Off-campus students will have another high-end apartment option near campus, after the former City Hall is renovated with millennials in mind.
The building on 24th Street will be called Varsity on K and will include 197 studio, one and two-bedroom apartment units, Washington Business Journal reported Wednesday. The building, set to open on Jan. 3, will include a gym, a computer room and a game room with a pool table.
The outdoor pool will be demolished and turned into a green courtyard, WBJ reported. Each of the rooms will have a washer and dryer, quartz counter tops, a walk-in closet and wifi and cable included in the rent, for a final price that has not yet been released.
Varsity principal Donnie Gross, who heads the company who is renovating the building, said the design is meant to attract college students and young professionals in the area because “there’s just no housing for them,” he told WBJ.
“Our goal is to have them bring a laptop and their clothes,” he said. “That’s an ideal tenant for us.”
GW’s 15-year lease on the building ended just in time for it to be sold in May for almost $80 million. This is the first D.C. project for the building’s owners, Durant Berkeley Partners LLC, which specializes in off-campus apartment buildings for students in places like the University of Maryland to the University of California at Berkeley.
Gross added that workers found a bag of marijuana in one of the room’s ceilings, left there by a student moving out.
Foggy Bottom Association President Marina Streznewski told the Journal that she worries neighbors will encounter the same issues with GW students littering and having noisy parties as they did when the building was a residence hall.
“I am concerned that might happen again, especially if these are young people who, for the lack of a better word, are unsupervised,” Streznewski told WBJ. “And we can’t go to GW and complain. Even though it’s not going to be officially a dorm, it sounds something like a dorm. I am not soothed by this information.”