Lincoln Equities Group and JM Zell Partners have formally proposed a large office-to-residential conversion in Arlington, Virginia, targeting the former Transportation Security Administration headquarters in Pentagon City.
The joint team has submitted plans to Arlington County to transform two existing office buildings into approximately 637 residential apartments and about 31,000 square feet of retail space. The project is framed as a mixed-use redevelopment that would bring housing and street-level activation to a site that has been largely dormant in recent years.
The 4.88-acre property sits in the heart of Arlington and previously served as TSA’s headquarters. According to the filing, the existing offices have been vacant since 2020, when TSA relocated its headquarters, leaving a sizable block of space unused. The proposal calls for reusing a substantial portion of the existing structures while adding new residential area to reposition the site for multifamily and retail use.
Plans indicate that 571,564 square feet of existing office space would be converted, complemented by 116,244 square feet of new residential floor area. In total, the redevelopment is designed to accommodate the planned 637 apartments across the repurposed and newly built portions of the project, alongside the roughly 31,000 square feet of retail, organized into two retail areas.
The concept also incorporates public realm improvements. The vision includes a half-acre public plaza designed to connect directly to the Metro, integrating the site more closely with regional transit and surrounding uses. This plaza is intended to serve as an open space amenity for residents, visitors, and transit riders, while strengthening pedestrian circulation through the block.
The development team has assembled a design and advisory group to advance the proposal. Miami-based Arquitectonica is listed as the project architect, tasked with reconfiguring the obsolete office complex into a contemporary mixed-use property. Oculus is serving as the landscape architect, focusing on the public plaza and open space components, and Wire Gill LLP is acting as land use attorney for the entitlement process.
The plans were filed with Arlington County this month and are currently under review. The entitlement process will determine how the project can proceed and what conditions may be attached to items such as building program, public space, and circulation. No additional details on project cost, capital structure, or construction timeline were included in the filing summary described in the source material.
If approved, the project would bring new multifamily inventory and supporting retail to a high-profile site directly linked to transit, while removing a long-vacant former federal office complex from Arlington’s inventory.
