Harry Jaffe, The Examiner
2008-07-09 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

Open space is hard to come by in downtown D.C., so I was thrilled to see the wrecking ball take down the ugly old office building at the northwest corner of Connecticut Avenue and K Street.

It took weeks to tear down the behemoth. As I stopped by day and night to witness the building crumble, I felt both excited by the might of the wreckers and a bit embarrassed. What had happened over the past 40 years in those offices and secret spaces suddenly laid bare by the wrecking ball?

My imagination ran a bit wild until the last hunk of concrete was hauled away. Now the corner is quiet and flat.

What will take the place of that building? Wouldn’t it be nice if that prime corner was grassed over and turned into a park, so we could breathe deeper and have a longer vista? I put the questions to Michael Gewirz, one of the developers.

“We have a lot of parks in Washington,” he said, “perhaps the greatest amount of space devoted to parks than any city in the country. The question for us is how best to build off those green spaces.”

Short answer: Enjoy the open space because a building is about to fill it up. But behind every corner in downtown, there’s a story, and the one at the heart of what we call the Golden Triangle is instructive.

Gewirz’s grandfather, Morris, gathered partners and bought the corner back in the 1940s. They also bought the corner across K Street, among others. At that time there were garages and gas stations along L Street and town houses along K.

“In those days there wasn’t a tremendous need for office space,” Gewirz says. “It was very risky. The office market evolved over the last 50 years.”

Gewirz, 45, runs Potomac Investments, with his brother Stephen, and their dad, Bernard, in his early 80s. “He’s not only alive but prevailing,” Michael says.

The new office building will be a totally local enterprise.

Local owners, local lending from Chevy Chase Bank and Trust, local builder with Clark Construction, even a homegrown tenant with the law firm of Arendt Fox.

The new building will be a green one designed by Pei Cobb.

“Modern material, modern design, lots of glass and stone and stainless steel,” Gewirz said. “We hope it will set a standard for the first cycle of redesigned buildings since the 1960s.”

The new building will showcase the thriving real estate market in the nation’s capital at a time when many cities are suffering.

Rents will be more than $80 a square foot, putting the number on a par with San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles.

So we can expect an environmentally friendly office building with a modern look. Not as good as a green, open space, but better than the ugly box that once occupied the spot.