Jemal Family Sells 29K SF Georgetown Building for $12M Townhouse Conversion

Douglas Development Corp. has sold its mixed-use building at 2715 M St. NW in Georgetown for $12 million to Adams Investment Group, ending the Jemal family firm's 27-year ownership of the property and setting up a conversion into six townhouses and two penthouse condominiums.

The deal closed under a noncontingent contract, according to broker Bobby Meehling, who represented the Jemal family-owned firm and detailed the transaction in an August LinkedIn post reported by Bisnow. The 29,000-square-foot building, constructed in 1985, includes 17,100 square feet of office space, 9,100 square feet of residential space, and 2,900 square feet of retail, and Douglas Development had owned it since 1999. Meehling said the property drew strong investor interest, with more than 20 tours and seven or eight offers before the deal closed.

Norman Jemal said the firm sold the building to focus on projects that offer better scale, fitting Douglas Development's broader pattern as one of the most active local buyers of distressed offices with a pipeline of larger projects in the District and elsewhere. The firm has built its reputation on large-scale historic redevelopments, including transforming NoMa's 1940s Uline Arena into office and retail space anchored by a flagship REI store. Founder Douglas Jemal grew the company into one of D.C.'s most prominent commercial real estate owners around exactly that kind of ambitious adaptive reuse.

A Familiar Comparison and a Tough Market

Meehling said the M Street property is similar to Hamilton Court, a mixed-use Georgetown property with 55,000 square feet that sold to a joint venture including the Bernstein Cos. for $16.5 million in March 2024. He also acknowledged that closing deals in the District right now is somewhat difficult, even as he credited Adams Investment Group's reliable execution. The buyer completed the agreed transaction without changing course from signing through closing, and Meehling thanked principal John Holmes for showing that a handshake still matters.

Adams Investment Group is not new to converting older D.C. buildings into homes. Principal John W. Holmes previously led the 2011 acquisition and conversion of the 1930 Woburn Apartments in Kalorama into The Marvin, a 37-unit condominium building, according to DC Condo Boutique. That track record of converting existing residential stock into condos gives Adams Investment Group established local credibility as it now takes on a mixed office-retail building inside one of the city's most tightly regulated historic districts.

From 36 Apartments to Eight Luxury Homes

The plans for 2715 M St. NW have shifted dramatically over the past several years. Douglas Development originally filed a conversion plan, per UrbanTurf, that in January 2023 proposed 36 apartments designed by Emotive Architecture and would have cut basement parking from 62 spaces down to just 11. That higher-density rental concept never moved forward under that ownership.

By April, UrbanTurf reported that a revised proposal designed by ADG+G Architecture called for six townhouses and two penthouse condominiums instead, a plan the outlet later clarified represented the buyer's intentions once brokers stepped in to correct the record. The Old Georgetown Board reviewed the plan to convert the building's commercial space to residential use in May, part of the design oversight required for any exterior alteration in the historic district. Under the federal Old Georgetown Act of 1950, all such changes in Georgetown must pass through that board, an advisory panel appointed by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, according to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. The sale itself has not yet appeared in deed records, Bisnow noted.

Georgetown's Boutique Pipeline Versus Downtown's Tax Breaks

The M Street conversion joins a growing list of boutique residential projects reshaping Georgetown, including EastBanc's seven-unit development at 2715 Pennsylvania Ave. NW and the Four Seasons-branded condo conversion of the Georgetown West Heating Plant, both detailed by UrbanTurf. Unlike Central Washington's larger office towers, these Georgetown projects must navigate the Old Georgetown Board's design scrutiny rather than lean on the city's newer financial incentives for conversions.

Those incentives are considerable elsewhere in the District. Mayor Muriel Bowser's administration launched the Housing in Downtown program, which offers a 20-year property tax abatement for commercial-to-residential conversions as part of a goal to add 15,000 new downtown residents by 2028, according to the Executive Office of the Mayor of Washington D.C. By September 2025, that program had generated eight active office-to-residential projects representing 1,745 proposed housing units, per CoStar. CBRE has separately identified Washington as a top U.S. market for office conversions, citing a widening gap between surplus commodity office space and strong residential demand.