Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Montgomery County loses another corporate HQ to Virginia


There goes another one. Amentum Services, a leading government contractor in the fields of engineering, project management and advanced solutions integration, is moving from Germantown to Chantilly in Fairfax County, Virginia. The latest corporate decision to choose Virginia over Montgomery County will bring 157 new jobs to Fairfax County - good jobs with high pay. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) announced the move in a press release Monday.

According to Youngkin's statement, Virginia competed directly with Maryland to woo Amentum, which has 44,000 employees working in 85 countries around the world. “Fairfax County offers the location, access to decision-makers, and talent pipeline that global providers like Amentum are seeking, and we are proud to welcome the company’s leadership and operations team to Virginia,” Youngkin said. “Amentum joins the ranks of the Commonwealth’s diversified ecosystem of more than 800 corporate headquarters across a broad cross-section of industries.”

“I want to thank and congratulate Amentum for choosing Fairfax County for its home base,” Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeffrey C. McKay said in statement. “Our long-term investment into making Fairfax County the top choice to locate a global business continues to bear fruit, and I am thrilled that Amentum has chosen to take advantage of what we offer.” 

Amentum is the latest corporation to abandon moribund Montgomery County for Virginia, or choose Virginia over Maryland in a relocation search. It joins Amazon, Northrop Grumman, Volkswagen, Lidl, Hilton Hotels, Intelsat, Corporate Executive Board, Nestle, Lego, and Gerber, to name a few. 

Montgomery County and Maryland have had difficulty even gobbling up the crumbs under Virginia's dinner table. When Youngkin made the surprising decision to reject a Ford Motor Company battery plant recently, Maryland wasn't even a serious contender to grab the jump ball. That fumble apparently happened on the watch of former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and the 2018-2022 Montgomery County Council, as Michigan was quickly named as Ford's backup choice. 

12 comments:

JAC said...

Well Robert,
I can tell you for a fact that Hogan's team had quite a few successes. Will Moore do better?
They are not interested in business generally but high taxes and more govt. So, we'll see.
We did very well on attracting and retaining corporations under Hogan. Fact.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Elrich Voters! You did it!

Anonymous said...

Luckily it's a company most of us have never heard of, so no big loss. They kept Marriott and that was one of the Big Fishes !

Anonymous said...

The car battery factory has always been likely to end up in Michigan; Youngkin pretending he broke up with Ford before they broke up with him was straight out of an insecure high school girl's playbook. Maryland wasn't in the running for obvious reasons - our residents have zero experience in car parts manufacturing.

As for Amentum, the "move" makes sense for them. They aren't actually leasing any new sqft - the NoVa space was already leased by a company Amentum acquired (hence calling this a "move" from one jurisdiction to another isn't particularly accurate) and a significant chunk of their business is defense contracting. I suspect most of their employees will be working remote, anyways, since they're not expanding their small NoVa footprint. None of MoCo's "good jobs with high pay" were harmed in the making of this NoVa propaganda piece, it appears.

Anonymous said...

While Amentum "moving" is a nothingburger that likely affects no county employees negatively, I am concerned about Novavax. They're poised to, at a minimum, have to severely cut back their expansion and eliminate dozens if not hundreds of positions. That's what job loss actually looks like. Luckily there are many, many other local biotech employers hiring.

Anonymous said...

Certain comments just illuminate the ridiculousness of wokelibtinksuicide. This is one of them. Collectively, we deserve our demise, individually, we need to spank this dangerous self-defeating thinking.

Anonymous said...

The Marriott family has been in this area for decades, maybe they overlook the knee jerk politics and shortsighted policies wrought upon us all. Other companies answer to other demands and expectations.

Anonymous said...

9:49 DeSintis is waiting to recruit you to his flock o fools, please join him.

Anonymous said...

Honestly.. this is a "shrug"

Anonymous said...

I agree with 949. The wokelibstinkwont change their attitude until their property values crash. They think it won’t happen to them but they thought that in Detroit before liberals took over and drove the city into the ground

Anonymous said...

Imagine knowing so little about politics and policy you think globalization and the decline of American manufacturing was a liberal position. If liberals had their way everyone in Detroit would be in a union making $50/hour and all the cheap Chinese crap you buy would be tariffed into oblivion. You're welcome to think that's a bad idea and the free market w/its cheap foreign labor is better, but saying Detroit's (or literally thousands of conservative towns and cities that also relied upon manufacturing) decline was caused by liberal policy is the exact opposite of reality.

Anonymous said...

10:05, "globalization and the decline of American manufacturing was a liberal position"

Who's citing that? Talk about disingenuous false options! The decline with all but one of the 15, or so, liberal failed cities has more to do with crime and failed social policy. The root cause is the creation of a "middle class" ( LBJ's Great Society) bereft of education and discipline. Look around and tell me that more Gubmint will fix this. It's only gonna get worse and our beloved Bethesda will go the way of failed Silver Spring if we (read: naive libs) don't address the real issue and get their heads out of the free mulch.