive at 725 12th St. NW in 2028, and another is on its way to 2100 M St. NW, with an expected completion in 2031. Both are slated to be anchored by law firms.
"Imitation is the highest form of flattery," Goldfarb said in jest.
For the record
CBRE's Scott Frankel, Carroll Cavanagh, Dimitri Hajimihalis, Emily Eppolito and DJ Callahan are the exclusive office leasing agents for 600 Fifth St. NW, and KLNB's Jenn Price, Kim Stein and Kelley Milloy, in collaboration with Brand Urban's Taryn Brandes, are the exclusive retail leasing agents. Thornton Tomasetti served as the structural engineer. Architecture firms Pickard Chilton and Kendall/Heaton Associates, as well as general contractor Clark Construction, worked on the project. The joint venture secured additional equity financing from Taisei USA and Mitsubishi Estate New York, a U.S. affiliate of Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Estate Co. Ltd.