City Grill

Steve Rubin
Vice President of Project Development
Harkins Builders Inc. 

Converting vacant office and hotels into residential units is trending, but Rubin adds that “rarely do you find an office footprint that is ideal for a conversion. A majority of these deals are having trouble getting past feasibility due to high costs, less than ideal layouts and financing challenges.” 

But the overall “hard costs” are easing, Rubin says, “allowing our affordable housing projects to finally move into construction.” 

Rubin says a “ healthy pipeline” of delayed deals—some due “to funding gaps that are slowly being filled—are starting to “shake loose here recently,” he says.  

Meanwhile, office and commercial work remains slow. “Until the office market recovers and gets back to normal absorption levels, this sector will underperform,” Rubin says. 

Overall, the area’s economy “is pretty stable and can draw on many different types of sectors for ahealthy pipeline,” he says. “The scarcity of housing units, low unemployment, a public desire to promote affordable housing and proximity to the federal sector in D.C. are all reasons for my optimistic viewpoint here.”