By this fall Q Street will have four new “luxury” flats for sale at Dupont Circle. The UrbanVibe Developers condominium project, nicknamed The Q, will be located at 1700 Q Street NW and is set for completion by this fall, says Joseph Shieh, president and CEO of UrbanVibe.
“The energy and activity of this location, [along with] the pedestrian traffic, and the convenience to everything made it a top choice,” said Shieh. “But it’s also a close-knit neighborhood. People bump into each other and it’s a friendly, inviting environment and atmosphere.”
It took several months for UrbanVibe to find a property to develop, but they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to bid on this historic foreclosure, says Shieh. And while the building that is from around 1895 is in excellent shape inside, architect Tom Kamm has designed a more clean and modern look for the interior and so the entire inside has been renovated. The exterior, however, is protected by the Historical Preservation Office and will not be touched.
“We’re retaining its beautiful shell, the façade,” says Shieh, “but the entire interior has been gutted and renewed. Some more historically-inclined people might be hurt by that, and even though things were in good shape, they weren’t relevant to our designs.”
There will be no reserved parking for the two-bedroom, two-bath units, but all will have some kind of outdoor space. The ground-level condo will have a garden, the penthouse a spiral walk-up to a private roofdeck with an outdoor kitchen, and the other two units have some balcony space in the front.
The units range in roughly 1200 to 1400 square feet and are not on pre-sale yet. They will go for somewhere around $850 per square foot, Shieh estimates, and even higher for the penthouse. Eric Mitchell Properties will be selling the properties; however, Shieh says that won’t start happening until earliest this summer.
The median per-square-foot sale price for the last three months of data in Dupont Circle has been around $583, according to Trulia.com. According to the site, it has barely fluctuated in the last five years. The area is extremely popular for young urban professionals with nearly every block in and around Dupont filled of restaurants, bars, nightclubs and businesses as well as Metro lines and bus routes.
Lisa Spinelli is Elevation DC's development editor as well as a freelance journalist, copy editor and mother of two. After receiving her Master of Science in print journalism from Columbia University in 2004, Lisa worked across the country and in Italy as a journalist, editor and Web editor. Her website
LisaSpinelli.com has links to a smattering of her published clips.