Next Up: the Baseball Stadium

By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 8, 2006

Washington area developers shared last week in the widespread relief that the Washington Nationals finally have a new owner -- and some were doubly pleased that it's one of their own.

Lerner Enterprises of Bethesda, the privately held family business of Theodore N. Lerner, has built more than 22,000 homes and 6,000 apartments in the Washington area. Its commercial projects include the Tysons Corner and White Flint shopping centers.

Now, not only will Lerner and his family own the baseball team, but their team will be the tenant of the $611 million stadium the city is building for it near the Navy Yard in Southeast Washington.

"It's tremendously positive to have the Lerners as owners because they're excellent developers, and they'll understand that between the stadium and the development surrounding it that we can create something that's a truly integrated district," said Jonathan Cordish, a top executive at the Cordish Co. of Baltimore, one of the developers chosen to help develop land around the stadium.

The stadium is expected to be the catalyst for redeveloping dozens of acres -- which now have mostly warehouses, taxicab shops and auto-repair garages -- into a mix of residential, retail and office space.

"Just having an owner's name is positive in that we have someone who can make long-term decisions," said Adrian G. Washington, president and chief executive of the quasi-public Anacostia Waterfront Corp. "And in particular having someone with development experience and retail experience will be helpful.

"They get it," Washington said of the Lerners. "They've created projects that work, and they'll be able to say, 'You've come up with an idea that's good,' or they can say, 'Have you tried this?' The more smart people you have, the better."

Washington's organization, four developers and a New York-based consultant soon will announce their "master development" plans for the area around the stadium. Some developers said they don't expect the Lerners to have much of an impact on those plans because most of the land is already spoken for by developers with firm ideas about what to build.

But the Lerners will help decide what is built on the 21-acre footprint of the stadium itself, city officials said. They also will have a 42 percent interest in the development of some land south of the stadium.

"We haven't had the opportunity to see all the plans and discuss with the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission and the [Anacostia Waterfront Corp.] all their plans," Edward L. Cohen, principal at Lerner Enterprises and one of Ted Lerner's sons-in-law, said at a news conference last week. "We're anxious to see them and give whatever thoughts we might have on them."

"We think it's a great area," Cohen said, pointing out that his company is building a 190,000-square-foot office building at 20 M St. SE and plans another building at 1000 S. Capitol St. SE.

'On Time and on Budget'

For the media-shy Lerners, it was a week of cameras and speeches that included a groundbreaking for the stadium on South Capitol Street SE. Now some of the attention will turn to another wealthy businessman who shuns publicity: A. James Clark, chairman and chief executive of Clark Enterprises Inc. in Bethesda.

Its subsidiary -- Clark Construction Group, one of the nation's biggest contractors -- is building the 41,000-seat baseball stadium, which is scheduled to open in 2008. In an interview Friday -- he said it was only his third in a career of more than 50 years -- the 78-year-old builder pledged that the stadium will meet its deadline and its budget.

"Our projects are always on time and on budget," Clark said. "That's our trademark."

He said that he is dealing with cost increases of 1 percent a month on such materials as steel and concrete but that the project's budget is locked in by Clark's contract with the city.

Clark seemed comfortable with the cast of characters involved in building the stadium and with its monumental scale. He noted that he has worked with the Lerners to build a number of their projects downtown, in Dulles and at Tysons Corner.

And he recalled that he made daily inspection trips by helicopter when his company built FedEx Field in Landover for Jack Kent Cooke, who owned the Redskins.

"I promised Mr. Cooke that I could get it done in 15 months, and we did," Clark said. Recalling the toll on his construction crew, he said: "We worked them 12 hours a day, five days a week. We finally had to stop because the men were just getting worn out. But we opened it on time."

Citing post-Sept. 11 airspace restrictions, Clark said of the Nationals stadium, "I can't watch this one from the helicopter."

Clark's company has built more than 1,500 buildings, most in the Washington area. Among its larger projects are L'Enfant Plaza, the Washington Convention Center, Verizon Center, Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the World Bank headquarters.

Clark started working at the company as an engineer and took it over in the 1960s, and he later gave it his name. Clark commutes to his Bethesda office from his residence in the Watergate complex during the week and also owns a house on the Eastern Shore.

The company has ownership stakes in 125 buildings in the Washington area and investments in pharmaceutical and oil and gas companies. It now has about $2 billion to $3 billion a year in construction contracts, said Rebecca L. Owen, senior vice president and general counsel.

Clark was most eager to talk about his latest project, on land near NASA headquarters at Third and E streets in Southwest.

Clark bought the land 30 years ago for $10 million and sold part of it, where a new office building and a Residence Inn hotel were recently built. On the parcel he kept, Clark is constructing Capitol View, a 12-story, 232,000-square-foot office building at 425 Third St. SW that his company will own. He has no tenant signed up but said he hopes to lure associations, law firms, high-end government contractors and other trade groups to his building because of its proximity to Metrorail and Capitol Hill. The building will have rooftop terraces and a large balcony on one of the top floors.

Clark said the area where he is building his office project is more developed than the neighborhood around the new baseball stadium. But he said the stadium "is going to do the same thing for that area as Abe Pollin's stadium," Verizon Center, did for its neighborhood.

"Development is going to happen quickly there," Clark said, "because Washington doesn't have any more land."

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