Sage is a north-south mixed-use apartment building located on S Eads Street in the National Landing neighborhood in Arlington Virginia. It is situated across the street from Pen Place, the future location of the Amazon HQ2 and the ‘Helix’ building. The mixed-use building provides 306 luxury apartments in 257,160 sf of residential space and 12,200 sf of commercial. This 19-story building contains 18 floors of residential program, a double-height lobby and retail ground floor, a small mezzanine level, an amenity penthouse roof level, and three underground floors of parking for 148 parking spaces, including 5 spaces for the Verizon building next door.
The site is restricted by utility easements on both the east and west that define the building footprint. The underground garage is unfortunately constrained, which makes for an inefficient below ground garage and a difficult construction process. The west side easement created the opportunity for the future Junction Park.
The lobby entry is located at the north end of the building at the corner of S Eads and 11th Street, where it is situated on the deeper portion of the park and closer to the vehicular entry to the garage making it convenient for pick up and drop offs. The retail is located in the southern portion of the building where the park is shallower for visibility and cady-corner to the Whole Foods, which acts as an anchor retail location for the neighborhood. The penthouse amenity level includes indoor and outdoor fitness spaces and gathering spaces with vistas of National Airport, the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery, the Potomac River, and the Washington DC monuments beyond.
The development was initiated before the announcement of Arlington being selected as the site of the future HQ2, and once the announcement was made, it had an impact on the design of the building. It was designed to compete for a Crystal City/Northern Virginia young professionals’ market. That market is competitive, and the strategy was to promote larger units while being cost effective with interior finishes. This strategy changed dramatically when the location of Amazon HQ2 was announced with the promise of 25,000 new jobs coming to Northern Virginia within a decade. Immediately, the market became less risk-adverse and less financially constrained.
With the new opportunity, the market could accept more units and so apartments were made smaller as a unit was added to each floor. As the market suggested a more demanding client and to compensate for the slightly smaller apartment size, the interior finishes were improved. Lighting was improved, as was the sliding door hardware, framed mirrors in the bathrooms, under cabinet lighting in the kitchens, and a high-speed roll-up garage door.
The prospects for retail improved with HQ2 being located immediately across the street and so the fitness area was moved to the penthouse -roof level to make way for more retail. A public process for the design of the park was completed and the amenity rich streetscape of Junction Park came together.
