The historic former Bank of Bethesda building at 7500 Wisconsin Avenue was auctioned off in March. A resulting real estate transaction, which closed on April 23, has just been entered into Maryland property records. The winning bid was $4,100,000, a significant haircut from the last sale of the building in 2020, when it sold for $6,175,000. That sale was in turn a major drop in value from the $9,300,000 SunTrust (now Truist) paid for the landmark crossroads property in 2016. SunTrust had sold the building in 2008 for $5.5 million, so it's been a money loser for every buyer for over a decade now.
Who acquired the bank building late last month, and what can we expect to happen to it? The property record is too confusing to reach a solid conclusion on that at the moment. "DNA Real Properties LLC" is listed as the new owner. That entity is a real estate firm located in Las Vegas, with no public-facing website that I can locate. But...the address given on the state record for DNA Real Properties LLC is right here in Montgomery County, at 3111 Automobile Boulevard in Silver Spring. That's the Koons Silver Spring auto dealership at the Montgomery Auto Sales Park.
But the property at 3111 Automobile Boulevard is not owned by DNA Real Properties LLC. The dealership site is currently owned by the Mary A. Nonnemacker et al Trust. That is the only property at the Auto Sales Park owned by that trust, and as far as my research finds, the only Koons dealership property owned by the trust in Maryland.
Koons recently opened an urban-style Lincoln dealership in downtown Bethesda. Will the bank building become another storefront dealership for Koons, or do DNA Real Properties or the Mary A. Nonnemacker trust have other plans? Who is the real owner, and where are they actually located? Was DNA a holding company for the property until the real buyer could obtain financing and close on it, and is mistakenly listed as still being the current owner? The transaction record raises almost as many questions as it answers.
Alright, a brand new Koons Ferrari dealership me thinks!
ReplyDeleteThe value of that building probably declined with the alteration of the front entry facade.
ReplyDeleteIt's a sort of "destination property," in an awkward place for happenstance or spontaneous use. One has to want to go there to do business. Some are more obvious than others, that's maybe why many businesses fail over time at certain locations. Like at present day DIG. Sometimes it's parking cuties, sometimes awkward traffic lights or difficult to negotiate intersections, sometimes it's some vague abstraction. Without big windows how will Koons draw us in?
DeleteOnly $4M?! Now I wish I had bid.
ReplyDeleteWasn't this building the site of an Olive Garden in the 1980's, or somewhere nearby?
ReplyDelete