Best Real Estate Projects: Ice Blocks

After years of work, the final stages of Ice Blocks wrapped up this summer. The $100 million development has 142 loft-style apartments, about 55,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and 106,000 square feet of office space.

We’re introducing you to our Best Real Estate Projects of 2018. This is the winner in the mixed-use category.

Developer Mike Heller was just weeks away from starting construction on Ice Blocks, his ambitious, adaptive reuse project on R Street, when a fire destroyed the central structure of an expansive, historic plant slated to be the heart of the new development.

It was a devastating blow. Heller and other investors had already sunk a lot of money into planning the demolition and redesign of the space as part of a multi-phase, mixed-use project. But the fire that erupted on a November morning in 2015 — the cause of which is still unknown — changed everything.