Demolition of existing structures continues at the future site of the relocating Marriott International headquarters at 7750 Wisconsin Avenue (the HQ is currently in the Rock Spring office park area of Bethesda). Shuffling Marriott downtown is about all the sputteringly-stagnant Montgomery County economy can muster these days. County officials have been bodyslammed by everyone from the
Washington Post editorial board to Sage Policy Group, for creating an anti-business environment that has now become MoCo's bad reputation nationwide. The crisis has reached such alarming heights that a former Republican businessman came within 80 votes of victory in June's Democratic primary for County Executive.
Montgomery County failed to even court Medliminal, LLC, which was searching for a new headquarters location. Such a business would have fit well here, given that biotech and medicine are among the few bright spots in our moribund MoCo economy. Instead, Medliminal is headed to the booming Innovation Park in Prince William County, with 70 jobs averaging $74,000, according to a Prince William County press release.
Medliminal is not a Fortune 500 or major corporation - both of which Montgomery County has failed to attract a single one of in two decades - but is a classic case of MoCo's super-low-energy County Council being unable to even grab the low-hanging economic development fruit. Tragic!
19 comments:
"County officials have been BODYSLAMMED by everyone from the Washington Post editorial board to Sage Policy Group"
LOL...Dyer fantasizes that respected news media and think tanks engage in #CoffeetableViolence.
Looks like office space in Manassas rents for about half of what it does in Gaithersburg and one-quarter of what it does in downtown Bethesda.
"A former Republican businessman"
Because Republicans are abandoning their party at a steadily accelerating pace.
#WalkAway
Imagine how confused Trump supporters are. They have to hate the NFL and Harley-Davidson but like Kanye West.
What's totally awesome is that Christine Hallquist, M2F transexual Democratic nominee for Governor of Vermont, is much prettier than Republican "females" Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
11 homicides as of August 19, Day 231 of 365.
So that means that if the rate stays the same through the remainder of the year, homicides will have fallen by 19% over 2017.
3:10: Not true - we're ahead of last year already by at least one homicide. Trending upward, while homicides have been declining in counties around us. Sorry, Dyer is right and you are wrong on this.
12:42: #WalkAway is a Democrat phenomenon, not Republican.
10:43: Yes, Virginia is more affordable and lower taxes - that's why they're kicking our ass, Sherlock.
#UnsignedDyer @ 3:19 PM:
1) While it is true that there were more homicides year-to-date, homicides in 2017 spiked in the last four months of the year, with 10 out of 21 occuring in the first 8 months of the year and11 out of 21 occurring n the last four months. If homicides do not spike in the remainder of 2018 as they did in 2017, the number of homicides will be lower for 2018.
2) "#WalkAway" is a Russian-supported GOP trolling effort. But the reality is that Republicans, not Democrats, are walking away from their party in 2018.
3) Innovation Park is 30 miles from the center of DC, with lots of open land around it. Bethesda is 8 miles, convenient to Metro. Gaithersburg is 20 miles, next to I-270 and just 2-3 miles from the Shady Grove Metro station. Innovation Park is 5 miles away from I-66 and is 20 miles from the nearest Metro station. So of course the site is cheaper, because the location is less desirable, "Sherlock".
It's MedImmune. And they're a subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.
3:43: I always post comments under my own name - despite your fantasies, not all people who disagree with you in Bethesda are me.
Whoa - now you admit you were lying about the additional spike in murders this year. #FakeNews Reality: We had a 31% spike in murders, and now we're on track to exceed that number of homicides this year.
If you believe #WalkAway is a Russian effort, do you now admit that Senator Joe McCarthy was right?
Innovation Park was, in fact, more desirable than Montgomery County to Medliminal. Embarrassing.
9:15: Different company. Medliminal is a medical billing company.
"We had a 31% spike in murders, and now we're on track to exceed that number of homicides this year."
That will happen only if there are 10 or more homicides in the remaining 4 1/2 months of 2018. If it turns out that there are only 5 or fewer homicides for the remainder of this year, then the toll for 2018 will not exceed that for 2016. Are you really rooting for more of your fellow Montgomery County residents to be murdered?
Medliminal is a billing company. Not the same as an actual medical company like Medimmune.
If Virginia is so great then move there.
What does the phrase "sputteringly-stagnant" mean?
6:12: Many people are - that's why our County tax revenue is tanking.
6:34: Lowest rate of new business growth in the region, even behind Culpeper and Rappahannnock counties. No major corporate HQ moving here in two decades. Net loss of jobs. And that's just scratching the surface.
8:10 AM: No, I mean you specifically should move there.
Culpeper and Rappahannock counties are more rural. The comparisons are meaningless. Not just by the number of residents, but neither abut a major US city..
Per the 2010 census. the population, for each:
Culpeper County population = 46,689
Rappahannock County = 7,373
Montgomery County = 971,777
Just for context, yearly number of homicides in the county since 2007 are as follows:
2007 = 19
2008 = 21
2009 = 12
2010 = 17
2011 = 16
2012 = 15
2013 = 8
2014 = 19
2015 = 30
2016 = 16
2017 = 21
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