PHOTO: Courtesy DCBIA
Richard Lake
Founding partner and founding principal at Roadside Development
Richard Lake started out leasing and developing retail projects with supermarkets in the D.C. area, and while he still likes to anchor his projects with grocery stores, his ambitions have gotten a little grander. Now they’re at the center of multiple-building mixed-use developments with apartments, retail and office.
Lake’s firm, Roadside Development, recently wrapped construction on a 1.1 million-square-foot complex in Shaw called City Market at O, which includes a new Giant Food store. The rest of the $325 million project includes 718 apartments (114 of which are affordable), a 182-key Cambria Suites hotel, and 90,000 square feet of retail.
One building, known as the Hodge, includes 90 affordable apartments for low-income seniors. Two more apartment buildings, 880P and the Intersect, round out the project with mostly market-rate units and 24 affordable ones. The project includes amenities like a rooftop pool, fire pits, a terrace, a dog park, a rooftop waterfall, an herb garden, and a lounge with a grand piano. Roadside completed the last building, the 115-unit Intersect, in January.
Roadside also wrapped up work earlier this year on City Ridge, a 690-unit mixed-use development on Wisconsin Avenue, at the edge of Tenleytown. The historic former Fannie Mae headquarters building was converted to office, and it was structurally reinforced so that Roadside could dig beneath it to build a Wegmans supermarket. The complex includes 160,000 square feet of office and 150,000 square feet of retail.
All told, Roadside has about $1.4 billion worth of assets in the D.C. area, and the firm is working on another 1,500 apartments across four sites in the District and Montgomery County, Md. At 8601 Cameron Street in Silver Spring, Md., it plans to build 485 apartments and 20,000 square feet of retail on the site of the 1940s Tastee Diner.
Lake said that he tries to take a holistic approach to development.
“We’re not just building things for financial reward, we’re building things to sustain the community and for people to have homes to live in and thrive,” he said. “Your home is a big part of that growth. We fill our projects with unique amenities, places where people can engage and connect. We’re big believers in the connection of human beings.”
