WASHINGTON, DC-Akridge, a real estate services firm here, has closed on the air rights at Union Station--a $10-million transaction that is one of the necessary steps to realizing an ambitious $1-billion, three-million-sf mixed-use development project in the H Street Corridor. Called Burnham Place at Union Station, the development will be connected to the famed rail station and retail complex, built on a concrete platform 20 feet over the rail yard and straddling the H Street bridge in northeast Washington, DC.

The project is three to five years out from construction, Matt Klein, Akridge president, tells GlobeSt.com. “We are just now embarking on the process of getting through the entitlement process for the project and that will take some time.” Once that is complete and an architect has been identified, “then I think we will be able to look at a more concrete construction schedule.”

Akridge conceived the project some four years ago, he says, when it acquired the land from GSA. “We saw it as an incredible location next to one of the most remarkable landmarks in DC as well as its economic development potential.” Basically right now, he says, the site is a cavern or hole in the ground with railroad tracks. Once complete the project will bridge two economically disparate parts of the city.

The multi-party closing depended on the cooperation of many public and private entities including the GSA, Amtrak, the Union Station Redevelopment Corp., the Federal Railroad Administration, AEW on behalf of Union Station Venture, and the DC Department of Transportation, according to the company’s press release.

Akridge also has a financial partner lined up for the project, which Klein declined to name.