Montgomery County and Maryland have failed yet again to win another corporate headquarters competition. The winner in the contest is a familiar one: Northern Virginia. Heven AeroTech is moving its U.S. headquarters from Miami to Sterling, Virginia. The firm specializes in the design, manufacture, and deployment hydrogen-powered, runway-independent drones around the world. Needless to say, this is a booming field, as drones are the future of warfare, and are also being utilized in a growing number of non-military sectors of the economy.
A quick look at the map shows once again the critical importance of having direct access to Dulles International Airport for economic development. Heven AeroTech's new HQ address, 45240 Business Court, is 4 minutes from the airport. It's also right adjacent to VA 28, in which the state has invested greatly to bring it up to interstate highway standards, by constructing numerous interchanges. That's the same VA 28 that Montgomery County and Maryland could have made a direct highway connection to via a new Potomac River crossing many years ago, but have defiantly chosen not to.
The results continue to speak for themselves. We are falling further and further behind in the game, at an accelerating pace. According to Business Facilities magazine, in Fairfax County alone, 75 of that county's 125 aerospace firms have moved or expanded there in just the last three years. Montgomery County hasn't attracted a single major new corporate headquarters - of any type - in over 25 years.
Our "leaders" have made the deliberate decision to not give ourselves the Dulles advantage, and to continue to follow a tax-and-spend blueprint that is not only not competitive with rival jurisdictions, but now represents the greatest tax and fee burden in the entire region. Heckuva job, Brownie!
5 comments:
I made trip to New Jersey the past week. Another pretty blue state. For some reason NJ has more business large and small than Maryland does. More independent eateries. Could it be that MD has put all it's eggs in the Federal Government basket?
This is silly. Maryland has BWI if you're arguing they are locating next to any airport. The freeway connection would not have made being directly next to Dulles less appealing than the probably 20-30 min drive it would take to get from Moco
11:28: BWI is not comparable to Dulles. It does not offer the number of direct flights to international business destinations that Dulles does. It does not offer flights to as many cities worldwide as Dulles. And it does not offer the frequency of departures that Dulles provides.
These 3 factors, along with the superior air cargo operations out of Dulles, are why international business executives favor Dulles over BWI.
With Express Lanes on a new I-370 extension to Dulles, the travel time from the I-270 corridor - where we have the most available sites for aerospace and defense firms - would be very competitive with Northern Virginia.
They located right next to the airport. In no way is anywhere in Maryland competitive with that
5:41: Without the new Potomac crossing to Dulles, no. But that's the whole point - we need that direct connection to Dulles, and we need new leaders who understand that.
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