By Dana Hedgpeth and Chris Kirkham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 24, 2006; D03

A parcel that the District got in a land swap with developer Kingdon Gould III this year was widely portrayed as the last real estate needed to build the District's biggest hotel on the site of the old convention center.

Not quite. There are still a few more sites, including the Central Safe and Locksmith Co. at Ninth and L streets NW.

It's been a part of the neighborhood for more than 50 years, and Whit Conway doesn't really want to move.

"I have no idea what's going to happen," said Conway, 35, who bought the business seven years ago from the family that started it. He also leases the building from them. Conway had worked at the shop in the summer when he was a student at Gonzaga College High School.

D.C. officials want hotel giant Marriott International of Bethesda and its partner Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, to build a 1,434-room hotel at Massachusetts Avenue and Ninth Street NW on land that includes what is now mostly a parking lot and the locksmith's shop.

The District approved legislation this summer for the $550 million hotel deal, which includes $135 million in tax-increment financing, and authorized the use of eminent domain if needed to acquire the site of Conway's shop and two other small remaining parcels. Construction of the hotel is expected to start late next year and it will probably open in 2010.

For Conway, it means trying to keep his store open day to day.

"We prefer to stay in the same place, but we know the move is inevitable," Conway said, although it's unclear when or if the District will exercise its eminent domain power.

He leases the brick building from partners Warren Lumpkins of New Hampshire and his sister-in-law, Conchita Lumpkins. Warren's father started the business in the 900 block of New York Avenue, not far from its current location, in 1949. Warren and his brother, who died a few years ago, ran the business for 20 years.

The shop has moved at least four times in the past few decades, all within four blocks of Mount Vernon Square, to make way for new development.

For the past five years Conway has been in litigation with Conchita Lumpkins, alleging that she was trying to break his lease, which has eight more years to run. Conway said he won the lawsuit. Lumpkins and her lawyer did not return calls seeking comment.

"I don't mind moving if I get compensation for it," said Conway, who estimates that he has spent $250,000 on litigation. "With eminent domain, the owners are taken care of but the [lease holders] are not. I'm out on the street."

Warren Lumpkins, 54, said that the last time he was in touch with Marriott officials, about six months ago, they offered him about $3 million for the property. "We didn't take that offer because it's a third of what the plumbers got per square foot," Warren Lumpkins said. The Lumpkinses' property, which is 7,600 square feet, is assessed at $1.3 million, according to D.C. tax records. The Washington Convention Center Authority agreed last summer to pay the plumbers' union $30.5 million for a 90-year-old building and small lot abutting Gould's land. And the District persuaded Gould to swap about 1 1/2 acres, mostly used as a parking lot and valued at $73 million, for a parcel of similar size at the old convention center's site.

"They can get it from us by eminent domain, but I don't see how a right-minded person wouldn't give us the same amount as a comparable property in the same big project," Lumpkins said. "I'll sell. All they have to do is pay me what they paid the plumbers' union, and they have to settle with [Conway] because he has a lease on the property."

Marriott officials declined to detail how negotiations were going on the land on which the locksmith shop sits. "Our assemblage is going quite well, we are nearly complete," said Norman K. Jenkins, a senior vice president at Marriott who is putting together the deal.

Stephen M. Green, director of development for the District, said: "We've been successful in accomplishing the assemblage so far through friendly negotiations, and we hope to continue assembling 100 percent of the site through the same negotiation process. But we do have the authority to use eminent domain if necessary."

The top job at CarrAmerica Realty Corp. shifted from the District to the West Coast after the company was sold two weeks ago. Now the new owner is shopping around the company's 26 Washington area office buildings, said sources close to CarrAmerica who spoke about the private talks on condition of anonymity. The portfolio is valued at more than $2 billion.

Some local experts in commercial real estate have said the area's booming office market is at or near its peak, and several major developers have sold collections of properties in the past year.

A spokesman for New York-based Blackstone Group LP, which acquired CarrAmerica for $5.6 billion, declined to comment on the prospect of selling its Washington area properties.

Five top executives at CarrAmerica have left the company since the sale to Blackstone: chief executive Thomas A. Carr, son of the company's founder; president Philip L. Hawkins; chief financial officer Stephen E. Riffee; chief investment officer Karen B. Dorigan; and general counsel Linda A. Madrid.

The sources close to the deal said Bob Carr, Thomas Carr's brother, who also has been an executive at CarrAmerica, plans to start his own company. CarrAmerica would not comment on whether Bob Carr had left the company, and Carr declined to comment for this article.

Christopher Peatross, who led CarrAmerica's Northern California office, is the new chief executive and will stay in San Mateo, Calif. Maureen Wheeler, a CarrAmerica spokeswoman, would not say why Peatross would stay in California while the headquarters remains in Washington.

Peatross, 40, has been with CarrAmerica since 2002 and worked with several other development companies on the West Coast before that.

Other executive shifts for Carr America included Kurt Heister, a former senior vice president and controller who will be chief financial officer; and Howard Weissman, a former vice president and assistant controller who will be controller. Ken Simmons will remain senior vice president of the District-based development group, and its regional directors will stay the same.

· The St. Regis Hotel at 16th and K streets NW, will close Sept. 1 for a 10-month renovation. The 193-room hotel will undergo major reconstruction of its guest rooms, suites, lobby, ballroom, fitness center and meeting rooms. The property's owners -- Brickman Associates, a New York-based real estate investment company, and its partners -- said they will spend about $150,000 per room on the renovations. The hotel is scheduled to reopen in July 2007.

· GE Real Estate said it will provide a $242 million loan package to JBG Cos., a Chevy Chase-based developer, to refinance L'Enfant Plaza, the large mixed-use project in Southwest near the National Mall.

JBG is doing a major makeover of L'Enfant Plaza, which includes offices, retail and a 370-room hotel. The loan is in two segments -- a five-year $172.5 million fixed rate and a $69.5 million floating rate.

· The North American headquarters of Rolls-Royce's jet-engine division will lease 78,000 square feet at South of Market, a 620,000-square-foot mixed use office and retail project at Reston Town Center that is being built by Boston Properties Inc. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Rolls-Royce currently has an office at Westfields in Chantilly but it had previously been in Reston.

Staff writer Dana Hedgpeth covers commercial real estate and economic development. Her e-mail ishedgpethd@washpost.com.