Washington Business Journal has the story on JBG Smith’s sale of Fort Totten Square to Atlanta-based LBX Investments. Bisnow also reported on the sale.

The property, located at 5661 3rd Street NE in the Riggs Park neighborhood, is anchored by a Walmart on the ground floor fronting Riggs Road NE with apartments on top. Subway and Five Guys are ancillary tenants. With the recent opening of Wingstop, the property was “fully leased” to the extent that Petco was still paying rent (on what I assume was probably a 10-year lease) even though that space has been vacant for a few years now. The addition of Wingstop felt like a full circle moment because JBG was actually looking at a Wingstop from the very beginning.

It is not a big secret that I am not the biggest fan of how JBG built out this project, in terms of both design and leasing decisions. I noted in a comment on a post that I had been toying around with an idea for a blog post titled, “How JBG Underdeveloped Riggs Park.” It’s still in my drafts folder, but I will just say the way this whole thing went down beginning around 2011 was actually part of the impetus for my starting this blog in December 2012.

Between having concerns raised about design completely ignored, having Walmart blue plastered on the corner of Riggs Road, and being told that we should be excited to have a Subway because “they sell breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” I gotta say I was a little befuddled by all of the praise heaped on this project when it was built in 2015.

JBG’s MO is to get in and get out, so I knew as soon as they bought the property out of distress from Lowe that it was only a matter of time before they sold. And the neighborhood would be stuck with the (negative) consequences. This project ended up being the first large scale redevelopment completed in the neighborhood. It was a matter-of-right project. As we knew would happen when we learned in 2011 that JBG selected Walmart to anchor the space with a 60-year lease, the decisions made for Fort Totten Square ended up having an outsize impact on the other big redevelopment project happening down the street. As a result, every year elected and agency officials get to read my treatises about the failures of the large tract review process during oversight season.

Anyways, we will see what this Atlanta-based investment firm ends up doing here. I am sure they will fill the old Petco space at some point. I think people should manage their expectations about what goes in that space.