Bailey’s Crossroads office building sold
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| The Lee Building is on the corner of Leesburg Pike and Washington Drive across the street from a vacant lot where Spectrum plans to develop a retail center. |
The Lee Building, an aging, five-story office building at 5881 Leesburg Pike in Bailey’s Crossroads, has been sold for $3.1 million.
The buyer, Fitzgerald Lewis, listed as Daff LLC, plans to operate the building as an investment property and does not intend to redevelop the site, said Terrell Marsh, an executive vice president at Stewart Commercial Realty Services LLC, which served as the broker for the sale.
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| The lobby of the Lee Building, with a travel agency at the right. |
The seller is Lee Building LLC, an affiliate of E.G. Reinsch Co., which owns several local apartment complexes. Stewart handled the sale as an off-market transaction, which means the property wasn’t publicly listed.
The Lee Building is just under 27,600 square feet and its assessed value is $2.32 million, according to Fairfax County tax records. It was built in 1966, and its tenants include Rendezvous Travel & Tour, Computer CORE, IMA English Academy, and several doctors, dentists, lawyers, insurance agents, and other businesses.
The building’s vacancy rate is about 22 percent, which “is actually good for that area,” said Marsh. The average office building vacancy rate in Bailey’s Crossroads is nearly 47 percent, according to a 2015 report by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. Lewis owns a couple of other office buildings in the Bailey’s Crossroads area that are nearly fully occupied, he said.
Marsh is confident Lewis will operate the building as a rental property. “There’s no redevelopment play I’m aware of,” he said. “One of the problems is that it sits on such a small parcel.” The total property is about 29,800 square feet.
A representative of Lewis said the building will probably be upgraded, with improvements to the lobby, windows, HVAC system, and other areas.
Another stella landmark signature building for the safe keeping in the dump.
What a trashy deal
There's a lot more to this deal than meets the eye, which we won't know until it's up for rezoning. Probably the LLC that is buying the building will want tear it down to rezone it to make apartments. That will multiply their $3 million purchase into many millions more. Mrs. Difalco house sits right next to the building just purchased. The LLC will want to buy her house (she could get a pretty penny for) to expand their apartments. Here's the blog on Mrs. DiFalco's property and the Sprectrum development that was very contentious. http://annandaleva.blogspot.com/2015/03/board-of-supervisors-defers-vote-on.html
This should be mandatory reading for anyone choosing to participate in this blog:
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-stop-being-a-cynical-asshole-1537302138
haha awesome
Truth.
Cynicism is so inappropriate in these times of plenty. Until you look at the choice of presidential candidates.
No one has approached my grandmother for the purchase of her home. But this was an awkward comment to read…
The new owner is probably just waiting for the BOS to approve the proposal to increase development in the Baileys and 7 Corners "Opportunity" areas.
Even more apartments is a real possibility.
This is what "revitalization" is really all about. Banks and other commercial interest with too much money are always looking for a place to park their excess billions so they buy up our small town's commercial and residential areas and putting as little money as possible into them until the community is thoroughly trashed, all the jobs are gone, schools and property values are wrecked and stable neighborhoods, even the HOAs are uninhabitable. Then they get our elected representative to declare us blighted and tell the few of us that are left that extreme density "revitalization" is the only remedy. The town is then "urbanized" (Ala the ZOA5 proposal, more billions are made and they move on to other towns. How long are we going to sleep through this before we say no more? If your elected officials are doing this to your town, get organized and get new elected officials ASAP.