When BNA Inc. began looking for updated office space about two years ago, executives with the District-based publisher said their first choice would have been to cut a new deal with the city and stay put.
The company was founded in the District 75 years ago as the Bureau of National Affairs and expanded alongside the federal bureaucracy that its 1,300 employees write about in specialty newsletters, and "all things being equal, we would have wanted to stay here," said Paul N. Wojcik, BNA's president and chief executive.
But Wojcik said that in the battle for jobs around the region, he discovered that "all things weren't equal."
Although the District had provided BNA with a standard tax credit for hiring D.C. residents, the state of Virginia put up $1 million in cash. Arlington developer Charles E. Smith Commercial Realty agreed to exchange a newly renovated office building on South Bell Street in Crystal City for the three smaller buildings BNA owns in the District's West End neighborhood -- a transaction structured so the company could avoid capital gains taxes on a sale of its property.
The D.C. government could not make a counteroffer without D.C. Council approval, and BNA executives said they didn't want to wait on officials at the Wilson Building. The District gave BNA a 10-year property tax deferral in 1996, but it would have taken special legislation to extend it or provide other incentives.
"We had our own time constraints to deal with, and that was not appealing to us," Wojcik said. The company will pay its full property tax bill of around $6.7 million in two more years, about the time the company moves to Crystal City.
The relocation of BNA's 1,300 writers, editors and executives offers a glimpse into how aggressively Arlington County developers and officials are courting businesses. The county is slated to lose as many as 23,000 defense-related jobs in coming years under a proposed restructuring that would move military offices and related agencies out of millions of square feet of leased office space -- much in Crystal City.
"Our biggest problem is Crystal City clearing out. It's really undercutting the District," said council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), "They got a terrific deal."
But it also speaks to the evolution of BNA, an employee-owned company that has managed to remain independent despite intense consolidation in legal and business publishing and dramatic shifts in publishing technology.
BNA is the largest independently owned U.S. company in an industry dominated by such multinational conglomerates as Canada-based Thomson Corp., Amsterdam-based Wolters Kluwer and Reed Elsevier, which has headquarters in Britain and the Netherlands. The three have snatched up such U.S. firms as Gale Research and CCH Inc.
BNA was able to withstand pressure to sell because the company is owned exclusively by current and former employees. Despite bimonthly inquiries from brokers, they have steadfastly refused.
"People invest for the long haul. They believe in the overall mission and fundamentals of the business because they are here every day. There are no secrets," said Gregory C. McCaffery, BNA's publisher and chief operating officer.
