For its part, Grosvenor considers its latest District acquisition a veritable coup and something worth holding on to. "It was a very competitive process but we were able to finally get ourselves identified as the buyer," Grosvenor spokesperson Andrew Galbraith tells GlobeSt.com. Reportedly, JP Morgan and several other pension funds were in the running for the property. "We spent a lot of time looking at the property and we have a relationship with TIAA that goes back about 30 years."

Located downtown, the 11-story edifice consists of 225,000-sf of office space, 18,000 sf of ground-level retail space and a 120-space underground parking garage. In 1988, then-owners The Oliver T. Carr Co. and Norfolk Southern Corp.'s Southern Region Industrial Realty Inc. completed a $48-million upgrade of the property that completely restored the structure and added on 30,000 sf. The building is notable as the birthplace of the FBI Laboratory, which was established in the structure back in 1932. Today, 1500 K St. is 92% leased and is home to such occupants as GlaxoSmithKline, the Council on Competitiveness, and a bevy of law firms.

Grosvenor, which is a privately held company of the Duke of Westminster, sees the purchase as only the beginning of its planned expansion in the region. "It's our strategy to hold the property; we always look at either a five-year or a longer hold," Galbraith says. "Grosvenor is currently actively pursuing investment opportunities mostly in DC and the suburbs. Over the next five years, we'll be a lot more active in the acquisition mode in the area. The DC market is one of the strongest right now in the US and that's really why our focus is so much on the DC area.