en.Wedoany.com Reported - Arlington County, Virginia, has launched an office-to-residential conversion project, transforming a six-story, 121,000-square-foot office building into a multi-family residential community.
The 25-year-old building, which has been vacant for about a decade, will be renamed Renley after the conversion. The exterior facade will be largely preserved, while the interior will undergo a complete renovation to create 94 market-rate apartments ranging from one to three bedrooms. Fixed windows will be replaced with operable ones, and the existing plaza area will be enhanced with planter boxes and outdoor seating. Resident amenities include storage rooms on each floor, a wellness center, co-working spaces, lounges, and gathering areas. Some sixth-floor residential units will feature private balconies with a depth of 12 feet.
The project will offer over 5,600 square feet of ground-floor retail space and 207 underground parking spaces. The garage is adjacent to the Virginia Square-GMU Metro station entrance.
The project contractor is CBG Building Co., led by Gilbane Development.
Renley is scheduled for completion in April 2027 and is one of the first projects to benefit from Arlington County's new adaptive reuse policy. The policy, passed in November 2024, aims to address the county's record-high office vacancy rate. At the time of the policy's passage, the county had over 10.7 million square feet of vacant space, with an oversupply of aging office buildings.
According to Arlington County, the policy prioritizes rapid market entry by significantly shortening the review and approval time for adaptive reuse projects. This is intended to incentivize developers to revitalize underutilized office buildings while alleviating the region's housing shortage.
Other commercial areas in Northern Virginia are also advancing similar office-to-residential projects. In Arlington's National Landing, a nearly 60-year-old, 315,000-square-foot office building is being converted into nearly 200 multi-family residential units, while an adjacent 240,000-square-foot building will be transformed into a 344-room hotel. In Alexandria's Old Town, a recent project converted a seven-story office building built in the 1980s (236,000 square feet) into a 199-unit luxury multi-family residential community. Near the Vienna Metro station, a $174.6 million office-to-residential project broke ground earlier this year, replacing two vacant office buildings with 76 townhomes and a community of 452 apartments, while retaining the existing 656-space parking garage on site.
