What if? Fannie Mae sale could mean apartments, UDC student housing at 4250 Connecticut Ave.

4250 Connecticut Avenue (Nov. 2015 Google StreetView image)

The sale of Fannie Mae’s office building at 4250 Connecticut Avenue to Bernstein Management presents a possible opportunity to the site’s closest neighbor: UDC.

The next meeting of the University of District of Columbia Community-Campus Task Force will be held on January 11, 2017. The public, as always, is invited to the meeting, at 6:30 p.m. in Building 44, Room A-03.

The Fannie Mae sale has been added to the preliminary agenda, which also includes the 2018 budget and upcoming university events.

Many UDC students are housed in the apartment buildings at 3003 and 2950 Van Ness Street. This has presented challenges to the students and to the older residents, and UDC has long sought on-campus housing.

4250 Connecticut could also continue to house offices, though it’s not clear whether there’s much demand for that. In general, the market for office space in DC is soft, and conversions to other uses are on the rise.

The former Intelsat headquarters, just down the street from the Fannie Mae building at 4000 Connecticut, is having a difficult time leasing its office space. It did an evaluation of whether it was feasible to convert to apartments. Sarah Alexander, a Torti Gallas architect who did the evaluation, told a Coalition for Smarter Growth walk of Van Ness that this was not feasible.

Bernstein Management has some time to figure this out. Fannie Mae is leasing back this building and its two other headquarters buildings on Wisconsin Avenue until its new location at 15th and L Streets NW is ready to be occupied. If the project stays on schedule, that’ll be spring 2018.