B. F. Saul Company

B. F. Saul Company

Company type	Private
Industry	Real estate
Founded	December 1, 1892 (1892-12-01) in Washington, D.C., United States
Founder	Bernard Francis Saul
Headquarters	Bethesda, Maryland , United States
Key people	Bernard Saul II (CEO and chairman)
Products	Real estate development and management, hotels

B. F. Saul Company stands as a leading privately held real estate enterprise with its main office located in Bethesda, Maryland. The firm possesses and oversees numerous properties throughout the Washington metropolitan area and maintains one asset in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, including a portfolio of 20 hotels. Noteworthy holdings comprise the Hay-Adams Hotel and the Kennedy-Warren Apartment Building.

This organization is connected to Saul Centers, Inc., which operates as a public company and real estate investment trust traded on the S&P 600 index.

Founding

The company was established on December 1, 1892, by the young entrepreneur Bernard Francis Saul, who was 19 years old at the time, in Washington, D.C.. Initially, it functioned as both a mortgage banking institution and a property developer. Within eight years, Saul founded Home Savings Bank, which eventually merged with American Security and Trust Company, leading to the evolution of what is now B. F. Saul Company. Presently, the CEO and chairman role is held by Saul’s grandson, Bernard Saul II. His son, B.F. Saul III, departed from the family enterprise in 2012 to start his own business named Saul Urban.

In 1969, Bernard Saul II launched Chevy Chase Bank and simultaneously took the B.F. Saul Real Estate Investment Trust public through an initial public offering. The company acquired the Kennedy-Warren Apartment Building in 1931 after its former owners went bankrupt during the Great Depression.

The hotel division was created in 1976. By 1983, B. F. Saul Company was managing $2 billion in mortgage servicing annually and generating an additional $500 million in new loans. In 1988, the company privatized its real estate investment trust once more.

Saul Centers, Inc. was incorporated in 1993 to hold a significant portion of the firm’s real estate portfolio and went public through an IPO that same year. The company broadened its development activities with announced projects in Atlanta in 1997.

Significant refurbishments include a $70 million expansion of the Kennedy-Warren Apartment Building completed in 2004 and a $50 million upgrade finalized in 2012. Construction started on Park Place II—an eleven-story office tower in Tysons, Virginia—in December 2006; Hilton Worldwide leased part of this building in 2009 but sought alternative locations by 2017.

In 2009, the Saul family sold Chevy Chase Bank to Capital One for $520 million through a combination of cash and stock.

More recently, Saul Centers has engaged in strategic growth initiatives such as purchasing a property near Twinbrook in Rockville, Maryland for $62.5 million in 2014 and announcing plans for a ten-building mixed-use development in 2017. In Ballston, Virginia, they proposed a substantial residential and retail complex that secured a Target lease by May 2017 and obtained financing amounting to $157 million later that year.

Groundbreaking for a Homewood Suites by Hilton hotel took place in Rosslyn, Virginia in 2016, while operations commenced at the Capital One Watermark Hotel in Tysons, Virginia in 2021.