A 440,000-square-foot office tower in Washington's East End is getting a $25 million makeover, and the family behind it is betting that a rooftop solarium and new fitness and wellness center are exactly what it takes to land a blue-chip law firm in one of the tightest trophy office markets in the country. Gould Property Co. kicked off the renovation of 401 Ninth St. NW in September, rebranding the building as 401 on Ninth as it chases tenants for a rare block of contiguous top-floor space.
The project, first reported by Bisnow, includes a renovation of the building's four-story lobby, a new fitness and wellness center, and a two-level conference center. The building's crown jewel is a new penthouse amenity called the solarium, an indoor-outdoor space with a landscaped terrace, a lounge, and a catering kitchen that can also be built out as private tenant space. Gould expects the work to wrap up next fall.
A Rare Opening at the Top of the Building
The renovation is timed to a major vacancy: law firm Troutman Pepper, now Troutman Pepper Locke following a merger, signed a lease in late 2024 to move roughly 70,611 square feet to 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, opening up 80,000 square feet on the top two floors of 401 on Ninth. That departure is exactly the kind of opportunity Gould is racing to fill, since the building can offer up to 175,000 square feet of contiguous top-of-building space by the third quarter of 2029, according to Bisnow. As of August 2026, Washington had only eight contiguous office blocks larger than 50,000 square feet across all its trophy buildings citywide, and none of them included an available top floor before Gould's repositioning, the outlet reports.
Gould Property Co. CEO Giacomo Barbieri, who took over leadership of the company in 2025 as the founder's grandson, said the renovation will change the building experience from the moment visitors approach it. Barbieri also said demand for high-quality office space is high while supply remains limited, a dynamic the company is banking on as it courts blue-chip law firms and corporations for the newly available floors. Bisnow reports that 401 on Ninth is currently 65.6% leased.
A Family Firm With Decades of History Downtown
Gould Property Co. was founded in the 1950s by Kingdon Gould Jr. The 440,000-square-foot building now known as 401 on Ninth was originally called Market Square North when Gould co-developed it with Boston Properties around 2000; Boston Properties exited at the end of 2025, leaving Gould with full ownership, per the same outlet.
Barbieri was elected to the DowntownDC Business Improvement District Board of Directors this past June, the DowntownDC BID announced. Gould's pipeline extends beyond 401 on Ninth: the company is also marketing a planned office building at 900 New York Ave. NW, a surface parking lot near CityCenterDC, and says it is in talks with tenants interested in that site, per Bisnow's reporting.
D.C.'s Trophy Market Tells a Different Story Than the Rest of the City
The renovation lands against a stark divide in Washington's office market. While the city's overall office vacancy sat at an elevated 22.2% in the second quarter of 2026, according to CBRE, its 14-million-square-foot trophy office segment posted just an 8.3% vacancy rate over the same stretch, according to data cited by Bisnow. That gap between modernized Class A space and older commodity office stock is what's fueling Gould's bet that law firms and corporate tenants will pay a premium for a fresh top floor rather than settle for cheaper, dated space elsewhere downtown.
Recent law-firm moves in downtown Washington underscore the sector's role in absorbing trophy and Class A space in the city. Gould isn't alone in chasing that demand. Ponte Gadea, the real estate firm owned by Zara billionaire Amancio Ortega, submitted plans to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts this past June for a rooftop penthouse, atrium, and glass facade renovation at 1445 New York Ave. NW while negotiating a roughly 200,000-square-foot lease with law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, per Bisnow. Separately, Grosvenor is revamping a White House-adjacent office building for law firm White & Case, which plans to take nearly the entire property at the end of 2028.
A Second Bet in the Maryland Suburbs
While the East End renovation moves forward, Gould is also pushing ahead on a much larger, decades-in-the-making project outside the city. The company acquired the 2,000-acre Konterra site in Prince George's County, Maryland, in the 1980s, and broke ground this past May on a 400-acre downtown center there featuring 200 townhomes by Caruso Homes along with planned retail, 3.8 million square feet of office space, and a 20-megawatt data center, according to CoStar. The groundbreaking caps more than 40 years of planning for the site, which sits between Beltsville and Laurel.
Taken together, the East End renovation and the Konterra groundbreaking show a third-generation family company deploying capital on two very different fronts at once: repositioning a two-decade-old urban office tower for the narrowest, most competitive slice of D.C.'s commercial market, while simultaneously breaking ground on a mini-city in the Maryland suburbs that's been on the drawing board since the Reagan era.
