Shooshan Secures Rare 18-Month Forward for $100M 

ARLINGTON, VA-Shooshan Co. has secured a rare 18-month forward commitment of $100 million in permanent financing for its 355,000-square-foot Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency headquarters, which is now under development here. HFF senior managing directors Bill Asbill and Bob Donhauser and director Dan McIntyre secured the 15-year, fixed-rate loan from Prudential Mortgage Capital Co. 

Shooshan was seeking an 18-month commitment to lock in the current low interest rates, Matt Buhtes, director of finance at Shooshan, tells GlobeSt.com. “By doing this we have been able to remove one of the most significant risks facing the project.” Despite project’s obvious pluses for any lender--namely the fact that the building is fully leased to the GSA for fifteen years--only Prudential was willing to meet Shooshan’s terms. “Now that we have put the financing to bed we can focus on constructing a trophy-quality building,” Buhtes says. 

An 18-month forward commitment is unusual in the current environment, even for a project of this caliber, HFF’s McIntyre agrees. “More typical are terms that are between six to 12 months,” he tells GlobeSt.com. The last time he can remember such terms being available was in 2007, he says. HFF also arranged the $98-million construction loan for the project with Heleba Landesbank Hessen-Thuringen. 

Located at 675 North Randolph St., the 13-story office building is expected to deliver in the first quarter of 2012. It was designed by RTKL to be certified LEED Gold as well as meet the Department of Defense’s Level IV security standards. Clark Construction Group is the general contractor.  

In 2009, the GSA signed a lease to relocate all of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency operations to the building, which is part of Shooshan’s Founders Square development. It is the first in Arlington to meet the Department of Defense’s new Minimum Anti-terrorism Standards for Buildings.