WASHINGTON, DC–The opening of phase one of the $2.3 billion mixed-use waterfront community The Wharf was held this week. Visitors might be forgiven for thinking there is more work that needs to be done as, well, there is.
“There's lots more in front of us to do,” Madison Marquette Chair Amer Hammour tells GlobeSt.com. “On October 12 [visitors saw] a project that will be partly but not completely occupied.” He says that some buildings are still under construction, such as the fish market, as one example. “We are hoping we can deliver that by the second quarter of next year — around cherry blossom time. That's a good way to celebrate that.”
Hammour gave GlobeSt.com an extensive overview of his plans for phase two, now well underway, in the first part of this article. Following are excerpts of the remainder of our conversation.
About retail and fashion
One of my pet projects is to make sure we have at least one shopping street. One street with wide sidewalks, double loaded retail — something we don't have in phase one. This will allow us to have a serious fashion presence. This area isn't well known for its retail and shops, but we're going to make the case for it
with our first phase.
About the pre-leases for phase two retail, or lack thereof
There are no pre-leases on phase two retail.
What has happened, though, is many tenants that wanted to be in phase one but had formats that didn't fit us, have started talking to us about phase two. But I can tell you that we're doing a lot of experimenting on the retail tenants. See, for phase one, our first priority from a retail point of view was to focus on the food. We have more than 20 food outlets for phase one now. Different restaurants, different price levels. All regional, all local groups that are curated by chefs and doing something that's unique.
About phase three
There isn't one. Phase two will complete the Wharf plan as it is and the third phase, if you can call it that, is to take what we have done and improve on it, making it more and more of a destination.
In my opinion you stabilize your property and then whatever works you do more of; whatever isn't working you try to change. I think that would be our third phase.
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Erika Morphy
Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.
