Nats park priciest of top properties
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
March 20, 2009
Nationals Park is worth just a few dollars shy of $1 billion, D.C. assessors say, putting it at the top of the most valuable properties in all of Washington.
According to the District’s Real Property Administration, the 2010 taxable assessment for 1500 South Capitol St. SE, the stadium’s official address near Southeast, is $999,982,800 — roughly $4 million more than the city’s assessment of the White House, $400 million more than the U.S. Capitol and $550 million more than either the Library of Congress or the Verizon Center.
Nationals Park was assessed using a cost approach, said Ritchie McKeithen, director of the tax administration. The city performed a land analysis and priced each component used to construct the stadium to come up with a total value. “Valuewise,” he said, “Nationals Park is the highest-value property in the city.”
The stadium land has a higher value than the building: $511 million to $489 million. If Nationals Park were privately owned and taxable, rather than publicly owned and tax-exempt, its tax bill would run about $18.5 million a year.
The new valuation of the ballpark, the first since it opened last March, has spurred an upward spike in the collective worth of its Southeast neighborhood, in contrast to declining or stagnant values across the rest of the District.
Jacqueline Dupree, who writes extensively about “Near Southeast” on her blog jdland.com, added it up. Combine all of the parcels in near Southeast, generally bounded by the Southeast Freeway, South Capitol Street and the Anacostia River, and you get a total taxable assessment of slightly more than $6 billion — $1.5 billion more than last year.
“I think at heart is just the reality that finished buildings are assessed higher than unfinished lots, and Near Southeast had five buildings and the ballpark finished in the past year,” Dupree said in an e-mail. “Some of the buildings that have been standing for a few years did see their assessments decrease.”
“Still,” she added, “going from $221 million to $6 billion in nine years is quite a leap.”
Near Southeast has come a long way in five years, said, D.C. Councilman Kwame Brown, chairman of the economic development committee. Just imagine what it would be, he said, if the condominiums were actually selling.
“The economy is down but the area is hot,” Brown said. “It’ll only get better.”
