Shopping center The Bloc in downtown may
Washington, D.C.-based National Real Estate Advisors, the center’s owner, has filed plans to add 41 stories on top of the center’s existing 12-story parking garage.
Plans filed with the Department of City Planning call for 466 apartments — a mix
of studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom units.
Handel Architects, based in New York City, is designing the project.
The Bloc, at 700 S. Flower St., was originally built in the 1970s as Broadway Plaza before going by Macy’s Plaza in the ’90s.
Ratkovich Co., which is based at the center, updated it a few years ago. In 2018, the company sold its interest in the development to National Real Estate Advisors, one of its equity partners.
The companies and Blue Vista Capital Management had purchased The Bloc in 2013 for $241 million.
Today, The Bloc has a 32-story office building and a Sheraton Grand hotel, in addition to retail space. Retailers at the center
“It’s a great project, and it completes The Bloc,” Nick Griffin, executive director of the Downtown Center Business Improvement District, said. “You have the quartet of office, retail, hospitality and residential all in one location. That’s really a compelling package … and it really speaks to the confidence that developers have in downtown as a residential market. You would not build a project of that scale and complexity on top of a parking structure if you weren’t very confident about the market.”
Despite the difficulties facing many urban centers during the pandemic, downtown’s residential market is recovering. In the third quarter, the average occupancy rate for apartments was 93.6%, a 9.9% increase from the previous year, according to data from DCBID. The average effective rent per unit, meanwhile, was $2,734, up 15.1% over the previous year, DCBID found.
“It’s clear that projections about the exodus from the city were just plain wrong and, quite to the contrary, residential demand has come roaring back,” Griffin said. “This project is really compelling evidence of that and that the market for residential is very strong.”
Other projects with large residential components are also in the works in downtown. A $1 billion project dubbed The Grand will have 436 luxury apartment units when completed next year in addition to a hotel and retail space. A project at 520 Mateo St. in the Arts District will have a 35-story tower with 475 apartment units when completed. It will also have an office tower and retail space.
But the most recent plans come from Brookfield Properties, which filed plans in November with the city to add a 34-story residential tower with 366 units to its Bank of America Plaza at 333 S. Hope St. The property already has a 55-story office tower.
The residential project, known as Residences at 333 South Hope Street and being designed by Large Architecture, would replace some of the plaza and parking at the site with the apartment tower. Brookfield also plans to have a ground-floor café on the property.
These projects, Griffin said, are important to downtown’s continued growth.
“When we look at downtown holistically, we really feel like the continued growth of the residential (developments) is really the key to success,” Griffin said. “We’ve already got the critical mass of office.”
