CHANGE MY LOCATION
Local
California News
Multimedia News
Arlington seeks funding from state for Defense research building
SEE HOW THIS STORY DEVELOPED
Related Topics: Arlington
Arlington (Map, News) - Arlington is seeking $10 million from the General Assembly to build a new, secure headquarters for an agency that the Department of Defense threatened to move out of the county two years ago.
State and local officials have agreed to build offices that conform to the government’s post-Sept. 11 security requirements for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
With a $2.99 billion annual budget, DARPA is the Defense Department’s central research and development organization. It funds research for new military technology.
Now located in Virginia Square, the DARPA offices house about 230 government employees and 600 contractors. Another 900 contractors associated with DARPA have offices nearby, the agency said.
Arlington is requesting the amount former Gov. Mark Warner promised to contribute to the project when county and state officials negotiated with the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to leave DARPA in the county, said Terry Holzheimer, director of Arlington Economic Development. The County Board is scheduled to sign off on its request Tuesday.
DARPA’s new building is part of a development the Shooshan Co. plans for the current location of Metro’s bus yard in Ballston.
Founder’s Square is slated to include about 1 million square feet of condos, office space, DARPA’s secure facility and shops, according to its Web site. Shooshan submitted site plans last week, Holzheimer said.
Nationally, Arlington is most affected by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission’s moves, with about 17,000 jobs slated to move out of about 4 million square feet of leased offices by 2011. Most of the Arlington offices that will be vacated are in Crystal City.
For those defense employees still scheduled to be moved out of Arlington, a new state and federally funded transition center opens Friday in the Crystal City Underground.
Counselors will help civilian employees trying to stay in the Washington area find new jobs.
Center staff also will provide support to Crystal City’s small-business owners, many of them in the Underground, who depend on the defense employees’ business, said Karen Vasquez, spokeswoman for Arlington Economic Development.
The center is the only one in Northern Virginia and the first opened after the 2005 BRAC decision, Vasquez said. Holzheimer considers it central to Arlington’s strategy to deal with the effects of the thousands of lost jobs and empty offices.
mhegstad@dcexaminer.com
