Fairfax Shines In Jobs Report

Gerald L. Gordon, president of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, said he has taken to joking that "we are the downtown and Washington is our suburb."

Although the whole region benefits from proximity to the federal government, he said, Fairfax's success also can be explained by access to Dulles International Airport, good public schools and other services and a vigorous effort to recruit companies through a business-friendly climate.

Even as Fairfax has become a jobs magnet, its development authority continues to seek out companies, helped by a $6.6 million budget that has been questioned by residents who argue that the booming economy is pushing crowded roads and schools to a breaking point.

Fairfax "has been consistently aggressive about attracting businesses . . . and you can't say that about Maryland and about some other counties" in Virginia, Gordon said. He described some of those other places as saying "they're interested in economic development this year, but not next year."

"Businesses want to be in a place where they don't have to worry about the next election," Gordon said.

Royce Hanson, chairman of Montgomery's Planning Board, offered a different theory. He said Fairfax has enjoyed a snowball effect as it has become known as a hub for information technology companies. Montgomery has a similar reputation for biotechnology, he said, but that industry is behind in the growth curve and employs fewer people.

The chief executive of one of Fairfax's corporate newcomers described just such an "agglomeration effect" in explaining his decision to locate in Herndon last year. Tom Patterson said he was sitting on a beach in Malibu, Calif., writing a book when it suddenly came to him that Fairfax was the place to launch Command Information, a company working to develop the next version of the Internet.

Fairfax not only has good schools and proximity to the federal government, he said, but it also has high concentrations of the kinds of businesses his company would be selling to and of the kinds of workers it would need to hire. A year after opening, the company employs 330 people.

"The mood in Northern Virginia was very upbeat. It was a better mood than in other areas that had been historic high-tech centers," Patterson said. "We're building the next generation of the Internet, and we rely on people who are as excited about coming to work as we are."