WASHINGTON, DC-After what seemed to be a hiatus in activity, investment sales and leases in NoMa may well step up in light of the $8 billion worth of investment that is expected at Union Station. It is not that investor interest in this submarket fled, Cassidy Turley broker Jayne Shister tells GlobeSt.com. "In fact, right now we have a contract on 820 First St., NE," she says.

Rather, the recent quiet period has been more a matter of timing—a lot of NoMa buildings delivered in the 2008-2009 timeframe and quickly became leased, at which point the owners sold them. Still, buildings do continue to move here as the sale of the former Railway Express building illustrates. Located at 900 2nd St., NE, the building traded for $30.5 million. Shister represented the seller Potomac Development Corp. The buyer is undisclosed, which Shister describes as a local investor.

The 115,394-square-foot, four-story building is 90% leased. It was designed by Daniel Burnham and decidedly not part of the construction wave that occurred in this submarket in the mid to late 2000s: the building was constructed in 1908 and then underwent a full renovation in 1989.

The largest tenant in the building is Amtrak, which occupies 30% of the space. It has seven years left on the lease, Shister says. The building is well-suited for firms seeking to lobby Congress—it is proximate to the US Capitol and the Senate Office Building. It is also very close to Union Station, which is convenient for Amtrak, since the company will be quite busy for the foreseeable future with its plans to upgrade Union Station into a high-speed rail hub.