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Arlington Peers Into the Void
Arlington would lose 20,000 jobs and be left with 4 million square feet of vacant office space, including at Ballston Plaza, above, if the Defense Department's realignment and relocation plans are approved.
(By Larry Morris -- The Washington Post)
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In Alexandria, where planners were still trying to sort out how much of the city's nonconforming office space was being relocated, there was a concern about losing other tenants who might be attracted to vacancies caused by the Arlington relocations.
"That will play havoc with local economies," said Bernard Caton, Alexandria's legislative director.
This week, Arlington planners were busy trying to go through the relocation data and identify all the impacts, conducting economic analyses and formulating strategies to move forward. Already, planners are talking about how to backfill some of the potentially empty space and about renovating some of the buildings likely to be vacated. Fisette noted that many of the Defense Department employees leaving Arlington's Metro corridor will now have to drive instead of taking the Metro, thus adding to the region's traffic congestion and "undoing" many of the county's "smart growth" successes that have benefited the entire region.
"If you were to unravel some of the progress that's been made with development being coordinated with transportation networks and start to reinforce sprawl in a big way, you will see significant economic impacts on the region and quality-of-life implications," Fisette warned last Thursday. "Congestion is just the tip of the iceberg."
Holzheimer said that the space being vacated is among Arlington's finest and that there is a good possibility the General Services Administration, which holds most of the leases on behalf of the Department of Defense, may be interested in moving in other GSA tenants, those who have their own security criteria and do not have to conform to the Defense Department's building standards.
While Arlington officials said they will continue to make building security a high priority, Holzheimer said there is no longer a rush to make costly security changes to please the Pentagon.
"That pressure is somewhat relaxed," Holzheimer said with an incredulous smile.
Staff writer Brigid Schulte contributed to this report.
