Bidding on West Heating Plant: No Takers Yet?

Got a half million bucks to get on some serious real estate bidding? It is one of the last major pieces of land in Georgetown available for commercial development. The General Services Administration will sell its surplus property, directly south of the C&O Canal and just east of Rock Creek. Bid increments are $200,000. It is assumed you will have millions more on hand to continue in GSA’s e-Bay auction which began Jan. 18 and is slated to end Feb. 19.

According to the Jan. 22 Washington Business Journal, “The West Heating Plant in Georgetown has yet to draw its inaugural bid, four days after the General Services Administration launched the online auction. It’s too early to say whether the investors have opted to pass on the site or whether the lack of activity is a strategic measure designed to keep bidders from running up the property’s price too quickly.”

Georgetown developers and citizens have been waiting for this move for at least a year. Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans, the Citizens Association of Georgetown and the National Park Service have asked for part of the site to be set aside as green space, connecting with the canal and creek. Developers and commercial real estate owners, such as the group organized by Richard Levy that envisions Four Season condos in the old Art Deco industrial building, have the money and plans drawn and ready to go.

The 29th Street building itself was the site of a June 19, 2012, House hearing that chided GSA’s slowness in disposing of old, unused gov- ernment property.