Martha Naughten and Kaitlyn Rausse

“Our strategy was being proactive,” said Martha Naughten, who, until late last year, was senior director of leasing at Carr Properties with Kaitlyn Rausse, “getting in front of tenants, keeping in front of them, and coming up with creative terms to extend them.”

As it turns out, this straightforward approach made a lot of sense in a year when a lot of other landlords were grasping for a coherent strategy. Microsoft (yes, that Microsoft) signed a renewal and expansion at 901 K Street NW, Carr Properties’ 12-story, 219,000-square-foot D.C. office property, where Naughten and Rausse handled leasing. And, at the same building, the law firm Baker Donelson renewed its lease.

But Carr wasn’t merely focused on holding the leases they had already secured. Working with brokers from Transwestern and CBRE, Rausse and Naughten signed Walker & Dunlop to a 59,000-square-foot lease at the still-under-development office building The Wilson.

The deal “solidified the building’s best-in-class caliber, leading it to win CREBA’s 2020 Maryland Lease Transaction of the Year,” Rausse said in a statement to Commercial Observer, referring to the Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Association of Greater Washington. “I am extremely proud of the efforts from the Carr Properties and Transwestern leasing teams to complete the lease of The Wilson prior to completion of the development. At delivery, The Wilson was 100 percent pre-leased to six tenants!”

In December, Naughten left Carr to form Colliers’ first D.C. agency team with Mark Sullivan and Matt Venos, previously of Cushman & Wakefield, and since making the move, she’s been focused on properties like 925 15th Street, a boutique office from Saul Centers and 601 Pennsylvania Ave., NW.

“Leasing activity is starting to feel better,” Rausse said, “and the majority of our tours are back to being in-person … Wellness will be a major focus in the post-pandemic world, but the Carr Properties team is ahead of the times with the wellness and community-focused amenities at our new development in the Union Market neighborhood, Signal House.”

The 10-story, 228,000-square-foot creative office property is being designed by Gensler. It “will set the tone for wellness with a central distributed outside air HVAC system that will provide 100 percent outside air, five outdoor terraces, and rooftop honey bee hives that will increase the local bee population.”

We can feel the buzz!