Woodward Building Pushes Out Eclectic Tenants

"I guess we were the lowest-priced, and that's why they came, and I think a lot of buildings are stuffier than we were," said S. Jon Gerstenfeld, president of SJG Properties.

The tenants agree.

"You won't find another building like this," said Grace Malakoff, president of the D.C. chapter of the League of Women Voters. "It's cheap, but it's comfortable. All the neighbors are wonderful. They're all poor. They're all trying to make their part of the world a little better."

The nonprofit group came to the Woodward Building six years ago after hopscotching through offices in Northwest that were too expensive. The league pays $1,100 a month, including utilities, for a 577-square-foot office on the fourth floor. Malakoff's workers keep the windows open in the winter, even when it's snowing, because the radiator makes the air so dry.

"This is a no-frills building," said Robert Ivanoff, a vice president at Liberty Towers, an eight-person company that manages cell phone towers in 16 states from a sixth-floor suite about the size of a three-bedroom apartment. The company plans to move to a newer office near the World Bank headquarters in downtown Washington.

The Woodward Building once had as many as 120 tenants. Over the past six months, some of the office tenants have moved out, making the upper floors ghostly. The cherry wood doors of Suite 400 say "Bradley Woods & Co." in chunky silver letters, but behind the doors is an empty room with light bulbs dangling from the ceiling and bare concrete floors.

Some of the remaining tenants lament that the Woodward Building will become just another generic high-rise residential project with chain stores on the first floor.

"We offered something different in the middle of all this conservatism," said Houston Arrington, who runs a women's boutique that features racy, going-out-to-club clothes. He sells black and pink thongs and a few items that he sews himself, including a long, redLycra dress for $169 that he said was similar to one worn by movie star Catherine Zeta Jones.

Some of the retailers looking for space worry they will lose their customers if they move. And some office tenants and shop owners are shell-shocked at the going rate of real estate.

"It's very hard to find another spot," said Varinder Kr. Dutta, whose Woodward Liquors store has been in the building for more than 40 years. "Nobody wants to have a liquor store in their building anymore. And if they do, they're asking too much. To pay the $40 a square foot these landlords want, you have to make some more money."

Owner Gerstenfeld said he would welcome back his current retail tenants when the new building is done in two years "if they're available," but he acknowledged that "some of them aren't quite the image of the new building."

SJG Properties has owned the Woodward Building since 1968 after Gerstenfeld paid a partnership $4 million for the property.

"There was a lot of unrest in the city back then, and some broker called me up and offered me the Woodward Building," Gerstenfeld said. "At the price he gave me, it was like a gift. I just couldn't pass it up."

Gerstenfeld, the oldest son of a New York rabbi, grew up in Washington. He worked as an engineer for a construction company and bought and sold rowhouses in Dupont Circle on the side. In the early 1960s, he quit his job and started his own development company, which his daughter, L. Ashley Gerstenfeld, now helps him run. In the past three years, the company worked with D.C. developer PN Hoffman to develop four luxury condominium and apartment buildings in the 1400 block of P street NW.

Gerstenfeld doesn't quarrel with tenant complaints that he hasn't kept up the Woodward Building in the past few years.

"The bathrooms are a mess," said Gerstenfeld. "And the air conditioners are just window units because for years we've been planning to remodel it.

"Now we think the time has come," Gerstenfeld said. "It's come to the end of its useful life as an office building."

Dana Hedgpeth writes about commercial real estate and economic development. Her e-mail address ishedgpethd@washpost.com