Kingdon Gould III

Kingdon Gould III (born June 16, 1948) is an American real estate developer, active in the Washington, D.C.-area. He is part of the fifth generation of the Gould family of financiers, philanthropists and diplomats, which includes his father Kingdon Gould, Jr., grandfather Kingdon Gould Sr., great-grandfather George Jay Gould and great-great-grandfather Jay Gould, with associated generations of mothers, siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins.

Life and career Market Square, which was developed by Kingdon Gould III and Boston Properties. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on June 16, 1948, to Kingdon Gould, Jr., and his wife, Mary Bunce Gould (née Thorne).

He was made part owner and vice president of Gould Property Company, his father's real estate firm and one of the largest and oldest real estate development firms in the D.C. metropolitan area. He was the company's spokesperson when the Hyatt Regency Crystal City hotel and the Mayflower Hotel both were subject to foreclosure proceedings in 1989.

Other notable projects

In 1990, Gould partnered with Boston Properties to construct Market Square North, a development in the Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site which was completed in 1997.

In 1996, Gould's Laurel Sand and Gravel company, which includes Fairfax Materials, Allegany Aggregates, Laurel Asphalt and S.W. Barrick & Sons, purchased the 600 acres chase property north of the historic town of Savage, Maryland. The site is home to the Savage Stone quarry, mining Baltimore Gabbro for road bed construction. The facility started operations in 2005 after special zoning approval with a 25-year reserve in materials.

Gould then partnered with his brother, Caleb Gould, and local developers David Costello and Richard B. Talkin to form Kincade LLC. In September 2000, Kincade broke ground on the $11 million Columbia Lakeside, a six-story, office building facing Lake Kittamaqundi. It was the first new office building in Columbia Town Center since 1998. Gould joined with Marriott International, a hotel company, to propose that a 1,500-room hotel be built on this site to function as a "headquarters hotel" for the Walter E. Washington Convention Center (then under construction). Gould hired the law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi to assist with his plans. There was extensive debate among city officials and developers over whether the Gould parcel was too small for the hotel, and whether the old Washington Convention Center site (a few blocks away) would be more appropriate. D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams appointed Gould to an advisory board in October 2004, and charged the advisory board with studying all proposed sites and recommending one for the hotel to the city. In August 2005, the Washington Convention and Sports Authority put a $900,000 down payment on two lots (which included the historic former headquarters of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry adjacent to the Gould parcel. With the land swap, the city was able to move ahead with plans to build the Washington Marriott Marquis, the 1,430-room "headquarters hotel" long-desired by the city. Although the City Council had signed off on the deal in June 2005, the city took another 25 months to change local zoning regulations so that Gould was exempted from building housing on his new site. Gould and the others hoped to renovate the structure into a mixed-used apartment building with upscale retail space on the ground floor.

In April 2007, Gould proposed a major redevelopment of an area bounded by Massachusetts Avenue NW, I Street NW, 6th Street NW, and 7th Street NW (a trapezoidal city block just southeast of Mount Vernon Square). Although 650 Massachusetts Avenue NW and 901 Seventh Street NW were modern office buildings on the western end of the parcel, surface parking lots and several historic townhouses facing I Street NW occupied the remainder of the block. Gould proposed construction of an 11-story, office building with retail space on the ground floor and 300 underground parking spaces on the area currently occupied by the parking lots and townhouses. The office building's facade would be decorated with Chinese motifs, in keeping with the nature of the nearby Chinatown neighborhood.

Gould was also chairman of the Downtown Business Improvement District in Washington, D.C.