American Builders Quarterly
by Joyce Finn

Hip urban dwellers in our national capitol have David Franco and Jeff Blum of Level 2 Development, LLC to thank for new exciting apartment options. Founded by the two partners in 2003, the firm has prospered through the economic recession by addressing the increased need for rental and mixed-used buildings. Level 2 Development delights in bucking the more traditional architectural styles common throughout the city in favor of its distinctive bright and sustainable designs, and both

Washington Blade
by Mark Lee

Last week was the anniversary of the 1968 riots in D.C., following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis. The ensuing five days of destruction that befell Washington and filled the sky with smoke scarred the city’s landscape for decades and cut a hole in the heart of commerce through the prominent local retail districts of the era.

Washington neighborhoods hollowed out by looting and fires are only now beginning to fully finish recovering as commercial and

by Tierney Plumb, Reporter


​UDR Inc., a Denver-based publicly traded apartment owner with 16 properties in the area, closed on the sale of View 14 on 14th Street NW in D.C., shattering the record for the highest price per foot ever achieved in the metro region for Class A rental product.

The building sale, which was first reported in the Washington Business Journal in April, traded for $104 million, or about $670 a square foot for the 155,000-square-foot property.

Borderstran
by Tom Hay

After a three-year lull, condo and apartment development along 14th Street — from Logan Circle to the blocks north of U Street — has blossomed at a frantic pace. (See list of related stories at bottom.)

Work is well underway at several sites and many and others are slated for groundbreaking soon. Most properties will be considered mixed-use, usually in the form of ground floor retail and residential units above.

by Missy Frederick, Reporter

Level 2 Development LLC has snagged two tenants to occupy a major portion of the retail space at the View 14 mixed-use complex. 
​
The YWCA National Capital Area will occupy 15,000 square feet at the 2303 14th St. NW project. Cushman & Wakefield Inc.. brokered the deal for both parties.

Beta Academy, which hosts martial arts classes, has signed a lease for 9,000 square feet on the lower level. Cushman & Wakefield represented Level 2 in the deal, while Thur & Associates worked with Beta.

PR Newswire

GREENBELT, Md., May 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Bozzuto Management Company today announced that, for a limited time, the View 14 luxury apartment community – located in the hip U Street Corridor of Washington, D.C. – now brings the world within reach via a new "iPad For Your New Pad" giveaway.

Known for its fantastic city vistas along 14th and U Streets, View 14 now offers an iPad and one month's rent free with every new signed lease. The offer extends to any referrals, including referrals from current residents, which result in a new

Marketwire

In celebration of the opening, a VIP cocktail party will be held for friends of the project later this month. The first 150 people to register on View 14's website, www.View14.com, will receive a special invite to attend the VIP party and a preview of the community.

View 14, the new beacon of 14th Street, boasts a new level of modern architecture at its finest. Its recognizable angular cantilevered glass wedge and its walls of angled glass cubes perched on 14th Street overlook all of D.C., capturing breathtaking views of the city. The building's East side faces the Capitol while the West side faces the Washington Monument. So vast are its views that one can even see the Potomac River and Woodrow Wilson Bridge from its rooftop terrace.

Young Leaders Group
by Sonya Starnes

DC’s U Street Corridor has changed a lot in the last ten years and the newest sign of this transformation is View 14, a 185-unit Class A apartment building developed by Level 2 Development and Centrum Properties. In celebration of the opening, ULI Washington’s Young Leaders Group sponsored a U Street Corridor panel discussion Wednesday, November 18th, followed by a View 14 tour and a reception at Andy Shallal’s Eatonville restaurant. The discussion was moderated by Jair K. Lynch, President & CEO of JAIR LYNCH Development Partners and panelists

Washington Business Journal
by Tierney Plumb

Another housing option has popped up along the U Street corridor: View 14’s leasing center just opened this week. 

Located at the intersection of 14th Street and Florida Avenue, the 185-unit building boasts Zipcar services on site, a game room with Nintendo Wii, a sculpture garden and two landscaped roof decks. 

The New York Times
by Daniel McGinn

For the condo developers Jeff Blum and David Franco, the evening of Sept. 14, 2006, couldn’t have been more perfect. For two years the partners had worked on plans to construct a nine-story condo building called View 14 at the intersection of 14th Street and Florida Avenue in northwest Washington. On this night, they welcomed nearly 1,000 potential buyers into a nearby furniture store that they’d transformed into a nightclub. A D.J. spun music while bartenders poured an orange concoction called the View-tini. And as the party hit its peak, the partners unveiled a giant Lucite model, complete with dry-ice fog and glowing lights, of their building, which would cost $55 million to build. ‘‘It was like the Detroit debut of a new car,’’ Blum says. ‘‘We had everything except the turntable.’’

The morning after the party, the View 14 sales center opened. Over the next few weeks, a crowd of potential buyers came through, ogling floor plans and artists’ renderings of the units, which had an average price tag of $500,000. The sales team signed contracts for the penthouses, with one fetching $1.2 million. But sales of run-of-the-mill units were agonizingly slow. ‘‘People loved the building, loved the finishes, but they weren’t writing contracts,’’ Blum says. According to the partners’ business plan, 50 of the building’s 180 units should have sold in the weeks following the launch party. But by early December, during a meeting with a key financial adviser, the partners closed the door to talk candidly. ‘‘We haven’t sold 40 or 50 units,’’ Franco said. They’d sold only 18. The adviser’s jaw dropped. A minute later, they gave him another shock: instead of selling View 14 as condos, Blum and Franco were thinking of converting the building — on which construction hadn’t yet begun — into rental apartments.

It’s an act of real estate hocus-pocus that’s starting to become common. ‘‘It’s happening all over,’’ says Greg Willett, the vice president for research at M/PF YieldStar, an apartment-market consulting firm. Willett saw the first signs of the shift in early 2007 in places like Washington, Boston and Miami, where the condo boom had been particularly frenzied. Buyers were realizing that condo prices had reached a plateau. The speculators who once loved to flip new-construction condos had disappeared.

Post District Extra
by Jillian S. Jarrett

Level 2 Development has donated $1 million to the Sankofa Tenants Association for assistance in purchasing the Cresthill Apartment building, 1430 Belmont St. NW.

The 48-unit building provides affordable housing to district families.  Funds will also go toward renovating the 1920s building.  Planned improvements include appliances, heating and cooling systems and cosmetic repairs.  

Cresthill tenants organized the association and made an effort to purchase the building as a co-op to keep it affordable and low income.  David Franco; principal of Level 2 Development, said it donated the funds after learning that the affordability period for Cresthill had expired and that the building had to be sold.  

"We are humbled by the opportunity to assist the Sankofa Tenants Association in making their affordable housing home ownership a reality," Franco said.  

Washington Business Journal
by Tierney Plumb

On Oct. 30, a D.C.-based real estate developer that specializes in mixed-use residential and retail projects around the 14th and U streets NW area held a ceremony for the groundbreaking of the View 14 Apartments.  Level 2 Development presented a $1 million check to the Sankofa Tenants Association for the association to purchase the 48-unit low-income Cresthill Apartment building.  With Mayor Adrian Fenty as the keynote speaker, the ceremony marked the start of construction of View 14, an $80 million development of 185 apartments and 34,000 square feet of retail space.  The affordable housing contribution is part of the View 14, an public benefits package, which also includes removal of the Comcast satellite dish farm and antenna tower at the site, a green roof, participation in D.C. employment programs and $40,000 in contributions to neighborhood organizations.  

"We are humbled by the opportunity to assist the Sankofa Tenants Association in making their affordable housing home ownership a reality," says David Franco, principal of Level 2 Development.  "It seals their rightful place in this community, and we are pleased to have them as View 14 neighbors.

by Barbra Murray

Plans move forward for the development of View 14, a 185-unit mixed-use apartment project in Washington, D.C., with tomorrow's demolition of a Comcast satellite dish farm. Removal of the six dishes and antenna tower, which have been an eyesore in the now blossoming 14th and U Street neighborhood for almost 20 years, will allow Washington, D.C.-headquartered developer Level 2

by Tom Ramstack

Developers and D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty applauded as a backhoe ripped down a large satellite dish at 14th Street and Florida Avenue Northwest yesterday, marking the end of the Comcast satellite-dish farm that has occupied

The New York Times
by Vikas Bajaj

WASHINGTON — David Franco’s illuminated model of a proposed 10-story condominium tower dominates a sales center that, in spite of the “Now Selling” banner still fluttering outside, is conspicuously closed for business.

“We could have waited it out and kept pushing and pushing,” Mr. Franco said about the decision to abandon plans to sell 180 luxury condominiums with floor-to-ceiling windows offering views of the Washington Monument and Capitol Hill. “But it would have taken significantly longer.”

The Current

Despite a slowing real estate market, small D.C.-based company Level 2 Development is breaking into the big-time condo market in a dramatic way, with two buildings and more than 400 condos slated for the 14th Street corridor, along with an innovative sales office to reel in the numbers needed to sustain such a vision.

The two-person firm, run by D.C. natives David Franco and Jeff Blum, has partnered with a Chicago development giant, Centrum Properties, which has been poised to enter the D.C. market for some time, according to Level 2 Development. The first building, View 14, is a nine-story, 180-unit, $80 million project currently in its pre-construction phase on the northeast corner of 14th Street and Florida Avenue. It will be completed by fall 2008.

The InTowner
by Michael K. Wilkinson

View 14, 2303 14th Street and Nehemiah Center, 2400 14th Street. Level 2 Development is planning two large condominium buildings across 14th Street from each other. The first, View 14, which was the subject of an extensive report on the sale of the landmark Petrovitch building a year ago in this newspaper (“Longtime 14th St. Auto Repair Business Sells Property ​to Developer,” July 2005,

The Washington Post
by Lynn Thorne

Tatyana Schum was single, 30, and looking for new friends. So she decided to take action. No, she didn't sign up for "speed friending," hit MySpace or join a book club. Instead, she organized a condo crawl through her Park Fairfax neighborhood near Shirlington.

Now, a couple of times a year, Schum and her fellow Alexandrians spend an hour socializing at one condo owner's house, sharing everything from gardening tips to decorating ideas. They then move on to a kind of roving party at several other neighbors' condos that continues until late in the evening.

"I wanted to meet people," she said. "It seemed that there were so many young, single people in my neighborhood. And they were right there. But I didn't want to exclude anyone. It seemed natural to have the whole community involved."

by Chris Kirkham

Offers to buy Paulo and Pedro Petrovitch's garage started coming in more than 15 years ago. Their popular auto-repair shop at 14th Street and Florida 

The Washington Times

Neighborhood residents and those who drive along 14th Street between Florida Avenue and Belmont Street Northwest have been intrigued at recent signs of construction preparation at the former site of an auto repair shop.

The In Towner
by Rafael E. Valero

The Metropolitan Police Clubhouse #10, located in Lower Columbia heights at 2500 14th Street, a unit of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington, was the recent beneficiary of a $20,000 donation that will allow for the expansion of its tutorial programs.

With this funding provided by the city’s newest commercial real estate development group, the local owners of which have established their offices on U Street, Clubhouse #10 will now be able develop and implement educational activities focusing