The plan to turn the old Family Court building by Logan Square into a boutique hotel took a step forward recently, when developers Peebles Corp., received $2 million more in state and city funding needed to complete the project.
The news means they’re looking at a late June start date for construction, Don Peebles, chief executive of Peebles Corp. told Curbed Philly Thursday. The recent funding, which they were awarded at the end of 2018, brings the total amount they’ve received to $3.5 million, almost a third of their $10 million goal. But Peebles is hopeful that they will be awarded the rest of the assistance this year.
“We’re on schedule and moving along... proceeding in good faith that we will receive the full funding,” he added.
Right now the group is in the process of finishing up designs for the beaux arts building at 1801 Vine Street, which has been unoccupied since 2014. They envision a boutique hotel with 220 rooms, a roof terrace, lounge, and spa. Because the building is designated as an historic site, there are parts of the structure they’ll have to preserve, like the facade and the main floor, which Peebles said will become banquet space. They’re also looking at incorporating some co-working offices into the design, he said.
It’s been a long road for the building, which was constructed in the 1930’s. It was sold to Peebles Corp. in 2014, but the group quickly hit a roadblock when they tried to fund the hotel partly through the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives program. They were disqualified from the program over concerns that construction would negatively alter the historic building. The plan got back on track last year, when they received $1.5 million worth of funding, Philly.com wrote at the time, but the delays had brought the cost of the project up to $105 million.
Now there’s an end in sight; Peebles said that if everything goes according to plan, they should be finished with the project in two years.
In the beginning of 2018, the newly installed chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York, William Rudin, announced that diversity was a key item on the organization’s agenda.
Rudin’s direction came during a political climate that has forced a reckoning in real estate, and many other industries over the inclusion and representation of women, people of color and other underrepresented minorities. Currently, REBNY’s membership and upper echelons are representative of the industry: they are overwhelmingly white and male, and are therefore wholly unreflective of the city in which they operate.
Per Rudin, REBNY is determined to be a leader in making a change in the status quo. “Increasing diversity is a priority for the real estate industry and we are expanding our efforts on multiple fronts,” Rudin said at the group’s annual banquet last year.
Those efforts would be directed at every level of the industry, Rudin said, starting from education and recruitment at the entry level to better representation at the executive level.
A year in, the organization has taken several preliminary steps to achieve that change, but has yet to implement any initiatives. John Banks, the president of REBNY, said the organization was in the research stage and would be rolling out specific programs in the coming months.
“Over the last year, we’ve been engaged in many activities, a lot of research to determine what the best practices are,” Banks, who is the organization’s first black president, told Commercial Observer. “We’ve been meeting with a variety of stakeholders and other groups and we are in the real estate space trying to work on diversity.”
A key issue, Banks said, is increasing awareness and education at the ground level so that more women and minorities enter the business. “One of the data points that we’ve come up with in our research and part of the issue is that certainly high school graduates and many folks in college don’t think of the real estate industry as a career path,” Banks said.
The group leading the effort is the newly created Diversity Working Group, co-chaired by CBRE’s Darcy Stacom and Bernard Warren, the president of Webb & Brooker, one of a handful of people of color on REBNY’s 146-member board of governors.
Amy Rose, the CEO of Rose Associates, and one of five women on REBNY’s executive committee, is a member of the working group. Rose stressed the need to address diversity at every level, beginning with expanding the pool of talent, while also highlighting the diversity that already exists.
“How are we fostering and attracting talent, and how do you develop it so they can someday be leadership?” Rose said. “You have to grow and develop the talent pool, so then they will have that seat at the table.”
To that end, REBNY is working with groups that focus on job placement, internships and training in areas like construction and management.
However, not everybody has been impressed by REBNY’s efforts. Don Peebles, the Chairman & CEO of Peebles Corporation, and one of the city’s highest-profile black developers, said the focus on job placement was paternalistic and dismissive of the existing talent.
“There are qualified minorities, as qualified as anybody out there, to build buildings in New York City,” Peebles said. “There are qualified construction managers, there are certainly qualified architects, and qualified brokers. But at the end of the day they don’t get an opportunity.”
Opening the doors to more women- and minority-owned business is an urgent issue, Peebles said. He was on REBNY’s board of governors in the past, but withdrew before his two-year tenure was over in 2016, out of frustration with the way the issue was ignored. “Real estate and construction in New York City is an entrepreneurial business that provides tremendous opportunity for economic growth and wealth creation and job generation,” he said, “But it’s not reflective in any way of the demographics of New York City.”
He said the key issues that need to be addressed are access to capital and access to opportunity, and that requires effort on the part of banks, and the public sector, as well as from industry players. “Unfortunately, people hire who they’re comfortable with,” he said.
Another area of focus is increasing the visibility of women and minorities in top positions at real estate firms. Rose said that making a change at the executive level is crucial. “When you are able to see a person who looks like you or represents you being director of a company or being an executive, then you can see what’s possible to achieve in a career,” she said. “That’s why it’s important for that to exist at the highest level possible.”
In addition, REBNY says it has made an effort to include a woman or person of color on every panel and to highlight and honor their accomplishments at occasions like the annual banquet.
“I think REBNY can use some younger blood and some fresher faces,” Stefani Berkin, the president of R New York (formerly Charles Rutenberg) and a member of REBNY said, but she felt that the organization was headed in the right direction. “I’m already feeling the change.”
But whereas white women have made some progress within REBNY and within commercial estate as a whole, with a steady trickle of women entering the C-suite, minority communities are virtually invisible at the highest levels. At the close of 2018, REBNY’s 50-member executive committee had seven women and one person of color, and the new cohort for 2019 consists of five white men.
That’s representative of the industry. “I don’t know of one major company that’s a member of REBNY that has any diversity when it comes to minorities, especially African-Americans or Latinos, in the upper management in a company,” Peebles said.
That being said, on the board of governors, the cohort of 10 new members in 2019 is more diverse than usual, and includes several women and minority members, bringing the total to 19 women, and fewer than 10 people of color, on the roughly 151-member board.
Click here to listen (Michael McWeeney / November 10, 2016) These photos are protected under international and domestic copyright law. For more information contact Michael McWeeney
The 1898 building at 108 Leonard Street was designed, in part, by McKim, Mead & White, and will become a condo with more than 160 units. Credit: Rendering by DBOX
By Jane Margolies
Nov. 23, 2018
Plenty of historic office buildings have been converted to residential use in recent years — especially in Lower Manhattan, where some of the oldest commercial structures in New York stand. The latest building to undergo such a transformation is the Clock Tower Building, which is now being called 108 Leonard.
Completed in 1898 as the headquarters of the New York Life Insurance Company, the 16-story building occupies an entire city block with its grandest portion, fronting on Broadway, designed by McKim, Mead & White — the starchitects of their day.
The white marble facade is lavished with lion heads, balustrades and other flourishes drawn from Italian Renaissance palazzos, and the whole thing is topped by a three-story pavilion with a mechanical timepiece that gave the structure its nickname.
An image from the book, ”McKim, Meade & White: Selected Works, 1879-1915,” Princeton Architectural Press, 2018.
The building is a significant, massive work of art,” said John H. Beyer, a founding partner of the architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle, which has worked on restoring several McKim, Mead & White structures. His practice has been involved in the restoration and renovation of 108 Leonard, which will yield more than 160 condos and a raft of amenities, from an underground motor court to a rooftop Zen garden.
The former banking hall is being marketed as a restaurant or event space. Credit: Rendering by DBOX
Not that the process has been easy.
After New York Life moved to Madison Square in the late 1920s, the City of New York acquired the building, also known as 346 Broadway, to house courts and government agencies.
By the time a partnership involving developers Elad Group and the Peebles Corporation bought the building in 2013 for $145 million, it had been declared a national and city landmark. New York City’s Landmark Preservation Commission extended landmark status to 10 distinct portions of the interior, including the president’s suite on the fourth floor, with its nearly 500-square-foot anteroom paneled in gray-veined marble.
In its reimagining of most of the interior for residential use, Beyer Blinder Belle decided to relocate the anteroom. With the blessing of the landmarks commission, the developers had the room dismantled and the pieces sent off-site for refurbishment. They will be returned to the building and fitted back together — but on the ground level, where the space will be “a library/working area /entertaining area,” said Samantha Sax, chief marketing and design officer for Elad.
Under city law, an interior landmark is supposed to be open or accessible to the general public regularly. But the ante room and some other interior landmark spaces will only be open to residents.
The Leonard Street entrance to the building will lead to a double-height lobby. Credit: Rendering by DBOX
The Clock Tower in particular has been a sticking point for the developers, because they have sought to turn it, with its landmark mechanical works, into a condo unit. Their plan would involve electrifying the iconic four-sided timepiece — which was rewound weekly by a small, dedicated group of clock aficionados after the clock was restored in 1980 — so no one need intrude on what would be a private home.
While the Landmarks Preservation Commission supports the plan, opponents to the clock tower conversion sued and won a 2016 court ruling that said the mechanical works must be kept in their original condition. The city’s law department has appealed on behalf of the landmarks commission, which has also agreed to let the developers turn the rest of the elaborately paneled president’s suite into a private apartment.
A historic depiction of the building when it was headquarters for New York Life Insurance. Credit: The New York Public Library/Picture Collection
Meanwhile, work continues. The exterior restoration firm HLZA used nylon brushes to scrub the facade of the building, which extends east to Lafayette Street, south to Catherine Lane, and north to Leonard Street, where the building’s main entrance will be. They replaced damaged portions of the roof parapet, repaired scars left after old metal fire escapes were removed (in favor of new code-compliant staircase cores) and restored the fierce-looking 7,000-pound eagles that perch on the roof.
Inside, on the ground level, restoration has just begun and will include the removal of paint that at some point had been slathered all over marble columns and pilasters.
In the great rooms of most apartments, tray ceilings with cove lighting will make high ceilings seem even higher. Credit: Rendering by DBOX
On the floors above, space is being divided into apartments — with ceiling heights that far exceed the norm. On most floors they range from over nine and a half feet to over 14 feet, and Jeffrey Beers International, which is in charge of interior design, is adding tray ceilings with cove lighting in nearly all units, which is sure to make them look even higher. In the most luxurious apartments, on the top three floors, the ceilings can be up to 15 feet, and most units have terraces.
Sales began in February, and buyers should be able to begin moving in the spring of 2019, according to Ms. Sax. Units range from $1.435 million for a one-bedroom to over $20 million for a 5-bedroom, 6-bath triplex penthouse — and a chance to own a piece of New York history.
On Labor Day weekend, Don Peebles, Washington native and the founder and chairman of a multibillion-dollar real estate development company, hosted a charity benefit at his 10-acre estate here.
The former whaling village is part of New York’s Hamptons, the affluent beach community on Long Island that has been attracting wealthy summer residents for decades.
Against a backdrop of serenading Juilliard School violinists, a mix of celebrities and business executives mingled under an illuminated tent on a property fronted by a wrought-iron gate and entered through an alley of oak trees.
The fundraiser was to benefit Give Back for Special Equestrians, an organization that provides therapeutic horseback riding and equine-assisted scholarships for children and veterans with disabilities, including paralysis and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Peebles and his wife, Katrina, were drawn to the charity, in part, because of their teenage daughter, Chloe, who is an avid horseback rider.
“It’s an enormous amount of work to organize, but it’s a labor of love for us,” said Peebles, 58, the son of a mechanic, who has built a real estate empire that includes a $5 billion portfolio of condo projects, hotels and office buildings.
The event raised nearly $50,000 for the charity and illustrates Peebles’s rise from modest roots in Washington to power broker in elite social circles and the competitive world of real estate.
The benefit also put his Hamptons home on display. He and his wife have listed the estate for sale through Douglas Elliman for $10 million.
The 7,140-square-foot residence was designed with Gilded Age amenities such as French doors that open to wrought-iron Juliet balconies and a Versailles-style double staircase off the back of the home that overlooks a large manicured lawn. The property includes three fireplaces, a pool and two guesthouses.
The couple purchased the six-bedroom home in 2007 for $5.3 million and say they plan to buy a smaller Hamptons property closer to the ocean when it sells.
“We’ve built a life in the Hamptons with our family and don’t plan to leave,” said Peebles, who shuttles to Sag Harbor by helicopter from the family’s Manhattan townhouse or by private plane from homes in Washington and Florida.
The property’s appeal goes beyond summer, said Katrina Peebles, a former public relations executive Peebles met in Washington and married in 1992. She’s principal and creative director at Peebles Corp.
“Fall in the Hamptons has always been more about family time for us, and less about socializing or parties,” she said, recalling family softball and football games played on the lawn.
“We love cooking Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners here,” she said, pointing to the large French country kitchen with copper sinks on the home’s lower level. “It was designed with a chef in mind, with two big islands and multiple ovens and counter space.
Affordable-housing units
Peebles recently opened an office in the District, run by his 24-year-old son, R. Donahue Peebles III. He said the company plans to invest $1 billion in the D.C. market.
The company is about to break ground on a nearly 250,000-square-foot mixed-use project in the Mount Vernon Triangle neighborhood.
The development at 901 Fifth St. NW will include the 176-room SLS Hotel, an adjacent 45-unit condo building and 10,000 square feet of retail space. As part of getting the development approved, the company agreed to build 61 units of affordable housing off-site.
“I’ve watched D.C. evolve into a world-class city, as opposed to just the nation’s capital,” he said.
“There’s more energy now, and that makes it an important place for us to target.”
Peebles grew up in the District’s Petworth neighborhood until age 8, when he moved with his mother to Detroit after his parents divorced. But the family eventually resettled in the District.
He dropped out of Rutgers after a year of pre-med studies to work as a real estate agent and property appraiser. His mother, who was 19 when Peebles was born, worked in real estate after her divorce, giving him early industry insight.
The 7,140-square-foot residence was designed with Gilded Age amenities such as French doors that open to wrought-iron Juliet balconies and a Versailles-style double staircase off the back of the home that overlooks a large manicured lawn. (Rise Media)
His real estate experience caught the eye of then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, who appointed him chairman of the city’s real estate tax appeals board in 1984. Peebles, 24 at the time, said he benefited greatly from Berry’s mentorship.
“He opened doors for people like me at that time, when the doors of opportunity were closed for many African Americans in D.C.,” he said.
In 1986, still in his early 20s, Peebles started his career as a developer. His first project was a commercial office building in Anacostia, a once-bustling area that had endured years of neglect.
The project was a success and made Peebles an instant millionaire. It also led to the purchase of his first home: a $1 million property in the District’s Embassy Row.
After a $48 million office-building deal fell through in 1998, Peebles moved to Miami.
His redevelopment of the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Resort, a 420-room hotel in Miami Beach, became the nation’s first major hotel developed and owned by an African American.
His company is now one of the largest black-owned real estate development firms in the country.
Political aspirations
Years of political and corporate connections have helped fuel Peebles’s ascent. A congressional page in high school who interned for then-U.S. Reps. Ron Dellums (D-Calif.) and Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), Peebles became a staff aide for then-Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) before college.
Peebles has used his influence and wealth — estimated to be more than $700 million by Forbes magazine — to raise money for politicians including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
He twice served on President Obama’s national finance committee and is a former chairman of the board of directors of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
Peebles, author of two popular books on wealth and investing, and a regular on cable television, is mulling his own bid for public office.
“I haven’t ruled out politics,” Peebles said. “I grew up in D.C., and my goals were formulated there, so I’ve been engaged in politics all of my life.”
He’s contemplating a run for mayor of New York, a campaign he considered last year after consulting with former Obama aides and pollsters who worked for former mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“My interest would only be in a place where you could be transformative, and I think that’s at the chief executive level,” he said.
A fundraiser to benefit Give Back for Special Equestrians, an organization that provides therapeutic horseback riding and equine-assisted scholarships for children and veterans with disabilities, was held at the Pebbleses’ Hamptons estate over Labor Day weekend. (D.Gonzalez for Rob Rich)
Meanwhile, the Peebleses are enjoying their getaway in the Hamptons.
The home was designed by Peter Cook, a Hamptons architect who has created several celebrity homes on the East End.
Peebles initially rented the property in 2004, before purchasing it in 2007.
The layouts of the rooms inside the home “are exceptionally well thought out and rather old school,” Katrina Peebles said. The main floor includes the formal dining room, with French doors on either end, the drawing room, a solarium and a large foyer.
The living room has furnishings from interior designer Todd Hase, including two gray mohair sofas. “I call it the tangerine room,” Katrina said, referring to the walls, which are painted in orange hues. She recently turned the space into a TV room after hiding a plasma TV disguised as art above the fireplace. “The interior stylings reflect a clean and very contemporary feel,” she said.
In the foyer, a walk through double French entry doors reveals views of the grounds and gardens behind the main house. A large charcoal figure painting hangs above small antique tables that rest between two French-style chairs covered in Scalamandre fabric. “The decor is me having fun with scale and pattern,” she said.
The solarium opens directly onto the back deck and gardens. The couple use the space for entertaining because it allows for indoor and outdoor living. The solarium has recently been redecorated to include Baxter sofas by designer Jonathan Adler. Katrina said she removed a whole suite of French, silk-covered armless chairs and settees “because there were complaints about the lack of comfort.”
The recreation room, with a full-length, handcrafted billiards table is on the home’s lower level.
By Rebecca Cooper – Senior Staff Reporter, Washington Business Journal
Plans for D.C.’s SLS Hotel, the first for the upscale brand in this market, are finally taking shape.
Developer Peebles Corp. plans to break ground on the 175-room hotel at Fifth and Eye streets NW this fall, according to Donahue Peebles III, senior associate of development. If all goes according to plan, it would open in late 2020.
We’re also getting more details about the food and beverage offerings. The SLS Hotel D.C. will feature Japanese restaurant Katsuya from noted Master Sushi Chef Katsuya Uechi, while the lobby will have a cocktail bar modeled after Dandelyan in London’s Mondrian Hotel, Peebles said. SLS parent SBE Group also owns the Mondrian and the Dandelyan concept. Dandelyan was named the world’s best cocktail bar in 2017 at the annual 2017 Spirited Awards.
The project includes 175 hotel rooms, 45 for-sale condominium units, 10,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space and a rooftop pool and lounge area. There may also be a restaurant of some kind on the rooftop but that has not been finalized, Peebles said.
The condo owners will have access to all of the SLS Hotel’s amenities, from room service to housekeeping to pool access. The building will also have a dedicated area on the roof for condo residents.
SLS Hotels, in Miami, Beverly Hills and Las Vegas, are stylish and high-energy. Peebles said he expects the property bring a new level of hospitality to the District.
"D.C. is chomping at the bit for something like this," said Peebles, who recently relocated from his native New York to D.C. to live full time. "Look at how successful The Line Hotel is, and placemaking feat that was. We think that we’re going to take their baton and carry it forward in Mount Vernon Triangle."
Peebles is in the process of selecting a general contractor for the $50 million, eight-story hotel. The design, from Italian architect Piero Lissoni, is sleek, with modern furniture, artwork and light fixtures. Renderings show a dramatic rooftop, including an infinity pool that appears to have a fire pit in the middle of it.
The SLS will join a number of new buzzy hotels in the Mount Vernon Triangle neighborhood that sits just east of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. The D.C. area’s first Tru by Hilton is planned for 925 Fifth St. NW, and Douglas Development also plans to build a hotel, which may fly an AC by Marriott flag, at Sixth and K streets NW. Developer Habte Sequar has also floated plans to build a 200-room hotel at Third and K streets NW.
The SLS project — the first major one the younger Peebles, son of Peebles founder R. Donahue Peebles Jr., has led — has been a long time coming. The company won the right to develop the hotel on the city-owned lot in 2014, but it had eyed the site since D.C. first issued a request for proposals back in 2007.
"This has been a long time in the making. It's been 11 years since we had our eyes set on this parking lot at 5th and Eye," Peebles said. "I was still in college when we started working on this. So I'm excited. When you work on something for a really long time it's a real point of pride to have it move forward."
As part of Peebles' agreement with the D.C. government, the company is also building 31 affordable housing units offsite in Anacostia. The developer will also be required to build another 30 units at a to-be-determined location. The Anacostia piece will also break ground this fall.
An image from the book, ”McKim, Meade & White: Selected Works, 1879-1915,” Princeton Architectural Press, 2018.
