ARLINGTON, VA-Financing to the tune of $76.6 million for One Liberty Center, a new 315,000-sf office structure under development, has been put in place with the assistance of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. on behalf of The Liberty Center owner, Ballston Investor Group. Riggs Bank is behind the multi-million dollar bridge debt, construction and permanent financing package. The Shooshan Co. is acting as developer for the project, while Clark Construction Group is on board as the general contractor. One Liberty is the first of the multi-phase Liberty Center endeavor–originally conceived as the Ballston Center Project–that will ultimately offer one million sf of leasable mixed-use space.

Located at the spot where North Randolph Street and North Ninth Street meet, One Liberty sits in close proximity to the Ballston Metro station. The site was formerly home to three 1960s-era office buildings and a small apartment building. Those structures are being torn down to make room for Liberty Center. The buildings that occupied the north and west portions of the site have already been demolished to make room for One Liberty, which is already 98% leased by the government's real estate arm, the General Services Administration. Employees of the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research will makeup the main tenant roster when the building is finished in 2005. The GSA had previously occupied space in the office buildings that are to be destroyed for the new project.

Once the walls of One Liberty rise, the next phases of development will include a second office structure offering 180,000 sf of space and residential buildings amounting to 530,000 sf. It was the residential portion of the project that raised concerns among members of the County Planning Commission and the Citizen's Advisory Commission during the project's proposal phase. However, these concerns over affordable housing were soon allayed. “The applicant would be required to retain or replace the existing affordable units, and has proposed to do so by replacing the existing 10 one-bedroom units with 5 new two-bedroom units,” Arlington County manager Ron Carlee explains in a report to the County Board last January. “The developer previously agreed to lower rents on three of the units to be affordable to households at or below 50% of area median income. The other two units would remain affordable at or below 60% of median income for a period of 30 years. This approach meets several County Housing Policy Goals by creating more affordable family size units.”