New Logo for The Thompson at 2108 10th St NW

We have our new logos completed for our upcoming 4-unit building at 2108 10th St NW.  We decided to continue the "Thompson" theme from the Thompson Flats building we built next door in 2010.  The name is a reference to the Thompson Milk Dairy, which was located on this site in the 1920's.  The dairy was the biggest in the city and delivered milk to all of DC with small carts.  You can read more about it here.

This is the logo that will be on the new website, coming soon!

Construction Progress- The Thompson at 2108 10th

We finally had a great week of clear weather here in DC and we were able to get a lot of foundation work done at 2108 10th St NW.  The first part of the project involved underpinning the foundation of the house next door.  Here's what this process looks like:

The underpinning is nearly complete.

Underpinning is the process of creating a new foundation below an existing one.  The house to the right has no basement, and our new building will have a full one.  We can't just dig straight down because doing so would remove the dirt that supports the foundation of the other house.  Instead, we pour a new concrete foundation down to the lowest point of our new building.  On the right, that building has a full basement so we can just dig the dirt all the way down.

Smaller Units

There was an interesting article today on Urbanturf.com about the appeal of small units in DC.  Here's a link to the story.  The article features a 302 SF unit, which is in Foggy Bottom and is being sold by our good friend Lindsay Reishman.  Here's pretty much the whole unit:

Our upcoming project at 1120 Rhode Island Ave will feature eight units, which range from 500-650 SF.  We've sold several other moderately-sized units in the past, and we've found that they are usually the first units to sell.  Here are the reasons that we've seen why buyers love our smaller units:

1.  Cost-  Let's face it, smaller units are less expensive.  They often allow buyers to get into the most popular neighbors at a more attractive price than other, larger units.  Our units also are all new with high-end finishes, which is hard to find under $400,000.00 in DC.

2.  Location-  Our units are in the middle of downtown DC, close to pretty much everything.  Buying a unit with slightly less space but in such convenient locations is a trade-off most buyers are willing to make.

3.  Piede-a-terre-  Literally a "foot on the ground," often buyers who travel a lot for work like to keep a place to sleep when they're working in DC.  It's less expensive in the long run than staying in a hotel.

4.  Investors-  Apartments generally rent based on bedrooms, not size of the unit.  If you're buying a condo with the intention of one day renting it out, you'll get a better return on your money by buying a smaller, better priced unit.

5.  Lifestyle-  Single buyers and young couples don't need all of the space and upkeep of larger condos or houses.

New Site Up

The website for Harvard Row at 1449 Harvard St NW in Columbia Heights is up and running.  You can access it at HarvardRow.com.  One of the coolest features on this site is the 3D model under "Tour The Homes" which allows you to scroll over the building and see the layouts for each unit.  Pretty awesome.  Here's a screen grab of the entry page:

Construction Progress- 2108 10th St NW

Today was a highly productive one at The Thompson Condominium, our project at 2108 10th St NW.  We started and mostly finished demolishing the existing house that was on the lot.  The interior was gutted a few months ago (you can see that here) but we had to wait several months to demolish the rest of the house.  The original plan was to only do part of the demo by hand, and then finish with the heavy machinery.  However, when we started, we realized that the space was just too tight between the buildings on either side to use a large excavation machine.  We ended up knocking the building down the old-fashioned way- with hammers and manpower.

The first task was to build a temporary fence with plywood.  This serves two purposes- to keep the dust and debris off of the sidewalk, and to keep unauthorized people from entering the site.  This was at 11 AM this morning and you can see they were moving along- the roof is already gone.

Instead of standing on the floor joists, which were resting in the brick, we set up scaffolding for safety.

The house literally came down brick by brick, knocking each one out from the top down.

Coming Soon- New Condos in Logan Circle

More details will be following soon, but we're excited to announce a new Lock 7 Development condo project in Logan Circle.  The building will have seven or eight one-bedroom units, and it at the corner of 12th and Rhode Island Ave. NW.  The ceiling heights sore over 14 feet in several of the units, and every unit has massive windows that let in tons of natural sunlight.  We'll be preserving the original pine floors, stained glass and much of the decorative trim.  Here's how the building looks now:

We'll be starting construction in November 2011 and plan to deliver the units in the summer of 2012.