Apartment Neighborhood Takes Ashburn to New Heights

Atop Belmont Ridge, The Heights apartments in Ashburn already offer residents the best views in all of eastern Loudoun, stretching east to Tysons and west to the Blue Ridge mountains. This fall, the community will also give residents a place to work collaboratively and enjoy a cup of joe or glass of wine while doing so.

The Heights, a 230-unit apartment community in Ashburn’s Goose Creek Village still under construction, saw its first tenants move in last month. Floor plans include studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments ranging anywhere from 627 square feet at $1,515 to 1,272 square feet at $2,495. Business Manager Julie Langford said 40 residents have already moved into the main building and that the second and third buildings should be complete by August.

It’s in the main building that residents will find The Ashburn Collective, a coworking space owned by the 37 Media and Marketing Group that will feature a coffee and wine bar when opened this fall.

Allison Shannon, the group’s president and CEO, said construction on the coworking space should begin in about a month and take 60-90 days to complete. That space will be found in the rear 4,500-square-foot space of The Heights’ first-floor leasing office and will feature open coworking areas, private rentable offices for one to eight people and a restaurant serving coffee, wine and food.

Shannon said that while her group wasn’t ready to disclose who it’s bringing in to run the coffee and wine bar operations, it would be an area restauranteur who will locally source beverages and food.

“We thought that made perfect sense,” she said. “We really, really, really want to make sure that it has deep roots in our local community—it’s all about Loudoun.”

Shannon said The Ashburn Collective would also expand into the first floor of another building at The Heights in early 2020.

Goose Creek Village Co-owner Allan McKelvie said he and his team view The Heights and The Ashburn Collective as vital pieces of a puzzle that are helping to bring the village, the architecture of which was modeled after a Parisian street, closer toward completion. He said that should happen in the next three to four years once another residential community is built that will provide the “missing middle.”

Shannon’s marketing company is also working with Jim Speros to open a Velocity Wings Express in Speros’ Social House Kitchen & Tap across the street by July 10. She said that restaurant would be totally virtual, as it will operate solely for pick-up or delivery.

The Heights is managed by The Lincoln Property Company—the same company that manages the Masonvale apartments on the George Mason University campus in Fairfax and the Lincoln at Wiehle Station apartments in Reston that will open this fall.

The apartment community features interior lounges, common areas, a fitness studio, outdoor lounge areas with fire pits and grills, a resort-style pool surrounded on three sides by the main building, a pet spa, and an Amazon hub electronic package concierge to receive shipments at any hour of the day, among other amenities.

Perhaps one of the most attractive aspects of The Heights is the views of Loudoun in all directions. To the east, residents can watch airplanes take off and land at Dulles Airport or look into the distance toward Reston Town Center or Tysons Corner. To the west, residents can gaze at the Town of Leesburg or the blue haze that shrouds the Blue Ridge mountains beyond Round Hill.

Langford said her team’s goal is to accommodate residents by providing them with all the resources they need to live without worrying about maintenance or other everyday homeowner concerns. She said that many of the community’s current residents are in transition, either as transplants from different places across the nation or locals who have downsized.

“We want them to live big but little,” she said. “We want people to start streaming down what they need in their lives … so [they] can get out there and start living life.”

While the apartment community is only at a fifth of its full occupancy, Langford said she expects it to be fully leased by this time next year. So far, she said the studio apartments “went off the shelves like hot cakes.”

pszabo@loudounnow.com