Buchanan Partners Breaks Ground at Innovation
June 7, 2005
Buchanan Partners Breaks Ground on 125,000 SF of Flex/Office Space at Innovation in Prince William County, VA
Buchanan Partners Breaks Ground on 125,000 SF of Flex/Office Space at Innovation in Prince William County, VA
Project Located Near FBI Build-to-Suit Site
Manassas, Virginia, June 7, 2005… Buchanan Partners has started construction of three single-story flex/office buildings totaling 125,000 square feet at Innovation@Prince William near Gainesville, Virginia. This project, scheduled to deliver in the first quarter of 2006, will be the first fully speculative flex/office space within the 1,600-acre technology-oriented business park.
Buchanan’s groundbreaking comes on the heels of the Federal government’s purchase of 15 acres at Innovation for a build-to-suit structure to house about 300 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) employees. The new location will allow the FBI to consolidate offices that are currently in leased space, gain access a large and well-educated labor force, plan for future expansion, and comply with new Federal building security guidelines.
Designed by Morgan Gick McBeath & Associates of Falls Church, VA, Buchanan’s three buildings will be constructed simultaneously. Two of the buildings will have 46,300 square feet each, and the third will have 32,900 square feet. Hubert Construction of Gaithersburg, MD is the general contractor. Norman Realty is leasing the buildings for Buchanan Partners.
The three new structures will incorporate a number of environmentally friendly building features including skylights for natural daylighting, high R-value insulation, and the use of slag cement in base building construction. This “green” product incorporates slag, a byproduct of steel production, which is typically discarded in landfills.
“Innovation is a desirable location for technology companies, biotech businesses, corporate headquarters, and government agencies,” said Board Chairman Sean T. Connaughton. “These new office buildings will provide greater opportunity for businesses looking to lease space and become part of one of the nation’s fastest growing job markets.”
“Our buildings will provide space for smaller firms that want to locate near the FBI, Eli Lilly, Lockheed Martin, and George Mason University’s (GMU) Center for Biotechnoloy, Bioscience, and Bioinformation,” remarked Brian Benninghoff, Principal, Buchanan Partners. “As Innovation grows, we hope to develop more sites within the park.”
Just down the road from Innovation, Buchanan Partners also is developing Heritage Hunt Commercial Park, approved for up to 600,000 square feet of quality mixed-use space. The first phase of this project, the 67,000 square foot Heritage Hunt Village Center, is nearly completed. Leases are being negotiated for the Village Center’s 29,000 SF retail center; two three-story office condominium buildings totaling 38,000 SF are 90 percent sold.
Prince William County is rapidly developing as a business, residential, and cultural hub at the western edge of the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan region. The county as a whole had the fastest 2003-2004 job growth rate – eight percent -- of any large county in the nation; during the same time period, the U.S. as a whole experienced a job growth rate of less than one percent.
The western portion of the county, where Innovation@Prince William is located, is home to thousands of families living in award-winning master-planned communities such as Lake Manassas, Heritage Hunt, and others. To complement these new communities, a $56 million 1,100-seat performing arts center, designed in the style of a grand European opera house, is under construction on the GMU Prince William campus.
The 17th most active commercial developer in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, according to the Washington Business Journal, Buchanan Partners has developed a portfolio of over 2.5 million square feet of commercial property. The portfolio includes office, industrial, flex and retail space projects that have been developed, acquired, approved, or under construction. Buchanan Partners also has acquired, planned or developed over 1,600 acres of commercial land over the past seven years. For more information, see the company’s Web site at www.buchananpartners.com.
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