It will take up the entire fifth floor of the building, and if all goes as planned, they will be all moved in by November 25. CGD is currently located at 1800 Massachusetts Ave., NW. It also has a London office.
Here is more about the move and new HQ:
CGD’s new headquarters will include a 170-seat state-of-the art conference facility and a 60-seat boardroom / ideas lab that we will use for roundtable discussions, Board of Directors and Partners Council meetings, and our fortnightly all-staff Research-in-Progress (RIP) lunch seminars. Also in the works: a multimedia studio for our burgeoning production of short videos and my weekly Global Prosperity Wonkcast.
While we will increase our floor space by half, to 33,000 sq. ft., we won’t be much bigger in terms of the number of offices (about 30) or open-space workstations (40). That’s deliberate, because our president, Nancy Birdsall, has long believed that having about 50 to 60 full-time staff on site is a good size for an organization devoted to the creation and rapid exchange and dissemination of knowledge and ideas.
The total project cost is $18.3 million, which includes a purchase price of $13.5 million (about $400 per square foot) and $4.8 million for construction, furniture, and fixtures and various taxes, legal fees, and financing charges.
As a relatively young organization that began 12 years ago with a $20 million start-up gift from our founding board chair, Ed Scott, CGD has no endowment. But we have over the years accumulated a modest reserve fund. Drawing on these reserves and with additional generous gifts from our board and other supporters, we have covered the upfront costs, including a 20 percent down payment. We financed the balance through a District of Columbia program that enables tax-exempt financing for non-profits and helped to keep the interest rate on our mortgage under 3 percent.Certainly, $18.3 million may sound like a lot, but not compared to the $100 million move that the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) just made to its new headquarters.
CGD says it plans to hold a series of open-house receptions in early 2014.
CGD is a think tank that "conducts research and analysis on a wide range of topics related to how policies and actions of the rich and powerful affect poor people in the developing world."
CGD was recently ranked as the 26th best think tank in the United States by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings. It was also ranked as the 3rd best international development think tank in the world, after the Brookings Institution (#1) and the UK's Overseas Development Institute (ODI).
A variety of other think tanks in Washington, DC have recently moved or are planning to move. You can find a previous Think Tank Watch post on that here.
