Prince George's Sees Andrews As Hub of Development

To hear the top business types of Prince George's County tell it, the only reason the county hasn't become a technology hub or defense-contracting corridor is that it hasn't been marketed that way.

It's 10 miles from the Pentagon, with easy access over the new Wilson Bridge. Prince George's has cheaper real estate than Northern Virginia and a lot more room to grow. And Andrews Air Force Base is the county's biggest employer, with 3,500 more military and related jobs coming under Pentagon plans.

Because of all that (not to mention the fact that 60 percent of Prince George's residents leave the county for work every day), the area around Andrews should be designated a National Defense and Technology Corridor, the Prince George's County Business Roundtable suggested last week.

While the proposal came with few concrete commitments, it had plenty of brass.

The business group's announcement got huzzahs from local officials, state lawmakers and representatives of Maryland's congressional delegation, and hooahs from Air Force higher-ups assembled at Andrews, all in agreement that it's just what Prince George's needs.

With the designation and the creation of a special development district where suitable projects would be fast-tracked, incentives would be offered to lure companies to the corridor, the group said. Maryland could consolidate all of its homeland security offices in the area, and then get the federal Department of Homeland Security to move to Prince George's County, roundtable President Jim Estepp said.

"We're going to bring Homeland Security right here to Prince George's County and it's going to be great!" said Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., the Maryland Senate president, before dashing off the podium to get back to Annapolis.

"We can do this around Metro centers; we can certainly do it around military centers such as this," said Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown (D), who is coordinating the state's response to the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closure Commission plan. Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) said in his 2006 campaign that moving state homeland security offices to the county was a good idea, Brown noted.

In a show of support, Maj. Gen. Robert L. Smolen, commander of the Air Force District of Washington, announced that his headquarters would move in May to Andrews, from Bolling Air Force Base in the District. (This would add 300 people to the 20,000 who already live and work on the base.)

Last month, a report by the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development noted that relocations related to the BRAC plan were expected to increase the burden on public services in the communities where they land.

To that end, the Business Roundtable suggested that the county's planned town center just east of Andrews should be developed with an eye to serving the military community. Under the county's plan, 15,000 units of housing, 2 million square feet of retail, six new schools, and hotels and entertainment venues would be built. Eventually, according to the plan, a town about half the size of Columbia would rise on 7,000 acres bound by Ritchie Marlboro Road to the north and east, the Capital Beltway to the west, and Maryland Route 4 to the south.

The business group's plan for the technology and defense corridor calls for road improvements around Andrews and expansion of the Metro Green Line to the proposed Westphalia community next to the base. An additional 200 to 300 acres would be set aside for base expansion.

All that development could cost as much as $9 billion, the Business Roundtable says.

While the county can encourage the development it wants through zoning, incentives and approvals of plans, each part of the proposal would require many steps. Land would have to be bought for any base expansion. The Metro extension probably would require state, local and federal cooperation. Road improvements and redevelopment projects would face myriad funding hurdles and approval processes.

Robert E. Lang, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute of Virginia Tech in Alexandria, a research center on growth and development issues, said it's "within the realm of reason" that Prince George's could create a defense corridor around Andrews.

"There's a lot of total air balls out there, proposals that you look at and think this is just never going to happen. But that's not the case here," he said.

"This is clearly a region where there's plenty of defense contracting, and why should it all be on one side of the river?" Lang said. "In fact there's an imbalance in this region; way too much overload of every exit from the Beltway on the west side of the system, and with the new [Wilson] bridge, you could see a relocation to the southeast quadrant, which is Prince George's County."

Estepp said the Business Roundtable will pay for a special development district staff member to do community outreach and help shepherd projects through bureaucracy.

"This is a vision," Estepp said. "It is bold, but it could bring great prosperity to Prince George's."