The latest evidence of the difference in business climate is the Liberty Place project in downtown Fredericksburg. Once conceived of as luxury condos, the project will now be an 86000 SF office building with ground floor retail and restaurants facing William Street. "We're responding to the market," Liberty Place developer Tom Wack told The Free Lance-Star of Frederickburg, which noted the "strong demand for commercial property" in the city. The developers will offer free parking for the public in a garage connected to the office building (imagine that in any urban center of Montgomery County!) as part of a deal with the city.
The Fredericksburg City Council is set to vote on a memorandum of understanding for the deal tonight. Very few office projects are being developed in Montgomery County. The JBG Companies is constructing a new office building on Bethesda Avenue, but could not find an anchor tenant, and will now move its own headquarters into the building from down the road in Friendship Heights to fill the vacancy.
"Downtown's gotten pretty hot," Wack said of Fredericksburg. The office market is heating up as home construction continues to explode around Fredericksburg, which recently scored the idX Corporation factory that fled Maryland and the Lidl distribution center with 200 jobs (Virginia also won the sweepstakes for the Lidl corporate headquarters).
Every imaginable restaurant can be found in Fredericksburg, as well as the kind of hip breweries our County Council likes to talk about. Stafford and Spotsylvania counties are adding the jobs that will put less cars on the roads into D.C. every morning. And new infrastructure to reduce congestion for the commuters and businesses who make the increasingly-smart choice to locate in the Fredericksburg area.
Meanwhile, the bedroom-community-building Montgomery County Council is - as usual - asleep at the switch.
60 comments:
So move there, out of your Mom's bedroom community.
Your statistic about retail jobs is completely pointless. Retail employment is in free-fall nationwide, a point that has been made countless times in this blog's comment sections.
"Fredericksburg office market is hot"
That's quite the generalization, from the words of one developer plugging one new office building.
"Montgomery County has suffered a net loss of jobs over the last decade"
How many jobs has Montgomery County lost since 2017?
The retail sector lost 30,000 jobs nationwide in March 2017 alone.
7:25 AM S/B "...since *2007*".
Headline on linked article:
"Will third time be the charm for Liberty Place developers?"
Looks like the first and second attempts for this development were moribund.
Looks like this site has been limping along for two and a half years now:
https://www.cbcelite.com/former-free-lance-star-property-sold-for-mixed-use-project-2/
(February 25, 2015)
How can you compare the two?
Dyer, You actually put your name on this bunk? Embarrassing for you.
Seriously beginning to believe this site is a big punk'd on Bethesda. Dude deliberately stirring the pot and laughing when educated folks take the bait.
Honestly. Think about it.
Leggett's plan to solidify MoCo as a bedroom community is going to be disastrous for traffic and quality of life.
C'mon, Robert. I love downtown Frederick, but it's about five square blocks. No comparison with Montgomery County.
What MoCo planners could learn from downtown Frederick, though: charm, walkability and a sense of human scale.
Is this supposed to be a serious article? Is the author really comparing Montgomery County to Fredericksburg??? All I see to back up the spurious claims are misguided opinions and falsehoods.
For those who want to want hard facts, here is the most recent BLS data for Fredericksburg and Montgomery County:
Fredericksburg City, Virginia
December 2016 Employment - 24,332
December 2006 Employment - 26,892
-11%
Montgomery County, Maryland
December 2016 Employment - 472,567
December 2006 Employment - 471,721
-0%
Source:
https://data.bls.gov
ENU5163010010 & ENU2403110010
Robert, how would you provide the county with more jobs?
A word of advice Mr. Dyer: I would refrain from discussing the local county economy or commercial real estate development in the future. So much of this article is grossly inaccurate.
"Fredericksburg is a boom town compared to moribund Montgomery County."
Whoever told you that was a liar.
"Fredericksburg is booming, while Montgomery County has suffered a net loss of jobs over the last decade"
Also incredibly inaccurate and apples to oranges. Fredericksburg is doing worse than most places in the metro area. Bethesda's vacancy rate is 10.4%, while Fredericksburg's is 11.4%. Rent in Bethesda is $36/SF, while Fredericksburg's is only $20/SF. The list goes on.
"86000 SF office building with ground floor retail and restaurants facing William Street. "We're responding to the market"
JBG is building a trophy-class 300,000 SF building in Bethesda, and there's a backlog of projects following it. There's no comparison.
"The developers will offer free parking for the public in a garage connected to the office building (imagine that in any urban center of Montgomery County!)"
Show me one successful CBD with free public parking. Free parking sounds more like an tool to revitalize a struggling commercial district.
"The JBG Companies is constructing a new office building on Bethesda Avenue, but could not find an anchor tenant, and will now move its own headquarters into the building from down the road in Friendship Heights to fill the vacancy."
JBG is only occupying a small percentage of the space, and the rest will be leased to other tenants.
"Every imaginable restaurant can be found in Fredericksburg"
What?
There's no pointing in even continuing to respond.
Dyer hates bedrooms cuz he never got laid!!!
Why would anyone advertise an office building in Fredericksburg, in a blog in Westbard? I have to seriously question the judgement of today's sponsor.
I think his general point is on-target, that MoCo is anti-business. Look at the proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour. If they really wanted to help those in need, they would just raise the Earned Income Tax Credit instead of burdening businesses.
Or look at their stance on opposing even _studying_ the feasibility of a second Beltway bridge crossing. They were opposing a study which wouldn't even cost the County a thing! It was being conducted by the whole area transportation commission (MWCOG I believe).
2:08pm Agreed! Let's get MoCo moving again!
Virginia doesn't want the "Second Crossing" either.
Robert Dyer, 2006:
"I absolutely oppose widening the Beltway. I oppose toll lanes and toll roads, as they penalize low-income drivers."
"The Purple Line is my top transportation priority. I favor rail transit, and innovative bus initiatives. I will pay for those through local, state, and Federal funds; dedicating a portion of the existing sales tax for them; and by aiming for profitability by building projects to meet an existing demand. Let’s face it, if we let the NIMBYs keep control, we’ll never end gridlock. The Purple Line was a CSX route in the past, and was meant to become a commuter rail line 20 years ago. The Purple Line trains are silent and emission-free, so there are no effects."
Robert, did you really say that in 2006? I'm impressed!!
Not a fair comparison. The only offices in Fredericksburg are gas station attendant booths.
"I think his general point is on-target, that MoCo is anti-business. Look at the proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour."
So you mean MoCo is anti-business towards companies offering shit wages? Good! MoCo doesn't need $9/hour jobs. We don't want MoCo turning into some garbage southern or mid-west county.
1:48 body slammed Dyer through the proverbial coffee table with all those cold hard facts.
7:51: Not only were his numbers total BS (MoCo has a net LOSS in jobs since 2000 if you use 2014 BLS numbers, and a net LOSS in jobs over the last decade if you use the 2016 BLS numbers), but he's now comparing one city to all of Montgomery County. While the office market is indeed better in Fredericksburg than in MoCo, as the lack of office projects in MoCo proves, lets compare apples to apples in employment growth (no cherry-picking please - Our Saul Alinsky guy here keeps picking a good year and a bad year of his choice, instead of the actual long-term trends of one or two decades).
7:30: In fact, it's the [expletive] wage jobs that MoCo is getting. No major corporation has moved here in two decades, while many others have left.
2:31: Always out of context, Saul Alinsky. Mr. Alinsky, you know as well as I do that A) the Beltway widening plan on the table in 2006 was going to demolish homes in Bethesda. I did and still do oppose such a plan. Do you and Hans Riemer favor demolishing homes in Bethesda? Do tell!
B) Building new toll lanes is acceptable, I was referring to plans to toll existing lanes, and the worst-of-all-worlds toll plan for the ICC (which I've been totally vindicated on with the high tolls).
C) The Purple Line of 2006 is not the Purple Line of 2017. It has massively grown in scale, and will have far greater impacts on quality of life, affordable housing and the environment than the one I supported in 2006. As I said in 2014, if the state would agree to underground the Purple Line through Chevy Chase and Long Branch, I might support it. They did not.
1:48: There's no "backlog of [office] projects" in Bethesda, old sport. Meanwhile, the office market in Fredericksburg is heating up. JBG Smith is indeed the anchor tenant of the building - you must have missed the memo.
If you're confused about the restaurant scene in Fredericksburg, I'm not surprised. You're clearly not up to speed on the booming Virginia city that has been cleaning our clock since the turn of the century.
MoCo has a net LOSS in jobs since 2000 if you use 2014 BLS numbers"
Why use those numbers? Seems kind of arbitrary and dumb.
"And a net LOSS in jobs over the last decade if you use the 2016 BLS numbers."
How do you get that? These are the numbers for the decade ending 2016:
Montgomery County, Maryland
December 2016 Employment - 472,567
December 2006 Employment - 471,721
+0.179%
"The Purple Line of 2006 is not the Purple Line of 2017. It has massively grown in scale, and will have far greater impacts on quality of life, affordable housing and the environment than the one I supported in 2006."
No, it's not, not in the slightest.
Just admit you changed your position, you pathological liar.
He won't admit anything. He's never backed off his pontifical hooey.
Pontifical Hooey. - Name of my next band! hahaha
10:07: Please link directly to a chart showing the actual number of jobs from 2005 to 2016 in Montgomery County. The numbers you posted don't look like the ones from the chart I saw last week on the BLS site.
10:14: You're the liar. The width of the Purple Line has grown since 2006, and that's not a fact up for debate. It was originally supposed to be single-track, then double-track, then double-track with trail, then double-track with trail and median/fence, etc.
What is significant about 2005 to 2016, aside from the fact that the statistics play into your narrative?
"Please link directly to a chart showing the actual number of jobs from 2005 to 2016 in Montgomery County. The numbers you posted don't look like the ones from the chart I saw last week on the BLS site."
Do you realize that you would strengthen your position tremendously by showing and linking to those statistics yourself, Dyer?
#DodgingDyer
"he's now comparing one city to all of Montgomery County"
Which is exactly what Dyer is doing in the article. So much hypocrisy.
"There's no "backlog of [office] projects" in Bethesda"
Yeak, ok...
1. Marriott
2. 7359 Wisconsin
3. The Brookfield project on top of the Metro
4. Apex
5. 4747 Bethesda
"the booming Virginia city that has been cleaning our clock since the turn of the century"
LOL you've clearly never been to Fredericksburg
"So you mean MoCo is anti-business towards companies offering shit wages? Good! MoCo doesn't need $9/hour jobs. We don't want MoCo turning into some garbage southern or mid-west county."
That won't happen since other costs in MoCo are much higher than in the midwest. But it's anti-business for government to force wages to be higher than neighboring jurisdictions, and by a large difference. Unemployment rates are low in this area, so let the market, not government, work out the ideal wages.
Would like to hear Robert's response to this.
"Liberty Place’s commercial building would have 58,700 square feet of office space"
7359 Wisconsin Avenue will be 500,000 square feet of office space.
That's a good point. It sounds like the comparison isn't really apples to apples.
Wow, that's what? 11% ? So like one floor or an 11-story building?
(Or maybe a teeny-tiny 11 story building?)
Looks like it's 3 and 4 stories. Probably smaller than that building that was just demolished on Bethesda Avenue.
4733 Bethesda Avenue, the building that was just torn down, was 96,472 square feet. That's almost twice as big as the project in Fredericksburg that Dyer is touting.
6:32: Marriott is just moving their chair down the deck of the Titanic to Wisconsin, that's not a new office building to be leased up with no tenants. 4747 Bethesda had no anchor tenant until the developer finally moved its own offices in to be the anchor. Brookfield is nowhere near ready to go with that vapor building. The Apex isn't backlogged, but was targeting Marriott and now faces a heavy lift to lease up the office portion - unless we elect a new direction for the County Council.
6:30: I compared the office markets - if you compare the job numbers, you'd have to go by county.
So who is the anchor tenant at Liberty Place in Fredericksburg?
"Tysons Corner had 4.9 million square feet of vacant, existing office space in the second quarter, an office vacancy rate of 21.6 percent."
Bethesda's office vacancy rate is 9.4%.
Robert Dyer is Montgomery County's version of Lord Haw Haw.
4:33 PM here. The vacancy rate I listed for Bethesda was from 2014. For Q4 2016, it was 8.4%.
4:33: Saul Alinsky, we've been through this 1000 times - Northern Virginia, because of its success, has constructed many times the square footage of office space as Montgomery County. When the federal budget deal hit defense contractors, the expected growth did not materialize. Therefore office vacancies in Northern VA are artificially inflated, because it simply has so much more office space to fill.
4:26: The project was just announced. How would they have an anchor tenant when they haven't even signed the finished deal with the city yet?
Saul has a point though. NoVa does have a huge vacancy rate you just can't ignore. Both the percentage and total square foot of vacancy is higher.
And you have said yourself before that federal government doesn't count.
You are also avoiding the questions about the size of Frederickburg's office space compared to Montgomery County and the general idea your comparison is not very similar.
1:43: Federal contractors are not government. You can ignore the "huge" vacancy rate in Virginia because they just have way more office space, which drives down rents and demand.
1:44: Fredericksburg's office market is hot; ours is not. That's a trend and a fact. Most projects here are residential, whereas Fburg saw little demand for residential downtown, but high demand for office. We're becoming a bedroom community, they're becoming a job center.
"You can ignore the "huge" vacancy rate in Virginia because they just have way more office space, which drives down rents and demand."
Sounds like they overbuilt. Yet this is a good thing because Virginia.
"Therefore office vacancies in Northern VA are artificially inflated, because it simply has so much more office space to fill."
LOLWut???
Dyer/4:42a:
"Fredericksburg's office market is hot; ours is not. That's a trend and a fact."
Hahaha I guess that there must be be some other Fredericksburg out there that doesn't have 12% office vacancy and isn't hemorrhaging jobs.
"You can ignore the "huge" vacancy rate in Virginia because they just have way more office space"
What??? This statement makes absolutely no sense.
Can you please tell me where you're getting your economy/office market information from? I'm starting to suspect that your source might be intentionally trying to humiliate you.
4:33
"Bethesda's office vacancy rate is 9.4%."
Exactly. And Bethesda's Class A vacancy is like 5%. That's lower than any major submarket in Virginia.
But clearly Dyer thinks he's the expert on all things economy/cre and the authors of the 40 other comments on here have absolutely no idea what we're talking about, with our "fancy" employment statistics and vacancy rates.
Conjecture and anecdotes is where its at!
And like usual the Maryland hating scumbag trolls from Virginia chime in with their two cents disputing the Facts that the powers that be in MoCo are working with the NoVa Good Ol Boys.......
Robert Dyer is touting Virginia over Maryland yet again. Doesn't that make him a Maryland-hating scumbag troll?
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