WASHINGTON, DC–It is here. The opening of phase one of the $2.3 billion mixed-use waterfront community known as The Wharf. The formal debut will be Thursday, October 12 but, of course, most in the local real estate community know exactly what it consists of and how it looks.

All together — across phase one and phase two — The Wharf will have 3.5 million square feet of residential, hotel, office, restaurant, retail and cultural space. There will be one-mile of waterfront with 24-acres of land and 50 acres of riparian rights in the historic Washington Channel

There will 1,190 residences, 818 keys in four hotels, 342,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space, 1.1 million square feet of Trophy and Class-A office space, a 6,000-person-capacity music venue, The Anthem, for live music and cultural events and 10 acres of parks and open spaces.

Globest.com caught up with Madison Marquette Chair Amer Hammour before this key week to talk about, now that phase one is in the bag, what is happening with phase two.

On phase two's general numbers

Phase two will be about 1.1 million square feet and its developments costs will be about $1.1 billion or maybe a little bit over. That is close to phase one in development costs — which were about $1.3 billion — because first of all, costs have risen due to inflation. Also, more importantly we have upgraded in general the quality of the buildings in phase two.

About that upgrade in quality

If I wanted to compare the two I would say that the buildings in phase one were designed by some of the best local and regional architects. The buildings in phase two have been designed by some of the best national architects. They're not better architects — it's just that using them allowed us to have more variety. Every single structure in the property is designed by a different architect.

The office component

We're designing two trophy office buildings. Those office buildings are linked together by a belt in our design that's on the second floor. If we have a tenant that would want to take more than one building we have the ability to offer that — which we didn't in phase one.
We're starting to respond to offers from larger tenants who may want to pre-lease those properties. Those buildings were designed by SHoP Architects.

A building to be determined

Next to those buildings will be a building for which we are looking at different options. We know that we're going to have apartments but we're also looking at the possibility of putting a boutique hotel there. We already have three hotels at The Wharf as you know including Hilton Canopy, which I think will be the first Canopy to open on October 12th — the first Canopy to open in the country.
The Canopy is sort of a boutique hotel. It has all the lush stylization of a boutique hotel, but it's not on the expensive side. It's more affordable than say the Intercontinental [another hotel at The Wharf]. Here we're looking to do another kind of boutique hotel but different — maybe boutique luxury.
We're looking at different things, we're talking to different operators. Right now I would say the building will have about 120, 130 hotel rooms and 240 rental apartments. We could also go full rental. We're looking at both options. ODA is the architect for that particular building.

Come back for part 2 as Hammour continues his tour of phase two.

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Madison Marquette Chair Amer Hammour Talks About Phase 2 For The Wharf

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