ALEXANDRIA, VA. — Carr Properties has acquired a vacant office building located at 901 N. Pitt St. in the Old Town neighborhood of Alexandria with plans to convert the property into a 250,000-square-foot multifamily community.
The site, which will be cleared to make way for the new development, is located roughly seven miles south of Washington, D.C., and 1.5 miles south of the former development site for Potomac Yards, a recently cancelled 9 million-square-foot mixed-use project.
The community will rise eight stories and feature 234 units in a variety of configurations, ranging from studio apartments to three-bedroom units. An unspecified number of units will be dedicated to affordable housing. The development will also include below-grade parking, 15,800 square feet of outdoor space, a performing arts venue and 7,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.
Shared amenities are set to include an outdoor swimming pool and a resident lounge and amenity center. Carr Properties plans to break ground on the development this fall with completion slated for late 2026. The community will target LEED Silver certification.
The development team for the project includes SK+I Architecture and interior design firm Edit Lab by Streetsense, which partnered with Carr on its previous Union Market District development in Washington, D.C.
This project is part of a growing trend, with the number of office-to-multifamily conversion projects increasing from 12,100 in 2021 to 55,300 in 2024, according to research by RentCafe. The uptick in conversions comes as the office sector continues to be negatively impacted by the rise in remote work, which has reduced tenant demand.
Although this particular project is not adaptive reuse, as the original building is being demolished, office-to-multifamily conversions now represent 38 percent of the 147,000 apartments planned for adaptive reuse conversions, according to the RentCafe report. The markets surrounding Washington, D.C., New York City and Dallas are hotbeds for this type of project.
Carr Properties is a privately held real estate investment trust that owns, manages and develops commercial properties in D.C., Boston and Austin, Texas. The Washington, D.C.-based company’s portfolio currently consists of 15 office properties totaling 5.2 million square feet.
—Katie Sloan