The Department of Justice is moving into the North of Massachusetts Avenuedistrict, joining National Public Radio, which announced it was moving to NoMa on Wednesday.
“We’re thrilled! You can’t plan a week like this for an emerging neighborhood,” said Liz Price, president of the NoMa Business Improvement District. “We couldn’t have asked for two more prestigious headquarters to move in.”
“We’ve promised to drive investment in emerging neighborhoods, and the investments we’ve made to help secure these two anchor tenants are the quintessential examples of just what we are trying to accomplish,” said D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty in a statement released by the NoMa district.
The agreement offers the Justice Department a “substantial period of free rent,” sources familiar with the deal said.
The 521,000-square-foot site at 145 N St. NE sits in the heart of the NoMa community. The project, Two Constitution Square, will be composed of two adjacent buildings. Up to 2,000 Justice employees will move into the facility in the first half of 2010. Groundbreaking is expected in April, according to Price.
The new deal, part of the department’s second phase of a consolidation effort, won’t “free up a ton of real estate” in the District, however, sources said.
Currently, about 1,400 employees occupy the department’s main headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue in the Robert F. Kennedy Building. Almost 8,000 additional employees are housed in more than 10 different properties throughout the city. Some employees will remain in the headquarters and at least some at the other locations.
The Justice site is part of the first phase in a 1.6 million-square-foot project, with 340,000 commercial square feet; 80,000 square feet of retail space, including a 50,000-square-foot grocery store; and 440 residential units, said Doug Firstenberg, a principal with Stonebridge Carras and the secretary and treasurer of the NoMa district.
This marks the largest federal lease since the Department of Transportation’s new 1.35 million-square-foot headquarters at the Southeast Federal Center, announced in 2002.
