New NAB Building Could Cost Over $36 Million
NAB’s planned new headquarters on Washington’s Capital Waterfront in southeast could cost more than $36 million, according to rough estimates from commercial real estate brokers. The planned 120,000 square foot structure will be located on what's considered increasingly desirable real estate, said CBRE Executive Vice President Manny Fitzgerald, who's involved with the transaction. The area around the future HQ is transitioning to a “24/7 neighborhood” with a mix of retail, residential and commercial uses and easy access to Capitol Hill, Fitzgerald said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
The building’s construction is planned to be partially financed by the expected 2018 sale of NAB's current N St. NW building (see 1504060052). The structure would likely be considered a tear down by most real estate developers, said a commercial real estate broker familiar with the current building but not involved in the transaction. That means NAB would likely receive value only for the land the building sits on, the broker said.
That land was most recently assessed as being worth about $8.5 million, according to the Washington Office of Tax and Revenue. The OTR lists the N St. building as being worth $9.6 million. A broadcast industry official wasn't aware of any complaints within NAB about the new building's cost. NAB didn’t comment.
The move to the new building, to be located at the corner of South Capitol and M streets, isn't expected to have much of an effect on the broadcast attorneys who need to visit it, industry officials said. Though attorneys representing broadcasters frequently need to visit NAB, its location within the city became less important once the FCC moved out of its HQ at 1919 M St. NW, said Pillsbury Winthrop broadcast attorney Scott Flick. That move ended the expectation that law firms and associations lobbying the FCC needed to be within walking distance of it, Flick said. It’s very unlikely that law firms would move offices to stay near NAB, broadcast industry officials said, unless they were motivated to do so for real estate reasons. NAB is expected to break ground on the new building in 2016 and move there in 2018, the association has said.