New HQ complete for AARP.

New HQ complete for AARP 

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) new headquarters building has been completed. AARP will be moving its offices, which are currently located in six different buildings in Washington, into the new headquarters building beginning June 24. The move is scheduled to be complete on July 8, 1991.

The 500,000-rentable-square-foot building, located at 601 and 611 E Street, N.W., was completed, including the interior finishes, ahead of schedule and under budget.

"We are very proud of what we were able to accomplish in a relatively short period of time AARP's behalf," said Bob Carr, president of The Oliver Carr Company.

The building broke ground in April of 1989. Through close coordination, creative approaches and careful planning, construction on the interior spaces was underway well before the building was complete or even fully enclosed. This novel approach enabled the base building and AARP's interior finishes to be completed at the same time, thus shortening the construction schedule by three months.

The lease transaction with AARP was consummated in November of 1988. Given that only the master plan for the multiphased project was complete, The Oliver Carr Company was able to work closely with AARP allowing the project's architects to custom design the office floor layouts and building systems to be highly cost effective and energy efficient. For example, window mullions were placed to achieve maximum flexibility in floor partitioning and motion sensitive light switches were installed to save on energy costs.

The Headquarters facility includes offices to house the entire AARP headquarters staff of 1,050, a data center, a printing facility, a broadcast studio, a visitors center, a retail pharmacy and an employee cafeteria. The building will also have 7,500 square feet of retail space available for lease.

The architects for the AARP headquarters building were Kohn Pederson Fox of New York, Arthur May, FAIA Partner, in conjunction with Vlastimil Koubek, AIA, in Washington, D.C. The general contractor and tenant build-out contractor was The George Hyman Construction Company. Ward-Hale Design Associates, Inc. provided interior design services on behalf of AARP.

The AARP building is a joint venture between Equitable Real Estate Investment Management, Inc. and Square 456 Associates. The Oliver Carr Company is Managing Partner of the venture. Equitable Real Estate Investment Management, Inc. and The Oliver Carr Company have worked together on six other joint venture projects totaling over 3.5 million square feet. Equitable Real Estate is one of the nation's leading real estate investors with over $38 billion in assets under management for pension funds and overseas clients, and Equitable Life, its parent.