Another valuable Montgomery County office park property could be lost to residential housing, if the City of Rockville approves a proposal to convert it into condos and townhomes. 1455 Research Boulevard, one of many office sites located in the I-270 corridor of the County, would become 106 townhomes, 30 stacked condo townhomes, and 72 multifamily condo units, under the plan envisioned by developer Pulte. The company is building several similar developments in the City, including within the new Farmstead community, as well as in the King Farm, and Tower Oaks areas. Pulte's site plan is likely to be reviewed at a public hearing by the Rockville Planning Commission in summer or fall of 2025.
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| The existing office building, which was only constructed about 30 years ago |
The existing office building contains 17 office suites, 10 of which are currently leased, according to the property website. So the building is 59% leased. The property is 10.6 acres in size, meaning that it would still be ideal for a corporate headquarters, or a research, lab, and/or manufacturing facility, if the existing building were torn down for that purpose. It is directly adjacent to I-270. To state the obvious, all of the jobs currently provided by the current tenants of the building will likely be lost to the City and County in a conversion to housing. And the many more potential, high-wage jobs that could fill this office park site - and the resulting revenue - will never be realized.
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| Pulte's proposed redevelopment plan for residential housing |
From a County revenue standpoint, filling the current building, or replacing it with a major corporate headquarters or facility, would be more ideal than filling the site with residential housing. That's because residential housing, as we have seen this century, generates more costs in County services and infrastructure demands than it does in tax revenue. Hence the County's structural budget deficit, which extends as far into the future as the forecasts go. And do you remember "smart growth," which included placing jobs near housing, to reduce congestion and auto emissions in the I-270 corridor? Neither do the County Council and Planning Board, which don't even talk about "smart growth" anymore, having abandoned its fictional, expedient construct for the equally-fictional canards of "affordable," "attainable," "equity," "inclusionary," and "missing middle" - all code words bandied about in a nationwide campaign to allow upzoning for higher-density luxury housing in existing suburban neighborhoods.
Office, research, manufacturing and commercial uses, in contrast, generate less traffic and require no additional school capacity, for example. The problem is that the Council has driven the County's economy into the ditch over the last 23 years, through radical anti-business policies, and a failure to provide the necessary infrastructure to compete with Northern Virginia, such as direct highway access to Dulles International Airport via a new Potomac River crossing. Montgomery County has not only lost every competition for major corporate headquarters to Virginia during this time, but is most often not even in the hunt for these opportunities.
As a result, Montgomery County has failed to attract a single major corporate headquarters in over 25 years. While MoCo leaders slumbered this century, Virginia added the HQs of Northrop Grumman, Intelsat, Hilton Hotels, Nestle, Lidl, Gerber, Volkswagen, Corporate Executive Board, Amazon HQ2, CoStar, Lego, and more. And those are just ones we lost to Virginia!
Montgomery County has been left to spend large sums just to retain some of the HQs it had, like Marriott International, Choice Hotels, and GEICO, all of which have downsized when making their moves. In addition to such rearrangements of the deck chairs aboard the Titanic, Montgomery County has lost still other HQs that it had altogether. While the Council argued about the legality of circus animals one week last decade, representatives of New York City and Knoxville were completing final, secret negotiations that sealed their victory in snatching away the Discovery Communications HQ from downtown Silver Spring.
Obviously, property owners such as those at 1455 Research Boulevard can't be blamed for all this. They, understandably, are not going to simply wait for a future ousting of the Montgomery County cartel from power to maximize their investment. So we are likely to end up with more residential housing at this site. The Council is not sad about that, as their developer sugar daddies want them to keep Montgomery County bad-for-business, so that prime office park sites can become residential housing sites instead. Virginia prepares and markets such office/industrial properties extensively to international businesses, and reaps the spectacular results; Montgomery County just waits for someone to build housing on them. Too bad that Montgomery County residents will continue to shoulder the increasing tax burden to make up for all of this lost business and commercial revenue. Heckuva job, Brownie!
12 comments:
Stop comparing Montgomery County to the State of VA. What's next, why can't the village of Friendship Heights compete with the whole State VA? These arguments are getting ridiculous.
We need a mix of housing, business, and commercial growth over time. Whining about every small housing project in Rockville gives this blog "crazy uncle shaking fist at the clouds" vibes.
Thousands of jobs lost in MoCo in the last two weeks and you're acting like a handful of Class C tenants possibly having to move next door 5 years from now is the problem.
With hundreds of underutilized office and research buildings in MoCo, it’s hard to see how you believe that this shabby old office building should remain until a large corporate HQ can be lured to the site. Yes of course we need more office and research companies, but we also need more housing. I’m not sure I would ever buy a home so close to a freeway, and distant from mass transit though.
This is a terrible hot take. Suburban office buildings are effectively worthless. Downtown Bethesda and DC office buildings are worth a fraction of their replacement cost, office buildings in northern Virginia are worth a fraction of their replacement cost. The office market will not recover anytime soon and will likely get worse under the current president.
Nothing is worse than reading the same old tepid argument that employment growth is doomed, if housing replaces under utilized office space.
You can compare MoCo to Virginia, Northern Virginia, or individual Northern Virginia counties - - Montgomery County loses in any of the 3 comparisons, so I and many others will continue to use these benchmarks.
You've argued "we need a mix of housing, business, and commercial growth over time." That's echoing the whole point of my article! We've mostly gotten a lot of residential development over the last two decades, and it's killing us revenue-wise.
5:48: We've lost many thousands before the last two weeks. Smelling salts are needed for those who think this is a new problem. It's just that, politically, the faction of the Democratic Party that controls the County only sees value in government jobs, so DOGE is a new and shocking experience for them.
6:49: Yes, the roaring traffic of I-270 makes this an ideal site for homes, LOL. If you missed out on the apartments by the County dump, have we got a home for you! Air brake! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
6:50: Aerospace and defense are booming. They will continue to do so under Trump. Build the bridge to Dulles, and elect people who will actually create a positive business climate and market the County.
7:53: This land was set aside for high-wage jobs, much like Rock Spring and the Executive Boulevard/Montrose Parkway area. When it's gone, it's gone. You call this common sense article "tepid," but you find leaders who spend all their time talking about plastic bags, zoo animals, and leaf blowers to be compelling intellectuals?
Aerospace and defense will certainly not be booming if the proposed budget cuts actually happen. Government contractors across the region are about to get crushed and with that go their office space needs.
9:42: The jury is still out on defense budget cuts - call me a skeptic. Not to mention, manned aircraft are quickly becoming outmoded, and a whole new boom in autonomous air weaponry is upon us. Such products will be the natural winner in any budget downsizing.
But there will be no drop in demand from foreign customers, to whom Trump is heavily pushing purchases of U.S. equipment, in exchange for tariff relief. Likewise, there will be no drop in demand for private space launch vehicles, satellites, civilian aircraft, and other aerospace sectors.
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