Buchanan Completes 125,000 SF in VA

August 2, 2006

Buchanan Partners has completed construction of three single-story flex/office buildings totaling 125,000 square feet.

Buchanan Partners has completed construction of three single-story flex/office buildings totaling 125,000 square feet at Innovation@Prince William near Gainesville, Virginia. This project is the first fully speculative flex/office space within the 1,600-acre technology-oriented business park.

To date, about 25 percent of the space in Building A is committed. Christopher Consultants, an engineering and land planning firm based in Fairfax, VA, has leased 9,000 SF and was represented by The Staubach Company. ECS, an engineering consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., has leased 4,010 SF in Building A and was represented by Grubb & Ellis. Norman Realty is representing Buchanan Partners in leasing all three buildings.

Buildings A and B have 46,300 SF each; Building C has 32,900 SF. Hubert Construction of Gaithersburg, MD was the general contractor and Morgan Gick McBeath & Associates of Falls Church, VA was the project architect. The single-story high-ceiling buildings, located at 9371 Innovation Drive, offer flexible space suitable for office, distribution, warehouse, or light industrial use; some units have drive-in bays and/or loading docks.

“We are very bullish on western Prince William County,” remarked Brian Benninghoff, Principal, Buchanan Partners. “We are in active negotiations with additional potential tenants for the three recently completed buildings at Innovation Business Center, including private, institutional, and governmental organizations.”

“It’s clear that many firms will want to locate within the Innovation business park in order to be close to the FBI, Eli Lilly, Lockheed Martin, and George Mason University’s (GMU) Center for Biotechnology, Bioscience, and Bioinformation,” Benninghoff continued. “The park’s location just off I-66 provides quick access to both Washington, D.C. and Washington Dulles International Airport, and allows employees to live near their jobs in the area’s many new upscale residential neighborhoods.”

To further indicate the firm’s confidence in Innovation, Buchanan Partners recently installed an original commissioned sculpture by Delos Van Earl at the entrance to its three-building development. Van Earl is a well-known California-based artist and sculptor.

Last year, the Federal government purchased 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.

Prince William County has the fastest job growth rate of any county in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2004, the county added 2,068 new jobs, an over-the-year employment gain of 8 percent, compared with a national job growth of less than one percent and Virginia job growth rate of 1.9 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.

One of the top 20 commercial developers in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, according to the Washington Business Journal, Buchanan Partners has developed a portfolio of over three 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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