MacFarlane Partners Expects $1B DC Pipeline

WASHINGTON, DC-San Francisco real estate investment manager MacFarlane Partners is making a multimillion-dollar commitment to the DC market. It opened an office here this summer, headed by Brad Dockser, former partner and CEO for Western Development Corp., a retail and mixed-use development firm in the Washington, DC area.

MacFarlane Partners founder and managing principal Victor MacFarlane tells GlobeSt.com that the firm expects to invest $500,000 to $1 billion a year in the DC market, starting in 2007; MacFarlane plans to announce some $300 million to 400 million worth of projects in Southeast Washington by the end of the year.

Washington is one of a select few cities in which MacFarlane is making such high-dollar investments, a group that includes Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. “We are also expanding our activities a bit in the northwest, looking at Chicago for instance,” MacFarlane says.MacFarlane has had exposure to the DC market before; it partners with Forest City nationally and in DC has fronted 25% of the capital for the development of Southeast Federal Center, a 44-acre annex of the former Washington Navy Yard. The $2-billion project, which hasn’t begun construction yet, has been divided into 30 or so individual projects, MacFarlane explains.