GSA Awards West Heating Plant to Four Seasons, Levy Group


The General Services Administration concluded its online auction for the West Heating Plant on 29th Street March 6 with a win for “Bidder # 2,” it indicated, at $19.5 million.

For days, real estate and business watchers wondered who won the auction. The winner was revealed March 12, when Richard Levy told the Washington Business Journal that his firm, the Fours Season and the New York-based Georgetown Group had gotten the property.

Levy told the journal the team plans to spend more than $100 million on the reconstruction project.
After the auction began on Jan. 18, the first bid at $500,001 came on Feb. 14 with a few bidders going back and forth for days. Each 24 hours required a new bid to keep the auction going; March 5 saw the final bid.

Here’s what the Georgetowner reported about the Levy Group plan in November 2011:

The Levy Group, a longtime and well-known owner of Georgetown commercial real estate, and the Georgetown Company of New York City, which is working with Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Strategic Hotels & Resorts, Inc., are proposing a project to build a Four Seasons Private Residences and create an adjacent park on the site of the West Heating Plant. According to the group, “the proposal, which has been developed over the past year and a half, is being made public following the GSA’s recent announcement that it plans to dispose of the underutilized and inaccessible property that sits at the confluence of the C&O Canal and Rock Creek Park at the foot of Georgetown.”

“We and the Georgetown Company have joined forces with the Four Seasons to bring life to a cordoned-off section of Georgetown,” said the Levy Group’s managing principal Richard Levy. “Our priorities are clear: transform the West Heating Plant into an attractive and contributing building that complements and respects the neighborhood and create a new park that links the the C&O Canal and Rock Creek Park with the Georgetown Waterfront Park. … The proposed renovated building will include approximately 80 Four Seasons Private Residences … A significant part of the property south of the West Heating Plant will be dedicated to parkland …”

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