Brian Sullivan admits it — the deal surprised him, too.
Sullivan has seen scores of federal government proposals come and go since he began his commercial real estate career brokering for Smithy Braedon in 1985. So, when the General Services Administration put out a call for a new Securities and Exchange Commission headquarters, the JLL managing director turned to its client, Douglas Development Corp., to throw its hat into the ring.
Douglas’s undeveloped 6-acre triangle of land off New York Avenue NE, near the infamous “Dave Thomas Circle,” was something of a long shot. No one in the brokerage world thought the GSA’s requirements could be met with a new construction offering.
“We’d chased after some other stuff with them, some federal and District build-to-suits, and it was more of, ‘Here’s another one, let’s go after it,’” Sullivan says. “We got the call from GSA that we’d won, and we were like, ‘Whoa, that was that.’”
The deal for a new SEC headquarters…
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