2051 Jamieson Avenue Office-to-Residential Conversion, Alexandria

Insight Property Group paid $7.1 million for an Alexandria office building that traded for $65.8 million in 2008. That is the economics of the office conversion wave in one line.

The 2003-vintage building at 2051 Jamieson Avenue, six stories and 147,000 square feet in Alexandria’s Carlyle district, is entitled for conversion to 187 apartments with four stories and a mechanical penthouse added on top.

Project Scope

The vertical addition is what separates this from a standard conversion. Most office-to-residential jobs stop at reuse of the existing frame. This one adds four levels, which means the existing structure and foundations have to carry load they were never designed for, and that analysis is the long pole in the schedule.

Unit mix skews small: 135 one-bedrooms against 55 two- and three-bedroom units. Those figures come from the City Council record and do not reconcile against the stated 187 total, so treat the mix as approximate.

Michael Graves Architecture is architect. Clark Construction is general contractor, which is notable in itself, since Clark normally sits on work several times this size. The project went to the Alexandria Planning Commission in September 2025 and was already approved when Insight acquired it in August 2026.

Why It Matters

Fully entitled conversions rarely trade. Developers usually buy the building and then spend eighteen months chasing approvals, which is where most of these deals die. Insight bought the entitlements along with the asset, at roughly 11% of what the building fetched at the last peak.

The site sits within walking distance of the King Street-Old Town Metro station, which supports the low-parking program the unit mix implies. Alexandria, like every jurisdiction in the DC region, has more obsolete Class B office than it has tenants, and the tax base math only works if some of it becomes housing.

Construction dates have not been published.

Project Team & Details