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By Chris Kain
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Mayor Muriel Bowser and other DC officials helped kick off construction today on what’s billed as the District’s largest office-to-residential conversion to date: The Geneva, a project on Connecticut Avenue NW that will include 472 market-rate units and 60 permanently affordable units.
The Post Brothers’ project to remake the Universal North and South commercial complex — located in Ward 1 at the southern end of Adams Morgan but just north of the Dupont Circle neighborhood — into a 15-story residential building has been in the works for years, but market conditions and increased interest rates impeded the start until recently.
“It’s going to be the greatest apartment building in the history of the world,” the company’s CEO, Michael Pestronk, said to laughter at today’s event. “On the outside there will be a new, elegant, classically inspired facade by Handel Architects. … We’re going to create a grande dame building that just reeks of sophistication, for lack of a better way to say it.”
Developers praised the city’s assistance, which has included support via a 20-year tax abatement through the District’s Housing in Downtown program. The project is also backed by a record-setting $465 million in Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) financing obtained from Nuveen Green Capital and administered through the DC Green Bank, plus a $110 million senior loan from Mavik.
“Mayor Bowser and her team were a pleasure to work with in terms of supporting the approval process for a large project while being extremely responsive and putting its Housing in Downtown Tax Abatement to work,” Matt Pestronk, president and co-founder of Post Brothers, said in a statement. “This strong public-private partnership with the Bowser Administration and DC Green Bank demonstrates why the District exceeded its goal of 36,000 new housing units by 2025 and is well on its way of adding 15,000 new residents to downtown by 2028.”
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