Friday, September 04, 2015

4500 East-West Highway building snags its first retail tenant in Bethesda (Photos)

The sidewalks have reopened on Pearl Street alongside the gleaming new Carr Properties Class A office building at 4500 East-West Highway. Now, after struggling for almost a year to draw the heavy hitting office tenants expected to fill the nearly-vacant floors above (due to Montgomery County's moribund economy, and unfriendly business climate), the building has managed to acquire its first retail tenant - a hair salon.

A hair salon isn't Intelsat (which ultimately chose a Tysons suitor over 4500), but it will likely get Carr over the initial retail hump here, just as the Bainbridge Bethesda got its first signee on the retail front recently. 

With one tenant on board, other prospective retail or restaurant tenants can see that A) the opportunity must be promising, because somebody else is wagering on it, and B) might find that tenant's traffic complimentary to their own target audience. 

The building's office space upstairs signed RapidAdvance to a full-floor lease last October, but activity has been quiet since.

You'll notice the sidewalks are in the Bethesda Streetscape format, as all new sidewalks downtown will be from now on, with brick pavers.

4500 remains a very nice building just two blocks from Metro, with a lot of potential, but dealing with a very challenging economic development environment in MoCo.



21 comments:

Anonymous said...

What is the hair salon?

Anonymous said...

"...with a lot of potential, but dealing with a very challenging economic development environment in MoCo."

I feel sorry for the younger generations, who will never truly appreciate the phrase "you sound like a broken record".

Anonymous said...

Haha a hair salon? I guess they do not have much competition now that Bubbles died a quiet death down the street. Sigh... I was hoping for better from this location. McDonalds did awfully well there next to the high school and the offices.

After the winter they had to do some repairs. Looked like water issues sprang up. It seems like they are building out a floor or two, but it is slow. I thought I read somewhere a online education outfit also signed a lease for the building.

Anonymous said...

"due to Montgomery County's moribund economy, and unfriendly business climate"
"A hair salon isn't Intelsat"

Wow. More Tysons/NoVa cheerleading. If you took the blinders off your eyes you would realize that Tysons is the only submarket in Northern Virginia performing well. The entire region has been suffering from Federal cutbacks, including private contractors.

If you looked at the actual market indicators you would find plenty of empty office space in most office parks in Loudoun County and Fairfax County near your beloved Dulles airport. Not to mention businesses and goverment agencies abandoning Arlington in droves..

Also:
Why is the region's tallest office building completely empty after delivering two years ago?
Why did AOL abandon Fairfax for New York?
Why did Sprint pack up and "sprint" to Kansas City from Fairfax?
Why did Exxon close up shop in their huge office park in Fairfax?
Why is the biotech industry booming upcounty with single-digit vacancy rates and huge expansions from AstraZeneca and Glaxo?
Why is Bethesda's vacancy rate lower than pretty much every submarket in NoVa?
Why is 7550 Wisconsin Ave fully occupied and why did it just sell at the highest $/SF in Montgomery County's history?

It just doesn't make any sense. Reading this blog I was under the impression that VA is the best state for business in the country and Montgomery County/MD absolutely hates business and is doing their utmost to drive each and every singly one of them out.


"The building's office space upstairs signed RapidAdvance to a full-floor lease last October, but activity has been quiet since"

If you were more informed you would know that another 28,000 SF was leased at the 4500 and the building is on its way to full occupancy.





(All that said, it is pretty mind-boggling that Carr kicked out McDonald's because they wanted a "high-quality" restaurant and are now leasing the space to a hair salon.)

Chase said...

Fairfax got Intelsat and hundreds of jobs. MoCo got a hair salon.
Our council and planners have dropped the ball on the county's crown jewel, downtown Bethesda.

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Chase said...

Can we have an intelligent discussion as to why businesses don't want to locate in downtown Bethesda? And why is there no demand for new quality office construction there? It used to be our crown jewel.

Anonymous said...

Chase, are you joking? Bethesda's vacancy rate is one of the lowest in the region and it's ppsqft is one of the highest. Sure, there's not that much new office space being built, but who cares? I'd much prefer that to NoVa's burst bubble w/their submarkets of 25%+ vacancy rates.

Anonymous said...

*its
damn this site's lack of edit button.

Anonymous said...

I think it is this company that will join the building soon: http://teachingstrategies.com/about-us/

Chase said...

I'm concerned that Bethesda doesn't have any gleaming new modern office towers in the pipeline, let alone right now.

The prime new development near our Metro is all residential. That's fine, but why not give these new residents a place to work right in our downtown?

The new hotel projects have stalled. Is the lack of new world class hotel a problem?

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Anonymous said...

Don't they want to build a nice tall building next to the Metro despite Clark's whining.

Anonymous said...

I love the way they propose to build a "park" on land which is not theirs.

Robert Dyer said...

5:39: No more of a broken record than the Montgomery County political machine, and their allies in what's left of the press. Their talking points are not only tired, but have been proven to be utterly without merit via my ongoing reporting.

Fortunately, "the younger generations" are able to get what Paul Harvey called "the rest of the story" from this blog. My reporting is more in tune with their practical concerns, than with a bunch of career politicians whose strings are pulled by the sugar daddies who fund their campaigns.

Robert Dyer said...

7:12: All you have to do is look at the official Bureau of Labor Statistics, which show NoVa killing us in job creation. It's not even close. Northrop, Hilton, VW, CEB, Intelsat all chose Virginia.

7550 only leased up by dropping its ambitious corporate tenant plans. They chopped up the floors into smaller spaces so they could qualify for a new County rent subsidy for small tenants.

Those are not the type of major corporate tenants going to Tysons - in fact, we haven't attracted one of those in over a decade.

Montgomery County's political machine indeed hates business. As a result, not a single County Council incumbent was endorsed by any chamber of commerce in the County in 2014.

That was a powerful vote of No Confidence in Montgomery County's political cartel.

Robert Dyer said...

9:04: That's not the type of tenant or rate-per-SF the people who invested in this building paid for.

Anonymous said...

No demand.... :(

Anonymous said...

What would you propose as a plan to woo these big companies? What would you do differently from the council? Would love to hear your plan and ideas and how they might work while others have not.

Anonymous said...

I would love my neighbor to build a park instead of a new home too. Lol. Clark's name is being dragged through the mud.