To be vacant metro DC trophy office receives financing

WASHINGTON, DC – Dec. 6, 2018 - JLL Capital Markets experts have secured a $96.5 million loan for the new owners of One Discovery Place, the former Discovery Communications headquarters. The to-be vacant 478,130-square-foot trophy office building is centrally located in the metropolitan Washington, DC submarket of Silver Spring, Maryland.

Senior Vice President Paul Spellman led the team arranging the financing on behalf of the borrowers, a joint venture between an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management, L.P., a global leader in alternative investing, and Foulger-Pratt, one of the Washington region’s pre-eminent, mixed-use developers. The floating rate loan was secured through a U.S.-based private lender.

“There was a tremendous amount of competition for One Discovery Place, which was enhanced by the outstanding sponsorship,” said Spellman. “This was a great financing case study, as we rarely see vacant building opportunities of this asset quality in the DC Metro.”

One Discovery Place is widely considered to be the premier trophy office asset in Silver Spring. Located in the central business district of downtown Silver Spring, the office property is walking distance to the Metro, MARC and future Purple Line rail, and approximately one million square feet of restaurants, shops, theaters and entertainment venues. Completed in 2004, the building was one of the first in the country to receive LEED Platinum certification and has consistently achieved an EnergyStar rating over 95. The new owners plan to reposition the property for new tenancy.

The LEED Platinum trophy office building was the former headquarters of Discovery Communications, owner of several popular cable channels including Animal Planet, TLC and the Discovery Channel. Discovery Communications is moving its headquarters operations to New York following its acquisition of Scripps Networks and earlier this year sold the building in a transaction led by JLL.

JLL Capital Markets is a full-service global provider of capital solutions for real estate investors and occupiers. The firm’s in-depth local market and global investor knowledge delivers the best-in-class solutions for clients — whether a sale, financing, repositioning, advisory or recapitalization execution. In 2017 alone, the firm’s 2,400 Capital Markets specialists completed $170 billion in investment sale and debt and equity transactions globally.